007 First Light Quietly Adds Denuvo Before Launch

The controversial DRM system Denuvo has been quietly added, with zero fanfare, naturally, to IO’s 007 First Light, which is due out in less than a week, and Steam pre-purchasers are not happy.

Denuvo is widely blamed for system slowdowns and frame rate drops, but, more annoyingly, it requires you, even though you have bought the game, to handshake with an online server regularly. No massive problem, unless you are on a plane, on your Steam Deck or somewhere else with a spotty connection and need to connect to update your authorisation because you forgot to load it before you left, because you were too busy making sure the cooker wasn’t left on, and you had your passport.

Even if claims of technical issues are overstated, what isn’t is that, if your internet goes down for a period of time for whatever reason (say, the apocalypse?), then you aren’t going to be able to play the game you have forked out over $60 for. Straight up question – do you think that’s acceptable?

So therefore it is something players absolutely reject, even though it has, until recently at least, though not in the case of the Lego Batman game, allowed publishers to get a little longer with their game released before it is cracked and available to pirates, which is fair enough, although the argument that only people who buy the game legitimately suffer these issues and people who pirate it for free get a better experience is a strong one

Why then, are we seeing a trend when disclosure of Denuvo is only announced super close to a game’s launch – could it be the prospect of announcing it months in advance might impact pre-orders, which are the most ridiculous thing in modern gaming anyway? Don’t pre-order anything that won’t run out ever. It’s a nonsense.

Denuvo operates by charging a subscription to the software house, so there is a cost involved, but there is pretty much a zero chance that the decision was made to add it just six days out from launch. Which means that it has been deliberately held back from becoming public knowledge, and I can’t think of a single acceptable reason why that should be the case.

Players are calling on Steam to force publishers to say whether a game will contain Denuvo before allowing pre-orders. It’s a nice idea, but it absolutely won’t happen without severe pressure from us all. We have no rights in any of this stuff. We don’t own what we buy, and with Denuvo, we are even told when we can play it. And we are too busy forcing devs to highlight when they used Midjourney four years ago for a tree in the background of their game anyway.

And the crazy thing is, I might as well write the story in advance about how Denuvo has been bypassed already, so it’s prepped for an hour or two after the game came out.