It is just shy of a year ago that Capcom released Devil May Cry 5 (DMC5). DMC5 released with the digital rights management (DRM) system Denuvo. Capcom released a new patch which has removed the DRM system from the game. DRM and Denuvo specifically has been repeatedly accused of causing issues for performance on games. The accusations range from being too demanding on computers to even reducing the lifespans of solid state drives.
DCM5 had for, a brief moment, two separate builds. One with and one without Denuvo. Steam users had a user guides on how to run DMC5 without Denuvo and players found the game to run at about 20 frame per second faster. Though this guide is now defunct as the files to remove Denuvo has been removed. Tests have been done testing the impact of Denuvo on games performance. A test specifically tested the impact Dishonored 2, comparing both FPS and milliseconds per frame (MS). Dishonored 2 running with Denuvo consistently preformed worse, with a lower FPS and higher MS with the later striking as high as 137.
The test revealed the Denuvo affects the MS more negatively than the games FPS and the game version without Denuvo performed 50% better than the variant with Denuvo. Of course the test only checked a single game, but the impact of Denuvo has been felt in other games with pirated Final Fantasy XV performing better than the official release. The impact of DRM towards thwarting game piracy is not entirely clear, but DRM has yet to stop piracy altogether.
It is not uncommon for games to now release with DRM to protect it from piracy during the game’s most popular shelf time. Later in the game’s life when most of the hype has died down, the DRM is often patched out to boost the game’s performance. This is not Capcom’s first time removing DRM from their games. They have done it with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2.