Final Fantasy 12 was first released for PlayStation 2 in 2006. Final Fantasy 12 was released to PC in 2018 followed by an HD release onto Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4, with a few features that were exclusive to the consoles. The PC’s edition did carry over the Digital rights management (DRM) service Denuvo. Denuvo was removed from Final Fantasy 12 with he game’s latest patch along with adding in the few minor features from the console variants.
The first feature that was added allows the player to change job vocation of the player at any time, the second expands the Gambit system, which dictates the orders which dictates the party’s behavior. The Gambit system was expanded out to three concurrent orders giving more flexibility to the playstyle. Square Enix did not disclose the removal of Denuvo in the Patch 1.0.4.0 patch notes. Members of the PCGamingWiki did notice the change though as the removal can be seen in the SteamDB.
Digital rights management (DRM) are various methods to protect the copyrights of digital products thus preventing piracy. Denuvo is one from DRM can take but is popular amongst developers. Denuvo intends on making the game much more complicated to crack and making a free version to distribute. The service is not perfect, and many games get cracked eventually. DOOM 2016 was cracked on the day of its release while Assassin’s Creed: Origins was not cracked until its 100th day after release. Denuvo or other DRM services are often implemented to protect sales for the first month of release where the game’s popularity is at its highest.
Denuvo often has a negative effect on the end-user of the game with game performance being 50% lower than the game running without Denuvo. Tekken 7 Director Katsuhiro Harada pinned the poor performance of Tekken 7 on PC was due to Denuvo. The benefit of Denuvo in preventing piracy is currently unclear as many pirates may have bought the game if it did not have Denuvo.