After just four days of implementing the Denuvo anti-cheat software into the PC port of Doom Eternal, id Software has announced that they will be removing the controversial program in their next available patch. Executive Producer Marty Stratton made the announcement on the Doom Reddit page, with long and detailed explanation as to why they integrated the software in the first place, as well as to why they were taking it out. Ever since the update last week, Doom Eternal has been getting review bombed on Steam without mercy, with the numbers exponentially increasing each day.
Stratton initially justified the Denuvo program as a way to counter cheaters in the game’s multiplayer modes. He went onto list many reasons for this, including having the anti-cheat fitted with a kernel driver which allows the program to sit right at the center of the operating system where the majority of potentially sensitive data is stored. However, after seeing the overwhelmingly negative response, Stratton and the rest of id Software had a change of heart: “Despite our best intentions, feedback from players has made it clear that we must re-evaluate our approach to anti-cheat integration.” Stratton goes onto say that they are planning to have this update rolled out within the week.
In addition, one of the many complaints that came from the Denuvo anti-cheat program was that it was causing the game to run with less than desired frames with additional performance issues: “Many have unfortunately related the performance and stability issues introduced in Update 1 to the introduction of anti-cheat. They are not related.” Stratton dispelled this by saying that this was not due to the Denuvo and was just a separate problem that would be addressed in the upcoming patch: “We believe the performance issues some players have experienced on PC are based on a code change we made around VRAM allocation.”
However way you take this, those in the PC gaming community will most likely see this as a major victory. It’s very rare for a company to take something back in their video game, let alone a AAA developer. Doom Eternal was critically acclaimed when it launched in March, which is arguably why id Software changed their minds with Denuvo. They had taken something that the fans were in love with and made it almost unrecognizable. As we said earlier, the update that will remove the anti-cheating software is expected to go up sometime within the week.
Doom Eternal is available now for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch port coming later. You can check out our review of the game here.