I really don’t understand why big publishers keep forcing Denuvo into every new AAA game when it’s 2025 and we’ve seen again and again how bad it is for performance.

Look at Wuchang Fallen Feathers. The game already had some serious optimization issues at launch with frame pacing all over the place and then you check and see Denuvo in the files. Mafia Country Side was the same story for me. I was hyped to play it and the open world is gorgeous but you get constant microstutters when riding through the countryside and your CPU usage is spiking for no reason.

Capcom just removed Denuvo from Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess for its first anniversary—a move widely cheered by players. While this game didn’t suffer much at launch, Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil Village saw serious performance hits due to denuvo.

Games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Rise struggled with optimization at launch—even on high-end rigs—and pairing that with Denuvo seems like a recipe for disaster.

The thing is these aren’t even competitive multiplayer games where you can argue DRM is protecting anything. They’re mostly single player experiences yet they still throw in heavy DRM that keeps running in the background and eating up resources. All it really does is make the performance worse for people who actually buy the game.

People keep saying “oh Denuvo doesn’t affect gameplay” but you can’t tell me the extra loading times and random stutters are just coincidence when they magically disappear in versions without it. We’ve seen devs remove it after launch before and suddenly the game feels smoother.

If publishers want to use DRM fine but at least remove it after the first month when most sales happen. Keeping it forever just makes people avoid your game entirely. In a year where optimization in general is at an all time low adding Denuvo is like pouring fuel on the fire.