DRM has always been a touchy subject, especially so if its implementation affects gameplay. Resident Evil Village seems to be the latest game to serve as an example. Pirates have managed to crack the game, and it reportedly fixes a performance issue that some paying customers have been reporting.
DSOGaming reported that the PC version of Resident Evil Village has had stuttering issues. A common way to recreate it seems to be simply killing enemies which, as you’d imagine, is common enough. But over the weekend, a cracker managed to work its way through the game’s DRM. And the folks at DSOGaming found that the cracked version essentially solved the stuttering issue.
This points to the DRM in Resident Evil Village, a combination of Denuvo and Capcom’s own anti-tamper software, causing performance issues. Though Denuvo prevents another hit to its already tarnished name here, as the crack only disables Capcom’s DRM.
But even if it’s not Denuvo’s fault this time, it’s another instance of anti-piracy measures hurting the paying customer instead of pirates. Resident Evil Village, and its players, are the latest victims. Judging from the amount of money Crytek paid to have Denuvo DRM in Crysis Remastered, it must’ve been an equally big sum for Capcom. And it’s unnecessary spending on the publisher’s part, since it put in its own DRM, which ultimately got cracked.
It’s probably worth mentioning that this article is not condoning piracy. But publishers should pay attention to this case study. If they spend less money on DRM, then that’s less money that they “need” to charge customers for. Or even if they charge us the same, that’s more money to pay their developers, use as budget for upcoming games, or line the pockets of executives and shareholders. The last one notwithstanding, those options all sounds better than paying for something that not only doesn’t work, but also has a chance of punishing the paying customer.
(Source: DSOGaming)
