DRM in video games have already been controversial among players. And over the weekend, the most infamous among them, Denuvo managed to lock players out of their games. And the reason is cited to be “domain issues”.
This affects a wide range of games on Steam, from brand new ones like Guardians of the Galaxy, to those that have a few years to their name, like the Tomb Raider reboot series. The common element that they all have was that they run Denuvo DRM.
@PlanetZooGame @shadowofwargame your DRM provider has let their domain name lapse, and it's killed your game startup… along with multiple other games I imagine. pic.twitter.com/rQk58K4AuJ
— Alex Buckland (@alexbuckland96) November 7, 2021
Users suspected that this downtime was caused by a lapsed domain name used for Denuvo games activations. In a statement to PC Gamer, Denuvo has said that the downtime was indeed caused by “domain issues”, but did not confirm the exact nature of the issue. While the issues have been fixed, there’s also the obligatory line of implementing “further improvements to avoid such downtime in the future”.
It remains to be seen if such promises of preventing downtime on the part of Denuvo will mean anything beyond platitudes. Being the most famous, the DRM provider is also one of the most disliked among players. Though one saving grace in recent memory is in Resident Evil Village, when it was not its DRM that affected performance, but Capcom’s own.
