Doom EternalÂhas been a hot topic recently due to one thing, and one thing alone: Denuvo. For PC players, Denuvo’s software is the boogeyman, the thing that goes bump at night. The company is infamous for its DRM software, which requires players to be connected to the internet to play a game. However, DRM isn’t the focus of fan’s anger this time around, instead, it’s the company’s anti-cheat software. Thankfully,ÂDoom EternalÂwill soon only be plagued by demons, as id Software has opted to remove the anti-cheat program in its entirety from the game in its next update.
This all started afterÂDoom Eternal’s first patch, in which Denuvo anti-cheat was introduced. Players swiftly review-bombed the title on Steam, but why? It has to do with the kind of software Denuvo anti-cheat is. It’s a kernel-mode anti-cheat, which is just a fancy way of saying this is software that doesn’t just stop at the game’s files, it digs into your operating system. Irdeto, the company that built Denuvo, has stated that this software doesn’t take any personal information, although it does monitor how your OS interacts withDoom Eternal, and then sends that information to Amazon servers.
To make matters worse, word started spreading of the game running poorly after introducing Denuvo’s anti-cheat. Some players on Reddit and in Steam discussion forums claimed that the game was running noticeably worse, while others said their gamewouldn’t launch at all.Bethesda eventually stepped into the conversation, saying that the game’s development team would be “investigating reports of crashes and performance issues for some PC users,” after the patch was applied.
In apost on theÂDoomÂsubredditannouncing that Denuvo anti-cheat would be removed,ÂDoom EternalÂExecutive Producer Marty Stratton shared the results of that investigation. According to Stratton, through the investigation, the development team was able to discover and fix “several crashes in our code related to customizable skins. We were also able to identify and fix a number of other memory-related crashes that should improve overall stability for players.”
It seems like this tumultuous point inÂDoom Eternal’s life is finally over. Once this patch rolls out (its date is currently unannounced), we can go back to the norm of everyone happily using an imp as a springboard.
