Even before reviews roll in, Crimson Desert has become one of the year's most anticipated games thus far, but the discovery of a DRM being added has soured the excitement. Digital rights management (DRM) software is widely used as a means to protect brand-new PC releases from piracy, but it often comes under fire for hampering performance.
On March 12, one week before release, Crimson Desert's Steam page was updated to show that the game would be using Denuvo to block early piracy attempts, per Eurogamer. It's not entirely unexpected, but the quiet admission just days before launch has shined a spotlight on the issue, especially since Crimson Desert has already been at the center of various performance discussions. How it would run on base consoles – i.e., the PlayStation 5, compared to the PS5 Pro – was a growing concern due to a now-remedied lack of footage, and now a similar fear has crept into the PC version because of Denuvo's involvement.
The revelation that Crimson Desert will utilize Denuvo is quite innocuous. A small box in the sidebar of Crimson Desert's Steam page notifies potential buyers that the game "Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-tamper." That hasn't stopped...
