id Software Confirm Denuvo Will be Removed from Doom Eternal

Earlier this month, a highly-controversial new update was made to the PC version of Doom Eternal. Presuming you missed the outcry, let me quickly fill you in. In a nutshell, id Software had basically bundled the latest version of the Denuvo anti-cheat software in with the patch.

This decision was met with a lot of criticism from the PC community largely for two reasons. Firstly, there’s the ongoing debate as to whether Denuvo affects the performance of a game. Secondly, and this was the most concerning, the latest version of the anti-cheat aspect of the software installed itself at the Kernel level. In other words, right at the root of your PC.

Following a post on Reddit, however, Doom Eternal’s executive producer Marty Stratton has confirmed that it will be removed in an upcoming patch!

Doom Eternal – Denuvo U-Turn!

In the post (which you can read in full here) Marty Stratton has confirmed that following community feedback, the Denuvo anti-cheat addition will be removed in an upcoming update for the game.

“Despite our best intentions, feedback from players has made it clear that we must re-evaluate our approach to anti-cheat integration. With that, we will be removing the anti-cheat technology from the game in our next PC update. As we examine any future of anti-cheat in DOOM Eternal, at a minimum we must consider giving campaign-only players the ability to play without anti-cheat software installed, as well as ensure the overall timing of any anti-cheat integration better aligns with player expectations around clear initiatives – like ranked or competitive play – where demand for anti-cheat is far greater.

It is important to note that our decision to include anti-cheat was guided by nothing other than the factors and goals I’ve outlined above – all driven by our team at id Software. I have seen speculation online that Bethesda (our parent company and publisher) is forcing these or other decisions on us, and it’s simply untrue. It’s also worth noting that our decision to remove the anti-cheat software is not based on the quality of the Denuvo Anti-Cheat solution. Many have unfortunately related the performance and stability issues introduced in Update 1 to the introduction of anti-cheat. They are not related.”

What Do We Think?

This issue is something of a double-edged sword. While the community may today be complaining about the anti-cheat software, this could very quickly turn tomorrow into more complaints about people encountering aim-bot users. It does, however, largely boil down to the fact that people want good anti-cheating software in their games, but not for it to be installed at such a deep-level of the operating system.

As for when it will be removed from Doom Eternal, however, the short answer is that we don’t know. While id Software has confirmed it will be done in an upcoming patch, they have not gone as far as to say when it will happen. Put simply though, we can’t see them removing it until they have something ‘better’ to replace it with!

What do you think? Do you have an issue with this in Doom Eternal? – Let us know in the comments!