Capcom have removed Denuvo DRM from Devil May Cry 5 on Windows PC.

Steam DB notes that the DRM was removed on February 6th. For those unfamiliar, Denuvo DRM has been criticized for allegations of its effectiveness.

These include the need for a constant and uninterrupted online connection even on single-player games, and allegations of causing severe performance inhibition.

There have even been claims and rumors of the anti-piracy measure being “cracked” (allowing the once-protected software to be copied and distributed) mere days after or even before a game’s release.

Eurogamer reported that the game had a accidentally included a second branch without Denuvo. This allegedly lead to a more stable performance, and an increase of 20 fps.

Eurogamer’s own tests had less dramatic results. They found the Denuvo version delivered 93% of the performance of the Denuvo-free version, with an increase of 13 fps and a “consistent” difference between the two branches.

While they noted most modern gaming PCs should be able to handle the extra CPU overhead, they did state “the notion of any DRM system incurring a seven per cent in-game hit to performance on a processor as capable as the Core i5 8400 (which runs six cores at a peak 3.8GHz) is certainly concerning.”

This is the second Capcom game since December 2019 that has removed Denuvo, the other being Resident Evil 2. On the other hand, it was recently confirmed Resident Evil 3 would use Denuvo.

It would seem that Capcom utilizes Denuvo for almost one year on some of their major titles. We will keep you informed as we learn more.

Devil May Cry 5 is available now for Windows PC (via Steam), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In case you missed it, you can find our thorough review for the game here-we highly recommend it! In fact, it was our community’s Game of the Year 2019.