Ghostwire: Tokyo just got Denuvo DRM - more than a year after launch. This came packaged in the latest update, forcing fans to play the game with the anti-piracy tool which has long been linked to poor performances on many PC setups.
Unsurprisingly, players aren't pleased with the update, and are letting their frustrations be known in the game's Steam reviews. Recent reviews for the highly acclaimed Ghostwire: Tokyo have fallen to "mixed", with almost every negative rating mentioning the Denuvo update.
While Denuvo DRM is an increasingly common addition to PC releases, it's incredibly odd to see it added to a game more than a year since its initial launch. Typically, the opposite is true, and a game will launch with DRM in a bid to halt piracy until the initial sales period is over. We recently saw this with Resident Evil Village, which clung onto Denuvo for around two years, only ditching it earlier this week.
Of course, this has only added to the player base's frustrations. In the latest Steam reviews, fans express their deep disappointment with the new update, reporting performance issues that weren't present before it went live. Some even say they can't launch the game at all, and those that can say they're experiencing significantly reduced frame rates.
"Adding Denuvo a year AFTER release is just [a] dumb way to treat paying customers like criminals," reads one negative review from Steam user Prudis06.
"Load times are about 25 percent longer than pre-patch," agrees SmokeOfC. "[I] needed to downgrade visuals to make the game run as smoothly, and [the] game just randomly crashed to desktop after about an hour of gameplay.
"Do NOT buy this at this point. If you recently bought it, get a refund."
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To add insult to injury, this isn't the first Bethesda-published game to get Denuvo this week. Prior to this, it was confirmed that Redfall is sticking with Denuvo, despite earlier reports about its inclusion being met with severe backlash.
Unfortunately, anyone who wants to play Ghostwire on PC DRM-free is out of luck. The game never got a GOG release, so anyone experiencing performance issues after the new update will likely have to wait it out. DRM is rarely a permanent fixture in a game, although it is strange to see it added so long after launch.
In any case, it remains to be seen if publisher Bethesda or developer Tango Gameworks have any plans to help those experiencing a noticeable dip in quality after the update. TheGamer has contacted Bethesda for comment regarding this latest update, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.