The Steam page for Bethesda’s upcoming time-bending FPSDeathloopemerged today, and eagle-eyed fans have noticed a detail about the shooter that could potentially be a deal-breaker for some players. Arkane Lyon and Bethesda will be including the infamous Denuvo DRM on the game’s Steam release, potentially opening up users to performance issues and unwanted processes, should they choose to installDeathloop.
It isn’t a good look for Bethesda, which just this year includedDenuvo inDoom Eternal’s Steam release only to drop it a week later. Fans and developers alike have reported that the software, which is intended to prevent illegal copying and cheating, has been responsible for affecting gameplay in titles likeTekken 7andResident Evil 3,or worse, causing PC storage to degrade from excessive reading and writing to players' SSDs.
RELATED:Deathloop Pre-Order Bonuses Revealed
In addition to causing problems for legitimate users,Denuvohasn’t always been capable of doing the very thing it was designed for: preventing users from tampering with games. Players were easily able to circumventDoom Eternal’s version of the software when Bethesda included a version of the game’s executable without the DRM in the game files on its own launcher, and the same thing happened withRage 2in 2019.
Some PC gaming fans interested in games likeStar Wars Squadrons, Resident Evil 3,and nowDeathloophave allegedly sometimes turned to buying the games and then pirating them just to be able to play without dealing with complications from anti-copying software, or end up skipping titles entirely because of it. Denuvo has stuck around for the past few years because of its difficulty to crack, but that effectiveness has come at the cost of player trust and goodwill.
Only time will tell if Bethesda chooses to stick with the controversial software for its shooter, which has otherwise been received pretty well in the run-up to its release. A delay over the summer movedDeathloop’s release dateout of 2020 and into May, but it seems like the shooter’s surreal atmosphere andDishonored-like gameplay will make the wait a worthwhile one.
Meanwhile, on consoles,Deathloopis set to be a timedconsole exclusive for the PlayStation 5, along with fellow Bethesda gameGhostwire: Tokyo.The two titles will keep the existing deal between the publisher and Sony, even as Bethesda itself becomes a division of Xbox Game Studios under Microsoft. It’s unclear whether its future titles will be limited to the Xbox Series X and S, but fans should stay prepared for that possibility as the new generation gets rolling.
Deathloopreleases on August 04, 2025 for PC and the PlayStation 5.
