Warner Bros removes Denuvo-drm from Batman: Arkham Knight

Warner Bros. and Funcom appear to have removed the controversial Denuvo-drm from Batman: Arkham Knight. This is reportedly the version available on the Epic Games Store.

The change was initially noticed by DSO Gaming. The site states that the Steam variant still contains the DRM. It’s unclear if Denuvo will be pulled from the Steam version of Arkham Knight in the future as well. Developer Funcom has also extracted the DRM technology from Conan Unconquered.

Denuvo is anti-piracy technology that makes it difficult to crack games. Gamers often complain that Denuvo’s drm presents performance issues for paying users. The makers of the technology argue that this is not true. Denuvo’s website states, “Denuvo Anti-Cheat has no negative impact on in-game performance.”

However, there seems to be a grain of truth in the complaints. Benchmarks previously showed that Denuvo can have a negative impact on framerate in games. The director of Tekken 7 claims In addition, the performance issues in the PC version of that game were caused by the DRM software. Several developers have removed Denuvo-drm from their games after release. For example, the drm was removed from Rage 2 two days after its release. The DRM was also removed from RiME and Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Batman: Arkham Knight is available to download for free from the Epic Games Store this month. Users can now play this game free of charge and without DRM.