[UPDATE: A note from Denuvo claims that there was no outage related to its servers at this time.]

Highlights

  • A Denuvo server outage rendered the PC version of Persona 5 Royal unplayable on May 2.
  • A partial workaround allowed Steam users to access the game without online functionality, but most didn't use it, with the game's concurrent player count consequently plummeting from 16,600 to just over 600.
  • The outage lasted for hours, angering fans in the process.

The PC version of Persona 5 Royal has been rendered temporarily unplayable in early May due to a major Denuvo server outage. While a partial workaround allowed fans to circumvent the issue and access the game with some features disabled, this turn of events still angered many Persona 5 Royal players.

The definitive edition of Atlus's 2016 RPG has been a long-time hit among PC gamers, as underlined by the fact that the Steam version of Persona 5 Royal has been consistently averaging thousands of concurrent players since its late 2022 debut. The game had a significant popularity spike in late April, doubling its daily concurrent player peak to 25,000, after a 60% discount saw it drop to its lowest-ever price of $23.99 on Valve's storefront.

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Persona 5 Royal Rendered Unplayable For Hours Over Denuvo Issue

And while tens of thousands of Steam users have been playing Persona 5 Royal on a daily basis ever since, the vast majority of them were forced to stop on Thursday, May 2, when a Denuvo outage stopped their attempts to launch the game. With Denuvo's servers being down, the DRM failed to work as intended, preventing authentication at launch.

While the situation was ongoing, some fans realized that they were still able to launch the game offline, albeit without any online functionality, like the ability to perform Network Fusions and check the Thieves Network activity log. But most Steam users either didn't try any workarounds or didn't think of this particular one. That's according to public account data scrapped by SteamDB, which reveals that the outage resulted in the number of concurrent Persona 5 Royal players plummeting from 16,600 to just over 600. The same dataset indicates that the outage itself lasted for a bit over four hours, ending around 9:30am Eastern on May 2.

Persona 5 Royal Steam Denuvo Outage May 2 2024 player drop chart SteamDB

The problem seemingly only affected Denuvo's Persona 5 Royal servers, as suggested by the lack of similar outage reports concerning other Persona games using the same DRM solution. Short-lived or not, the outage angered some vocal fans, who took to social media to bemoan the situation as everything from "ridiculous" to unacceptable.

No Atlus PC Game Has Yet Removed Denuvo

Many players chiming in on the ensuing controversy used it as an opportunity to call for Sega to stop implementing Denuvo into its games, especially single-player titles. While the company does occasionally remove Denuvo from its products via updates, its Persona-making subsidiary is not in the habit of doing so. Specifically, although every Atlus PC game since 2020 debuted with Denuvo, none have yet ditched it.