Highlights
- Square Enix has removed the controversial Denuvo Anti-Tamper software from Forspoken.
- The PC version of the game received an update that removed Denuvo, though it did not come with a changelog.
- While Denuvo's removal could potentially improve performance, Forspoken still has demanding system requirements, making it resource-intensive to run.
Square Enix has removed the Denuvo Anti-Tamper software from Forspoken. The controversial feature was purged from the game just six months after Forspoken released to mixed reviews.
Luminous Productions's final game was meant to mark a strong start to the year for Square Enix, but it ended up falling short of the expectations that typically surround the Japanese gaming giant's AAA RPGs. Following the game's polarizing critical response and lukewarm reception from the fandom, Square Enix ended up absorbing the Forspoken developer in early May 2023.
The PC version of Forspoken received two updates since then, the most recent one of which rolled out on July 25. While the patch didn't come with a changelog, data scraped by SteamDB reveals that this latest version of the game is free of Denuvo. The controversial anti-tampering feature was present in Forspoken's PC port from day one, and while Square Enix released the RPG's latest update without any fanfare, the game's Steam page seemingly confirms its contents, as it no longer lists Denuvo as being part of the package.
Prior to this change, the Steam version of the game received seven patches, most of which were primarily aiming to resolve the major problems with Forspoken's PC port that the fandom complained about to date. That endeavor wasn't entirely successful, but the game might be worth revisiting now that it's free of Denuvo, as this anti-tampering software is frequently synonymous with performance issues.
For clarity, Denuvo Anti-Tamper isn't a standalone module that the developers can simply add to their games in order to take advantage of its anti-cheat and anti-piracy capabilities. The framework instead needs to be manually intertwined with any given game's codebase, with its overall performance footprint oscillating between non-existent and extremely problematic, depending on the implementation. That's not to say that Luminous Productions' usage of the software in Forspoken was necessarily lackluster, just that the PC players who struggled with running the ARPG at launch will might want to give its first-ever Denuvo-free build a go.
The newly released update doesn't affect the game's version number, which has been standing at 1.20 since the In Tanta We Trust DLC launched back in late May. And though Denuvo's removal could potentially improve the RPG's performance, Forspoken's hefty PC system requirements are still among the most demanding spec lists on Steam; merely running the game at 720p in 30 frames per second requires 16GB of RAM and a GPU with at least 6GB of VRAM, not to mention that Forspoken also eats up 150GB of storage.
Forspoken is available on PC and PS5.
