Rage 2 has already removed Denuvo DRM with a hotfix

Proving that Denuvo is losing its effectiveness quicker and quicker into release life cycles, Bethesda has already removed that DRM layer for Rage 2.

If anybody out there is glad that Epic Games is taking the heat in the PC gaming world, it has to be Denuvo. A company that was once thought uncrackable has become anything but, with many games released using the digital rights management services having their games cracked and pirated at increasingly faster rates. Rage 2 was technically released for PC on May 13, but it was already pirated on the game’s official launch date of May 14.

With the Denuvo DRM protection failing right at launch, there was little Bethesda could do. As such, the publisher released a Rage 2 PC hotfix for a number of small issues, with a primary change in removing Denuvo from the game. “We saw a few requests,” reads the patch notes, which indicates that Bethesda knows how much it was detested and worth removing once the game was cracked.

Other additions coming to this Rage 2 hotfix includes a crash reporter for error reporting, fixing occasional crashes related to Scaleform and startup crashes, as well as other minor issues. Hopefully, not too many people encountered crashes on the PC, as our reviewer encountered problems so egregious that it forces a full system reset. We hope to have our review ready in the coming days thanks to this hotfix.

For the longest time, including in 2019, removing Denuvo was more of a sign of good faith for PC users a month or two after launch. We’ve seen Sega be more lenient towards removing added layers of DRM with the Yakuza series; something that has only lately been taking off on the PC with additional post-launch features.

Thankfully, Denuvo is being removed from more games once its purpose is served. The effects on system efficiency range from “barely anything” to “10+ FPS improvements” depending on the game and the scope of its gameplay, based on which title from which it has been removed.