Back 4 Blood brings a hated copy protection in the last second

Shortly before the release, Back 4 Blood changes something and explains that they use copy protection, which is under criticism.

There’s a little bit of anger on reddit regarding the upcoming zombie co-op shooter. A few days before the release it got a little addition. The game will rely on Denuvo as copy protection and that bothers many a potential player massively – a reddit post on the topic collected more than 1,400 upvotes.

What happened? Shortly before the release, some players in the Steam Store noticed a few new lines of text on Back 4 Blood. According to SteamDB, the addition was added on September 28th that Back 4 Blood will be released together with “Denuvo”. For many, this is a reason to resent this last-minute change.

What is Denuvo? Denuvo is a small piece of software that is built into the game’s code. Basically, Denuvo should protect the game from the actual copy protection being “cracked”. So it is an extension of the existing copy protection, which should ensure that players buy the game for as long as possible and cannot illegally download and play it somewhere. So it’s anti-piracy software.

Above all, Denuvo advertises that it will have “the longest possible release window”. Sooner or later, as a rule, games protected with Denuvo will also be cracked. But this should take as long as possible so that the developers also earn something from their game and the game is not only illegally distributed on file sharing sites.

Why is Denuvo so criticized? Denuvo has long been criticized by players. Denuvo is supposed to cause the PC to be used more heavily, so that there may be a loss of performance – the game may not run as smoothly as it could on its own hardware.

In the past few months, some developers have said goodbye to Denuvo or have had to make adjustments. Resident Evil: Village needed a little overhaul of Denuvo so that it didn’t reduce the quality of the game. Other games, such as Marvel’s Avengers, have subsequently removed Denuvo and Humankind had thrown Denuvo out of the game before the launch.

In many cases, the use of Denuvo also requires the player to be “always online” for the game in question to work. Since Back 4 Blood is a co-op shooter that only works really well for other players, at least this aspect should hardly be a problem. We’ll probably find out in a few days whether Denuvo will really have a negative impact on Back 4 Blood as well, or whether it is already well optimized – because the Early Access of Back 4 Blood will start soon.

What do you think of Denuvo and the fact that it was added shortly before the release? Absolutely okay or an annoying thing that will influence your purchase decision?