Without any fanfare, the latest Ghostwire: Tokyo update removes a controversial feature that previously incurred some fan criticism.
Highlights
- Ghostwire: Tokyo has removed Denuvo in a recent update.
- The patch rolled out on April 17 without anything in the way of announcements.
- Ghostwire: Tokyo puzzled some fans when it added Denuvo in April 2023, more than a year following its initial release.
The Steam version of Ghostwire: Tokyo has removed Denuvo Anti-Tamper. The change rolled out as part of a recent update that spelled the end of Ghostwire: Tokyo's unusual approach to the controversial digital rights management (DRM) tool.
Developed by ZeniMax subsidiary Tango Gameworks, Ghostwire: Tokyo debuted to decent reviews in March 2022. The PC version of the game launched with nothing major in the way of anti-piracy and -tampering protections beyond Steam's native DRM. Instead, Tango Gameworks only added Denuvo to Ghostwire: Tokyo more than a year later, just as its supernatural action adventure reached the Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Game Pass in April 2023.
Ghostwire: Tokyo Quietly Drops Denuvo
The developer has now reversed course yet again, having removed the controversial feature in a recent update. The patch, first spotted by Reddit user lurkingdanger22, rolled out on April 17, one year and five days after Ghostwire: Tokyo originally added Denuvo. Much like the 2023 update, this newest patch arrived without any fanfare. Even so, a few of the game's latest Steam user reviews are already citing the removal of Denuvo as the main motivation behind their recommendation.
This turn of events spells an end to Ghostwire: Tokyo's strange handling of Denuvo, which has been puzzling some fans for the past year. While the controversial anti-tampering solution has long been seeing widespread use across the industry, it has been almost exclusively implemented into games from day one. That's largely because publishers' main motivation for using Denuvo in the first place is to curb piracy, which makes the most sense to do before any given title gets cracked.
In contrast, pirates already had a field day with Ghostwire: Tokyo long before its PC version received Denuvo 13 months following its initial debut. The move proved to be controversial among the fandom, not least because it quadrupled the game's executable size and led to some allegations of Denuvo-related frame rate drops. The latter were never proven conclusively, in part because Ghostwire: Tokyo suffered from some PC performance issues long before it embraced the DRM solution.
Ultimately, it would appear that this year-long Denuvo era was largely started in order to curb the piracy of the Ghostwire: Tokyo Spider's Thread update, which added the eponymous roguelike mode to the game in April 2023. As for why the DRM tech was now removed from Ghostwire: Tokyo, the timing of the move suggests that Bethesda, the game's publisher, simply decided against renewing its Denuvo license, which is ordinarily issued on a year-long basis.
Platform(s) PS5 , PC , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S Released March 25, 2022 Developer(s) Tango Gameworks Publisher(s) Bethesda Genre(s) Action , Adventure ESRB T for Teen: Language, Violence How Long To Beat 11 Hours X|S Enhanced Yes File Size Xbox Series 25 GB (November 2023) Metascore 82 PS Plus Availability N/A See at AmazonSee at Playstation StoreSee at Xbox Games StoreSee at Epic Games Store
