Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss is using Denuvo DRM, and the community is not happy about it.
The hype surrounding Crimson Desert kept growing until yesterday, but now the mood in the community is shifting.
Pearl Abyss, the developers of Crimson Desert, have decided to protect their game with Denuvo DRM. This software is intended to protect the game from piracy, but it is extremely unpopular among players. However, this isn’t necessarily due to the DRM itself.
The community is now up in arms, as Denuvo is known to negatively impact game performance. On top of that, there was no official announcement. The implementation is only The Gamer noticed it. They discovered it on SteamDB.
What makes Denuvo so unpopular?
Denuvo isn’t a traditional copy protection system, but rather a so-called “anti-tamper” system. It wraps the game’s code in encryption that’s extremely difficult to crack.
Since Denuvo constantly encrypts and decrypts the game code in the background, it consumes additional CPU resources. This can lead to stuttering and low FPS. Additionally, Denuvo relies on an internet connection to regularly communicate with the server.
These technical restrictions have always been unpopular with gamers when implemented in video games. Recent examples include Inzoi and Resident Evil 4. In both cases, Denuvo was removed from the games following a fan outcry. In the case of Resident Evil 4, the copy protection was replaced with Enigma Protector DRM, which made performance even worse.
In response to a query from Paul Tassi, gaming editor at Forbes, Pearl Abyss claims that the benchmarks published so far were already conducted with Denuvo:
this is what Pearl Abyss told me about the Crimson Desert Denuvo stuff:
“The benchmark videos and performance specs we released were all created with the exact same implementation of Denuvo that is in the launch build.
This includes the performance videos by Digital Foundry.… — Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) March 12, 2026
The video from Digital Foundry showcases impressive graphics and solid performance on the PS5 Pro and its three graphics modes:
Performance: 60 target FPS
Balanced: 40 target FPS
Quality: 30 target FPS
According to Digital Foundry, the modes are largely able to maintain their respective target FPS. However, areas with many NPCs may suffer from fluctuating FPS.However, how the game performs on PC will still depend heavily on how much of a load Crimson Desert places on the CPU and what CPU you have installed. You can find more information on the hardware requirements here.
The Community’s Reaction
Denuvo is causing a stir in the Crimson Desert community for two reasons:Because of Denuvo itself and the performance limitations.
Because of the under-the-radar way it was “announced.”
On various platforms, players are expressing frustration over the change so close to release. For example, jeffchicken in Crimson Desert subreddit:“I love performance issues as a shadow drop”
AdOdd5121 writes:“The game is going to run much worse now. It’s terrible that they didn’t tell anyone.”Other players are comparing Crimson Desert to Resident Evil 9, which also uses Denuvo, and hope that performance won’t be too severely impacted, as it was in the horror game. However, the fact that Crimson Desert is an open-world game and will require significantly more resources than the linear Resident Evil 9 suggests otherwise.
