Removing Denuvo DRM doesn’t improve performance for Arkham Knight

Enlarge (credit: Denuvo)

The version of Batman: Arkham Knight currently being given away to users on the Epic Games Store is missing the Denuvo anti-piracy protections still present in the Steam version. But the removal doesn't seem to have had any effect on the performance of the game, according to an Ars analysis.

Denuvo works by obfuscating and encrypting the code inside a game's executable, making it harder for would-be crackers to figure out how to get around processor-tied authentication checks. You can see this difference in the .exe files for Epic Games Store and Steam versions of Arkham Knight, with the former clocking in at about half the size (or 50MB smaller).

For years now, some piracy watchers have argued that this extra code can slow down a game's performance compared to a Denuvo-free version, and there has been at least some evidence that certain PC games have run slightly better after Denuvo has been removed.

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