Capcom Appears To Break Monster Hunter For The Steam Deck After DRM Swap
Here we go again. In the long and vaunted history of DRM in software, and especially in video games, there is one general truism: DRM tends to effect only legitimate buyers while so-called pirates" route around it completely. There are all kinds of anecdotal stories as to the annoyances at best, and game-crippling outcomes at worst, that are said to be caused by DRM that either shipped with the game or, more annoyingly, were added after the game was bought. The DRM companies typically will tell you that any performance issues experienced with these games can't possibly have anything to do with their DRM, a claim that flies in the face of thousands and thousands of instances of witness testimony on social media and the wider internet, while also stating that any inconveniences legit buyers experience due to DRM mishaps are outweighed by all the piracy the DRM kinda-maybe stopped for a while, possibly.
Capcom has a bunch of titles out there that were bought many years ago that paying customers still play. And that's great! Less great is that the company appears to keep updating these older titles with new DRM which breaks those games to one degree or another. For instance, I can't explain why Capcom decided to update Resident Evil Revelations earlier this month with Enigma Protector DRM, given that the game came out over a decade ago. Speculation appears to be that it might have something to do with protecting the game from cheat software, which is how Capcom refers to game mods generally. But doing so broke the game so badly that on January 13th, Capcom rolled the update back entirely after an enormous amount of backlash.
Due to an issue observed with the latest update released, we have reverted the corresponding update. We apologise for the inconvenience caused, and once the issue is resolved, we will re-release the update. Thank you very much for your patience and cooperation.
-CAPCOM
Well, Capcom must have thought it had everything ironed out, because it then turned its sights on Monster Hunter Rise, a game that was released 3 or so years ago. That game originally shipped with Denuvo DRM, which, well, R.I.P. On January 22nd, just shy of ten whole days from when it rolled back Enigma from Resident Evil Revelations, the company updated Monster Hunter Rise by removing Denuvo and replacing it with Enigma.
Which appears to have broken the game for the Steam Deck handheld console for some sizable chunk of players.
Monster Hunter Riseno longer works onSteamDeck hardware, after its latest update added new DRM software. The game previously used Denuvo anti-tamper technology, but the latest version 16.0.2.0 update reportedly removes it and, as noted by modderFluffyQuack, replaces it with the controversial Enigma Protector DRM.
The game's Steam page has been hit with a number of negative reviews, with its usual Very Positive' review summary reduced to Mixed'. Many of these reviews note that the game will now no longer run on Steam Deck, with players blaming the addition of Enigma (though there's no definitive proof this is the exact reason, as opposed to another issue with the same update).
On the one hand, it's true that it can't be stated with 100% certainty that Enigma is what broke the game for the Steam Deck. This is mostly true with every other historical complaint about DRM fucking up an otherwise working game. It goes this way every single time. And part of the reason this claim is allowed to fester has to do with the opaque nature of the patch announcement. Here is literally everything in the patch notes announced for the Steam version of the game for this update.
How could that be any more clear?
The overall point here is quite simple: pissing customers off twice now with updates including new DRM software over some misguided anxiety about game mods is beyond silly. Two games, two times being broken, and the common denominator looks to be Enigma. How is any of this worth the trouble?