Denuvo Anti-Cheat to be removed from Doom Eternal in next patch

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Marty Stratton, executive producer of Doom Eternal, has announced that Denuvo Anti-Cheat (not to be confused with Denuvo Anti-Tamper) will be removed from Doom Eternal in Update 1.1 which will be "rolled-out to players within a week". This follow the recent patch which implemented Denuvo Anti-Cheat in Doom Eternal faced backlash last Thursday.

The developers will consider "giving campaign-only players the ability to play without anti-cheat software installed":

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I want to provide our PC community the latest information on a number of topics related to Update 1, which we released this past Thursday. Our team has been looking into the reports of instability and performance degradation for some users and we’ve also seen the concerns around our inclusion of Denuvo Anti-Cheat. As is often the case, things are not as clear-cut as they may seem, so I’d like to include the latest information on the actions we’re taking, as well as offer some context around the decisions we’ve made. We are preparing and testing PC-Only Update 1.1 that includes the changes and fixes noted below. We hope to have this rolled-out to players within a week.

The initial reason id Software implemented anti-cheat in the first place is clarified:

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Our team’s original decision to include Denuvo Anti-Cheat in Update 1 was based on a number of factors:

• Protect BATTLEMODE players from cheaters now, but also establish consistent anti-cheat systems and processes as we look ahead to more competitive initiatives on our BATTLEMODE roadmap
• Establish cheat protection in the campaign now in preparation for the future launch of Invasion – which is a blend of campaign and multiplayer
• Kernel-level integrations are typically the most effective in preventing cheating
• Denuvo’s integration met our standards for security and privacy
• Players were disappointed on DOOM (2016) with our delay in adding anti-cheat technology to protect that game’s multiplayer
   

The main announcement can be seen here on the /r/Doom subreddit:

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Despite our best intentions, feedback from players has made it clear that we must re-evaluate our approach to anti-cheat integration. With that, we will be removing the anti-cheat technology from the game in our next PC update. As we examine any future of anti-cheat in DOOM Eternal, at a minimum we must consider giving campaign-only players the ability to play without anti-cheat software installed, as well as ensure the overall timing of any anti-cheat integration better aligns with player expectations around clear initiatives – like ranked or competitive play – where demand for anti-cheat is far greater. 

It is important to note that our decision to include anti-cheat was guided by nothing other than the factors and goals I’ve outlined above – all driven by our team at id Software.  I have seen speculation online that Bethesda (our parent company and publisher) is forcing these or other decisions on us, and it’s simply untrue.  It’s also worth noting that our decision to remove the anti-cheat software is not based on the quality of the Denuvo Anti-Cheat solution. Many have unfortunately related the performance and stability issues introduced in Update 1 to the introduction of anti-cheat. They are not related.

Through our investigation, we discovered and have fixed several crashes in our code related to customizable skins. We were also able to identify and fix a number of other memory-related crashes that should improve overall stability for players. All of these fixes will be in our next PC update.  I’d like to note that some of these issues were very difficult to reproduce and we want to thank a number of our community members who worked directly with our engineers to identify and help reproduce these issues.

Finally, we believe the performance issues some players have experienced on PC are based on a code change we made around VRAM allocation. We have reverted this change in our next update and expect the game to perform as it did at launch.

Please stay tuned to the official DOOM Eternal community channels for more on the roll-out of this update. As always, thank you for your passion and commitment to DOOM Eternal.

Marty Stratton
Executive Producer, DOOM Eternal

It remains remains to be seen whether id Software's decision to remove Denuvo Anti-Cheat again in Doom Eternal is permanent.