Ubisoft has put out a day-1 patch for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage and eagle-eyed players have noted that it appears to add Denuvo to the game, a controversial anti-cheat system that has long been argued causes performance problems.
Timo Schmidt noted the mention of Denuvo in the patch notes and had to agree to the use of Denuovo in updated terms and conditions. On paper, Denuvo is intended to help stop piracy by making it harder for people to crack the game and then distribute it, though in reality Denuvo only tends to act more like a speed bump. The bigger issue is that for years there has been fierce debate over whether Denuvo drastically affects a game’s performance, especially on lower-end hardware.
Truthfully, it’s a debated topic for a reason. Some tests seem to indicate that Denuvo barely affects performance while others seem to show larger issues. Some users are adamant that it negatively impacts their experience, while others say they haven’t had a problem.
Perhaps the best argument against Denuvo came in 2021 when a ‘cracked’ version of Resident Evil Village became available. Richard Leadbetter of Digital Foundry tested the official release with Denuvo and the pirated version and found that the cracked version ran far better.
It is a little odd that Ubisoft opted to add Denuvo to Assassin’s Creed: Mirage after all the major outlets had already published their reviews. If you wanted to be cynical you could certainly speculate that this was done so reviewers would get the very best performance possible to help keep the review scores as high as possible. AC: Mirage got a pretty good reception overall.
What do you guys think? Is it suspicious that Ubisoft withheld Denuvo until after the major reviews went live? And do you think Denuvo actually has any significant performance impact?
