Here’s some good news if you were put off by the recent inclusion of Denuvo Anti-Cheat in Doom: Eternal. After listening to widespread outrage across the interwebs id Software has decided to roll back the controversial kernel-level anti-cheat software.
The next update to Doom: Eternal will remove Denuvo Anti-Cheat. Why exactly was this a big deal, though? Denuvo’s had a bad rep for years, with gamers complaining about performance issues, excess I/O calls, and a general mistrust of a very intrusive approach to DRM. Denuvo Anti-cheat isn’t a DRM solution per-se.
As the name suggests, it’s meant to prevent cheating. However, it does this by burying itself deep in the system, at the kernel level. This raises major security concerns: if Denuvo Anti-cheat is compromised, threat actors could leverage the kernel-level access to do almost anything they want with a user’s system. Id Software isn’t completely backing out from an anti-cheat solution. However, it did promise to deliver one later for use cases like competitive play, which better aligns with player expectations. For the time being, though, id’s pressed the Glory Kill button on Denuvo Anti-cheat
