Denuvo DRM removed from Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and everyone is wondering why

[Alfonso Maruccia]

In context: Denuvo is one of the most hated copy-protection solutions in PC gaming. The company behind the DRM is struggling to keep resourceful pirates at bay, while some studios are already backtracking on their earlier decision to implement the technology.

Earlier this month, the studios working on the Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis remake updated the game's entry in Steam's database. The update appears to remove Denuvo's anti-tamper technology, potentially marking a major change coming four months before the game's scheduled release on February 12, 2027.

While gamers are celebrating yet another major production getting rid of Denuvo, many are wondering why the studios made the decision in the first place. The Irdeto-owned technology is one of the most universally hated copy-protection solutions PC users have to deal with right now, yet many high-profile publishers are still quite willing to implement it in their latest games.

Some users suggested that the developers could re-add Denuvo closer to the game's launch, or even add something "even worse" to the game's executable. Some are even speculating that Tomb Raider pre-orders are doing so poorly that publisher Amazon Game Studios decided to strip the much-maligned DRM from the game to score a small PR win among Lara Croft fans.

Either way, things could change considerably before the game's actual release. Some studios remove Denuvo from their games a few months after launch, while others confirm the DRM's presence when a game is just about to arrive in stores. Denuvo is often blamed for poor performance on otherwise capable PC hardware, but other DRM solutions can perform even worse in this regard.

Over the past few years, Denuvo has made quite a splash among DRM-friendly studios. The anti-tamper technology proved to be a very capable solution for protecting early sales, until hypervisor-based "tricks" and Voices38 started targeting Denuvo-enabled games.

Every Denuvo-protected game released before April 2026 has been cracked, and Irdeto is now resorting to lawyers in an attempt to fight back against pirates. Irdeto recently targeted Voices38, the mysterious developer who has released many successful Denuvo cracks after "Empress" left the piracy scene.

After being targeted by Irdeto and Denuvo, Voices38 said that everything was "fine" and that cracks would continue as usual. Voices38 did not release any cracked games after that message, while Denuvo continues hunting for the coder in an attempt to uncover their real identity and location.

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Denuvo DRM removed from Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and everyone is wondering why

 

[yRaz]

I love stories like this because piracy is an answer to the free market working as intended. Most pirates were never willing to pay for the game anyway, but then studios started releasing slop and charging access to your colon to play it. Users didn't like the price and piracy started seeming like a good alternative. Piracy would never have become as big of a problem as it has if developers just "listened to the free market" and saw that users were not willing to pay what they were asking. Instead of listening to users and looking at sales numbers. They'd rather pay denuvo hundreds of thousands of dollars for a couple weeks to sometimes a few months with a true cost of infuriating the people who pay their bills.

Most of these games should only cost around $20-30 and at that point, it's easier to buy than pirate. Instead, they post $100m development costs when most of that are just bonuses to people who didn't even work on the game.

I see games that should cost less than $20m to make posting $100m+ development costs.

As long as the industry keeps denying what their games are worth and trying to syphon money more money from the players who want to support the developers that make games they like, piracy will always be a problem.

 

[GeoffreyA]

Voices38, Hypervisor, and Fitgirl mainstreaming the latter have dealt a decisive blow to Denuvo. Only a publisher with ice-cream for brains would release a new game with it—like a lock which doesn't work any more.

 

[James321]

DRM only punish the people that actually paying for their games.

How stupid can you be to punish the people that support you?

 

[MSIGamer]

Cool! I was boycotting the game because of it, but I'll buy it after release if it stays like this. They can still add it again before launch after all...

 

[Xelions]

This isn't good news! It's great news!

Does it change anything for me? No! Still getting the game regardless of DRM - my right to enjoy the game for future use remains clear!?

"Crystal"

 

[Burty117]

The only thing I will say, another game recently did this, and the game was rubbish, so they blamed low sales numbers on "piracy", when in reality, they produced a game not even pirates wanted to play.

This is either a good sign of DRM finally going away, or a red flag for the games quality.

 

[scoffer]

Another BS rug-pull perhaps? Get the gullible to pay and pre-order, then re-implement the Denuvo on release day +1.