Civ 7 to include highly unpopular DRM anti-piracy software Denuvo, with fans quick to voice their anger

Civilization VII is set to become one of the biggest games of 2025 when it releases in February next year with fans of the long-running series already clearing their calendars in anticipation.

Despite anticipation levels being sky-high, not everything is positive around the Civ 7 release, even after the news that the Civ Launcher was not going to be needed this time around.

Complaints have already been plentiful about the high price tag – $130 for the best version of the upcoming game and now, those who have already stumped up the money have found out the game will have Denuvo’s much-maligned anto-tamper software included at launch.

Denuvo provides an extremely difficult-to-crack layer of protection which some publishing companies pay a license to the company to include in their releases, thus preventing pirated versions of the game from becoming freely available, often within minutes of a game’s release.

However, it is often accused of hobbling frame rates and causing countless issues for people who have legitimately bought the game to counter those that have not. It is also often removed within a six month period of the launch, although this is not always the case. This can then lead to the game being pirated at that point meaning the only players who have been affected remain the ones who paid out in the first place.

For their part, companies that use the anti-tamper layer and Denuvo themselves deny that the addition of the protection affects any installs. Denuvo has been highlighted however to have caused significant issues in games including Tekken 7 and Rime.

It works by assigning a unique authentication token to each copy of the game based on the player’s hardware. This token then handshakes upon launch with an activation server that allows your copy of the game to run. This can cause problems if you are without the internet for longer periods of time.

An article in 2018 by Ars Technica highlighted a dramatic increase in the performance of a game once Denuvo was removed.

Your citizens are unhappy

Civ fans displeased by the news took to the internet to voice objection saying on the Civ Subreddit:

“Please for the love of god tell the dev team we do not want this, it doesn’t work anyway. This will actually hurt sales, and for me, I’m on older hardware so now I have to worry about this Denuvo garbage slowing down the game more and destroying my drives.”

“Denuvo is always the dumbest decision. Sabotaging the performance of your own game only to maybe slow down a bit the time it will take for pirates to breach it is like showing a nasty middle finger to everyone in the player base willing to buy it.”

“Yeah, gonna be a nope from me. If I pay that much for a game I want to actually be able to play it without that piece of malware. Especially as someone who always plays on Linux and with their poor history of native Linux support, this is going to make it just not worth it.”

There have been notable occasions where player pressure has forced publishers into a rethink. Sega and Amplitude were pressured into removing the system before the launch of Humankind in 2021. Civ players on Reddit will now try to exude the same pressure on 2K and Firaxis over the next few months.

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