Star Wars: Squadrons, EA Motive’s fast-paced starfighter dogfighting simulator, is now available. The game arrived Friday and is already being credited for its impressive visuals and authentic Star Wars spaceship recreation. However, it’s not without its criticisms, either. And one of those criticisms is due to an addition from Electronic Arts that the publisher hasn’t transparently discussed either prior to launch or even now. Star Wars: Squadrons on PC features a layer of Denuvo DRM.
Denuvo is, at least in the public eye, considered a heavy-handed DRM option by gamers. It’s often associated with assorted performance issues on PC, or at the very least decreased framerates. Research from tech outlets has previously confirmed that Denuvo costs frames, but obviously every new game deserves to be evaluated independently. As such, it’s unclear whether Denuvo is costing PC players of Star Wars: Squadrons frames per second, but it’s understandable if PC gamers just assume that it is.
Electronic Arts clearly is confident in its use of Denuvo DRM. The DRM prevents the game from being pirated, preventing pre-launch leaks and maximizing launch window sales. Denuvo also provides anti-cheat, as well as protections that can hamper cheat developers. That’s likely why Star Wars: Squadrons employs Denuvo, regardless of whether it also has a negative impact on the game in other ways.
The use of Denuvo isn’t surprising from Electronic Arts. The company is a well-known Denuvo user, despite repeated criticism of its use. Anthem in particular was heavily criticized for using Denuvo, due to worries it was contributing to the game’s PC performance issues. Denuvo in Star Wars Battlefront 2 was also heavily criticized, though that game was criticized for many things. Oddly, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was not a focus of criticism, though, perhaps due to it being single-player.
Denuvo isn’t so impactful that it prevents players from getting the full experience with Star Wars: Squadrons, of course. There’s an argument to be made that perceptions of the game could be better on PC if performance was better, but the real impact comes just from branding alone. Having Denuvo associated with the game is often seen as a negative, regardless of its genuine impact on the game’s performance.
What isn’t helping the situation is that Electronic Arts doesn’t appear to have confirmed that Star Wars: Squadrons features Denuvo pre-launch. It also doesn’t mention Denuvo anywhere on the game’s Steam page, even in the fine print. That’s likely to be frustrating for players to deal with, regardless of their opinions on Denuvo itself.
Star Wars: Squadrons is available now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Source: DSO Gaming
