Crimson Desert dev says not to worry about Denuvo, because the impressive PC preview builds they've shown already had the DRM and are "representative of the final consumer's experience"

As confirmed by a recent update to the game's Steam page, Crimson Desert will feature Denuvo. The controversial anti-piracy tech always keeps PC gamers on edge about performance, but Pearl Abyss says you shouldn't worry too much if you were happy with how the game looked in previews. That early version had already implemented Denuvo DRM.

"The benchmark videos and performance specs we released were all created with the exact same implementation of denuvo that is in the launch build," a Pearl Abyss representative told writer Paul Tassi. "This includes the performance videos by Digital Foundry. It's important that reviewers and benchmarkers' experience with the game is ultimately representative of the final consumer's experience."

The Digital Foundry video being referenced is likely the one published on February 28, which shows the game running at ultra settings in native 4K at "mainly" 60fps on a Radeon RX 7900 XTX. That graphics card is no slouch, but it's over three years old at this point and still a few steps behind Nvidia's ultra-high-end GPUs. Seeing Crimson Desert run with strong performance at native 4K – no upscaling – on an aging card like that is very impressive, and bodes well for its scalability on lower-end graphics cards.

Crimson Desert First Look: The BlackSpace Engine Tech Preview - YouTube

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Some PC gamers despise Denuvo purely on principle, but the majority fear the effect the DRM system can have on performance. Denuvo doesn't universally degrade performance, but it happens often enough that the DRM company itself has been forced to acknowledge the issues. Some players will still see that "Denuvo anti-tamper" badge on Steam as a flashing 'do not buy' signal, but it's at least good to hear the devs commit to showing off the game in the state it'll be in when players get ahold of it.

Crimson Desert blocks spoilers by locking down the RPG's physical copies that shipped early, but some players worry it's a "slippery slope" for game preservation.