"Seriously mind boggling": Resident Evil 4 remake dumps controversial DRM on Steam after 1 month and a ton of performance issues

Resident Evil 4 Remake screenshot of Leon holding a pistol
(Image credit: Capcom)

One month after the Resident Evil 4 remake got some fancy new DRM on Steam, almost three years after it came out, Capcom's taken it off. The update follows complaints of performance issues stemming from the change, as players encountered slowdown across both cutscenes and gameplay.

According to the survival horror classic's SteamDB page, you can see the Enigma Protector was taken off as of March 3. Previously, the re-release of Resi 4 had Denuvo, a common protective software, and that was tagged out for Enigma on February 3.

Resident Evil 4 - 3rd Trailer - YouTube Resident Evil 4 - 3rd Trailer - YouTube
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Testing by Digital Foundry found a discrepancy of up to 40% between how the fourth mainline Resident Evil used to run versus how it does with Enigma bogging it down. We've had no word from Capcom on exactly why the publisher chose to switch DRMs, though a prevalent theory is that Denuvo eventually stops being cost effective to maintain, and Enigma's considerably cheaper.

Fans are happy to see the back end of the software, but some are questioning the logic in gatekeeping a game this old. "I have no idea what management was thinking considering the game's age by now," says one commenter on Reddit. "Seriously mind boggling move from Capcom," says another.

Resident Evil Requiem just released with Denuvo on Valve's store, and we'll have to see if Capcom eventually switches that over to Enigma as well. Given the results here, hopefully not, as it seems more trouble than it's worth.

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Anthony McGlynn
Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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