Now here is a pleasant surprise. Gearbox has just removed the controversial Denuvo anti-tamper tech from Homeworld 3. Homeworld 3 came out on PC in May 2024. This means that it took Gearbox around five-six months to remove it.
Homeworld 3 currently has Mostly Negative Reviews on Steam. While players have praised its graphics, a lot of them were disappointed by pretty much everything else. So, that does not bode well for the Homeworld fans who haven’t tried it yet.
It’s also worth noting that Gearbox added Denuvo to Homeworld 3 at the last minute. This really pissed off a lot of players. Still, it’s at least good to at least have the game without it.
Gearbox is not the only publisher that has removed Denuvo from its game. Other companies have also removed it from several of theirs. In March 2023, KRAFTON removed Denuvo from The Callisto Protocol. NEOWIZ has also removed it from its Souls-like game, Lies of P.
And that’s not all. Bethesda’s Wolfenstein Youngblood, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Doom Eternal no longer have it. Warner Bros has also removed it from Mortal Kombat 11. Then we have Bandai Namco who has removed it from Tekken 7 and NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER.
Another company that has removed Denuvo from a lot of its PC titles is Square Enix. The Japanese team has removed it from games like The Diofield Chronicle, VALKYRIE ELYSIUM, TRIANGLE STRATEGY, LIVE A LIVE and Forspoken. Moreover, both Octopath Traveler and its sequel no longer use it. And, earlier this month, SE also removed Denuvo from Star Ocean The Second Story R.
All in all, this is great news for PC gamers. Or at least for those who were interested in Homeworld 3. From what I can see on SteamDB, its peak number of concurrent players was 9K. And in the last 24 hours, it had 60 concurrent players. Ouch. So, let’s see whether the removal of Denuvo will boost those numbers. Spoiler alert: it most likely won’t but hey, you never know.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Let's see if we get some commentaries on performance…
garbage game
remember when denuvo forgot to pay for some domain register they used for their drm to check their servers and then nobody could play some games and that led to multiple games removing it? Seems to me denuvo is a subscription service.
it definitely is now. kinda wish final fantasy 15 had a denuvo less version so I can see if the stutters are still as bad.
"We removed one fly from our pile of crap."
Gee, thanks. I'll totally try it now.
WOW! I'm sure the – let me check – 51 or so players still bothering with this disappointment of a game will be happy.
That's how many people were active over the last 24 hours. On 29 October, 21:42 GMT, there were 96 players max for the month. I'm pretty sure old DOS games have more players. If Gearbox just admitted they gave us rubbish, it would have been better. But no. No apology, no acknowledgement of getting it wrong and taking on feedback.
The franchise is dead. Sacrificed on a purple haired altar
Half of whom just died of laughter of the joke they got or went too depressed and committed suicide.. after that the PC's haven't crashed yet so still counting as online. 25 alive / 26 ghosts online!
They are really trying to save this cràp from early death.
not really denuvo removed the permanent model they use to offer publishers. that's why denuvo is still on old games like persona 4, valkyrie chronicles 4, and final fantasy 15.
Not bankrupt yet?
Shame.
well if they keep losing 2K too much money that probably will change in the future.
with this new trend wonder if square enix will remove it from final fantasy 16.
and 15
doubt it 15 was under the life time contract.
so does that boosts the performance ?
They still keep the best drm there is – Trashy and political content, no one even wants to pirate that… nor buy it either! Heck not worth the endurance loss on the SSD even if it were considered free ware
Likely the only reason they removed Denuvo is because the game flopped so hard that it's not worth it to keep paying the Denuvo fees.