Assassin's Creed: Mirage PC's day-one update adds Denuvo DRM, but don't worry, it runs the same

Very much like an assassin sliding a poison needle into your wrist while shaking your hand, Ubisoft have added Denuvo's anti-piracy/anti-cheating DRM software to Assassin's Creed: Mirage in the game's day-one update, aka patch 1.0.2. We've known for a while that the game would use Denuvo, together with the VMProtect software, but what's baking the noodles of many players is that the Denuvo functionality has been snuck in after the Assassin's Creed: Mirage review embargo, denying critics the chance to assess its impact on the game.

There's no mention of Denuvo in the official patch notes, either. We have Reddit (and in my case, VGC) to thank for spotting it.

In case you're new to Denuvo, which seems unlikely, it's a well-travelled digital rights management software suite which is notorious among PC players for, on the one hand, eating into performance, and on the other, making games overall less resilient in the face of changes such as studio closures or the introduction of new hardware. Typically, the DRM requires an internet connection at least when you first play the game, so it can check you're not using a cracked copy, which may lead to games becoming unplayable if Denuvo's servers go offline.

Denuvo themselves continue to insist that their anti-tamper tools don't affect how well games run, recently offering to submit copies of games with and without Denuvo software for independent testing. As far as I know, we're still waiting for the outcome of that programme.

The controversy around Denuvo has led to some fancy updating and marketing footwork from videogame publishers, with some discreetly adding Denuvo shortly before launch, as above, while others such as Starbreeze ostentatiously tear the functionality out.

Naturally, Denuvo themselves feel that many of the people complaining about their anti-piracy software are just trying to justify their piracy, despite there being some evidence that the DRM software does, indeed, erode performance. "In the pirating/cracking community, we're seen as evil because we're helping DRM exist and we're ensuring people make money out of games," Steve Huin, COO of Video Games for Denuvo owner Irdeto, commented earlier this year. "What has changed a little bit, and I hope this is going to continue to change, is the broader public starting to see us less as a bad thing for the industry."

Fortunately, I happen to operate in the orbit of an actual hardware journalist, James "Eagle Vision" Archer, who is equipped to assess Assassin's Creed: Mirage's performance after the addition of Denuvo. I asked for his take this morning, post-update, and according to James, Assassin's Creed: Mirage runs "dead-on" the same across all his benchmarks. Phew! Still, given the cloud of infamy surrounding Denuvo, tucking the anti-tamper code into Mirage post-review just feels a bit sordid. And none of this addresses the wider problem of Denuvo's possible impact on game preservation.

If you've bought the new Creed, you might want to investigate James's full guide to tweaking Assassin's Creed: Mirage's PC performance and the best settings.