Ubisoft has apparently added Denuvo to Assassin’s Creed: Mirage.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows, on Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect, on October 5, 2023. It will not be available on Steam.
So, it is quite surprising to learn that this latest Assassin’s Creed release, that is passing on the biggest platform available on PC, has gone the extra mile to add DRM protection Denuvo.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Ubisoft timed the addition of Denuvo until after most outlets had finished publishing their reviews and technical tests of the game. But if you were doubtful that this really changes anything, I have more to add.
A Twitter account named GamesTechPlanet added this in response to Video Game Chronicle’s source:
“This has stopped all my testing. Got the code early thru creator program. Started testing it and was running great on Ally, Deck and PC.
Then the patch hit and I can only launch the game in Ally now and performance is worse. What a move.”
Now, it’s worth pointing out that the current spate of handheld devices that can run x86 and x64 based video games is somewhat miraculous. It really did take this long before the technology could be miniaturized to this degree that OEMs could make gaming handhelds, smaller than gaming laptops.
But for these handhelds to work, they are still subject to some limitations. So even the newest of these devices sporting the latest chipsets, such as the AMD Z1 Extreme, can only perform at a certain level before it will be limited by either the heating of the devices, or the limited power batteries can provide.
So you take those limitations and you add in Denuvo, which is well known to hamper performance for video games at a fundamental level, and you would have just made your game that much less playable.
We don’t know the specifics of GamesTechPlanet’s PC build, but it may not be as high spec as the ASUS ROG Ally, which does have the Z1 Extreme in it. So all the reviews that Assassin’s Creed: Mirage went through, even with its rough metascore, makes the game sound just a bit better than it actually is. Now, consumers are going to have to deal with a significantly harder game to run.
The supreme irony of this is that Ubisoft also published a day one patch for the game. But then, it’s likely that when the patch is installed that Denuvo is going along for the ride with it.
