Mortal Kombat 1 Will Include Denuvo DRM

Just weeks before the official release of Mortal Kombat 1, NetherRealm Studios has updated the highly-anticipated fighting game's Steam page, revealing that the title will incorporate the infamous Denuvo, an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system designed to make it harder for hackers to pirate the game.

For those unaware, Denuvo has been under intense scrutiny within the gaming community for the past few months, with gamers frequently voicing their concerns that games employing Denuvo tend to run at a slower pace compared to those without it, comparing the official versions of games and their hacked counterparts.

In a recent series of tests carried out on various games by YetTea, it was demonstrated that the presence of Denuvo leads to a reduction in frame rates and longer boot times for the games, an observation that Irdeto, the DRM's developer, vehemently denies.

The controversy surrounding the use of Denuvo has motivated numerous developers to reconsider and, in some instances, remove the DRM from their games. This change has even affected titles that had featured Denuvo for years, such as Capcom's Resident Evil Village.

With all the controversy surrounding Denuvo taken into consideration, there is a strong possibility that Denuvo will eventually be removed from MK1 after a few years. Interestingly, should this occur, it wouldn't be the first time NetherRealm has added Denuvo to a game only to remove it later. The pattern was previously observed in Mortal Kombat 11, which included the DRM upon its launch but got rid of it several years later, back in 2022.

During gamescom 2023, Irdeto also unveiled Unreal Engine Protection, a new feature that lets teams and individuals protect games built using Unreal Engine from manipulation. The new feature is said to secure game files in Unreal Engine from decryption and block user access to the developer console. At the moment, it is unknown whether or not Mortal Kombat 1, a game powered by Unreal Engine 5, will leverage the new feature.

Funnily enough, MK1 is not the first fighting game in recent weeks to find itself embroiled in the "Denuvo controversy". Back in August, it came to light that Tekken 8, the upcoming installment in Bandai Namco's enduring Tekken series, would also include Denuvo, as indicated by the game's official EULA.

Tekken 8 Game Director Katsuhiro Harada, however, contradicted the EULA's contents, asserting that the upcoming game would, in fact, not incorporate Denuvo. He suggested that the agreement in question was likely a copy-and-paste job from the EULA of Tekken 7, a game that did utilize the DRM. "I've no plans to introduce Denuvo or anything else in Tekken 8," commented Harada. You can learn more and read the full story here.

Mortal Kombat 1 is set to be released on September 19, 2023, on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. You can learn more about the upcoming game here.

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