Nowadays, most talk of DRM revolves around titles that add the “anti-tamper” tech known as Denuvo, thus preventing piracy of those games. That’s what makes the latest update to side-scrolling puzzle game Inside so unusual: the developers have chosen to do away with Denuvo.
The latest patch notes for Inside on Steam state that the game has now “removed Denuvo Anti-Tamper.” Denuvo, as many of you know, is a highly controversial device that connects a purchased game to a specific PC, making it hard for people to disseminate the title online without triggering a red flag. Thanks to Denuvo, many of the year’s biggest games cannot be pirated.
Playdead did not give a reason for the removal of Denuvo in the short patch-notes, though it’s worth noting that the game was also recently released on GOG—which is marketed as a digital storefront that does not believe in DRM. That might be a clue. We reached out to Playdead to ask about the particulars of the situation, and will update this post if we hear back.
For now, it seems that fans are cheering the move: