Following the release of a pirated version of RiME, Tequila Works Games have released an official patch for the PC release that removes the DRM protection from the title.
RiME which released in late May of 2017 on all major platforms came with the addition of Denuvo in its PC release. Though Tequila works games did say they’d release a DRM-free version of the game if it could be cracked.
Denuvo is one of the more notorious forms of DRM protection, a piece of software that when applied to a game, monitors the game as it is being played, constantly checking to authenticate whether the game is legitimately purchased, or a pirated copy. This constant monitoring of Denuvo equipped games often lead to premature bottlenecking and performance hits, that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
It was reported that the addition of Denuvo caused the game to perform worse than intended due to the extra software running in the background. This prompted crackers, specifically the group known as Skidrow Games Reloaded, to release a crack for RiME. Although the biggest reason as to why they chose to crack Denuvo is likely due to them wanting to foster and promote piracy, in doing so, players who have bought the game legitimately could also benefit from the performance gains a Denuvo-less RiME brings to the table.
PC gamers can generally agree that one of the benefits of playing on a computer opposed to a console is having the flexibility and choice in terms of how a game performs and runs, not to mention the potential for modding. However, a recent trend amongst PC videogame releases has been the inclusion of DRM, or Digital Rights Media protection, which in some cases actually hampers the experience and causes slowdown and performance instability, which was the precisely what happened to RiME.
