Assuming there isn’t another delay, Civilization-challenger Humankind will release in just under a month. Developer Amplitude is likely to be hard at work making sure the 4X game is as stable and bug-free as possible, and one step the studio has taken recently is to remove its original anti-piracy solution, Denuvo Anti-tamper.
A statement was released on the official forums indicating that the well known anti-piracy platform will not be included in Humankind at launch. “Our priority is always the best possible experience for the players who buy our games and support us,” Amplitude studio head Romain de Waubert explains. “Denuvo should never impact player performance, and we don’t want to sacrifice quality for you guys.”
The decision was made after the team collected data from beta tests that have been run for the game since the end of last year. The response was posted on the thread of someone calling for the software to be removed because they avoid games that use it, with one of the reasons cited being what they claim is Denuvo’s tendency to negatively impact the performance of the games it's included in. Others have expressed similar sentiment.
Romain’s initial statement seemed to leave the door open for Denuvo’s return sometime after launch, but it was clarified that there are currently “no plans” to re-introduce the software after launch, although this leaves the game without a dedicated anti-piracy measure.
The statement goes into detail to explain why Denuvo was chosen in the first place. “We work really hard and pour our hearts into these games we make,” Romain explains, “and pirating really does affect our ability to keep creating games with you guys.
“We’ve been working on this game for more than four years now and personally it’s been my dream project for 25 years. We’ve been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam this year, so we know we’re going to be targeted by pirates, more so than any of our previous games. If Denuvo can hold off a cracked version, even just for a few days, that can already really help us to protect our launch.”
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We reached out to Sega for comment, but it had nothing more to share on the matter; at the time of writing, the game’s Steam page still shows Humankind as shipping with Denuvo Anti-tamper.
Humankind will launch on PC via Steam on August 17, 2021.