The PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will apparently see the return of Denuvo, a polarizing anti-tampering solution used in Fallen Order. This revelation comes at the heels of numerous Star Wars Jedi: Survivor leaks and spoilers that hit the internet in the run-up to the game's impending release.
Debuted in 2014, Denuvo is a digital rights management (DRM) solution that prevents tampering with game files through code obfuscation. While many of its past versions have eventually been cracked, each implementation of this software is unique, which is why Denuvo has proven to be one of the gaming industry's most effective tools in combating cheats and piracy over the years. That said, Denuvo remains a highly controversial topic in the PC gaming sphere because its poor application historically resulted in notable performance issues.
It would appear that won't stop the Fallen Order sequel from incorporating this DRM feature. According to a recent post from Reddit user Gtorrnet, the executable file for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is nearly 320 MB, which strongly implies the existence of Denuvo. An inflated executable size is a key indicator signaling the presence of this anti-tampering solution; for example, the addition of Denuvo recently quadrupled the file size of Ghostwire: Tokyo.
The Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Steam page also mentions the existence of "third-party DRM" software, which is described as a requirement for EA online activation of the game and for the EA app, formerly known as Origin, to run in the background while playing. There is no outright confirmation that the game uses Denuvo under the hood.
It remains to be seen whether this feature will end up affecting the PC performance of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Its predecessor wasn't exactly a perfectly optimized title, as many reviewers noted in 2019. However, its frame rate issues persisted even after the developers removed Denuvo from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2021, just a few days short of its two-year anniversary. That turn of events implied a poor Denuvo implementation wasn't at fault for the performance problems exhibited by the PC version of Fallen Order.
Moreover, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is Respawn Entertainment's fourth game powered by Unreal Engine 4. This inspires some hope that its PC version will be better optimized than Fallen Order, as the EA-owned studio now boasts a lot of experience with Epic's engine under its belt. That notwithstanding, the game's minimum system requirements are still quite substantial, not least because they ask for a graphics card with at least 8 GB of VRAM.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is launching April 28 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Steam