Good question; didn’t even occur to me this might be a thing, but a quick search confirms that previous demo releases have had Denuvo.
Still waiting on Hogwarts Legacy to drop Denuvo. I’ve almost bought it three times, when it’s been on sale, only to cancel when I did the Denuvo check. It’s been cracked for 2½ years, since 12 days after release. Why the hell is it still included!?
Yeah, I installed Enterprise edition on my desktop, which allows you to cut out all the bloat and spyware. But it takes a long time to do, and I’m not sure I got everything since Windows Updates can change anything.
That love of tinkering is why I’ve landed on not using an immutable distro for my first time installing Linux since the 00s. CachyOS is what I landed on; now I just need to catch up on work so I can take a day to tinker with my setup.
For context, I semi-broke my current Windows 11 install by trying to manually edit the registry to remove all traces of a piece of invasive, uninstallable bloatware (that comes direct from ASRock… the bastards) I accidentally installed. Turns out my sound drivers are from the same company, so when I deleted all entries with that company in the search terms, I FUBARed my Bluetooth audio and 3.5mm microphone. And didn’t backup the registry.
I like to tinker, and if I need to reinstall my OS anyway, so now is the time to finally switch!
Or keep the live service model, but label things correctly:
You’re getting a subscription to the service that’s guaranteed to last at least until [planned minimum end date]. Make it illegal to label anything using “buy” that doesn’t grant a permanent, non-expiring license to the software or digital good.
There’s nothing wrong with charging for a subscription. If that’s their product, and the only way they can offer the product, then clearly market it that way and there’s no legal problem under the proposed rules.
Granted, that still sucks for videogame preservation, but at least it’s honest. And I’m not sure how many people will be willing to shell out $80+ for a “minimum 24 month subscription” to a new game, or pay $9.99 for a "micro"transaction they’re guaranteed to keep access to for 8 7 6 5 months.
Oh, shoot. That sucks. I was going to get Hogwarts Legacy for my kiddos.
Thankfully, the pirated version doesn’t have Denuvo, so I guess there’s an alternative, but it’s so much easier to just buy it on Steam than pirate it, lol.