Back 4 Blood, Turtle Rock's spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead but now with live service elements, will be launching next Tuesday on October 12. Despite its positively-received pre-launch testing, the discourse surrounding Back 4 Blood has taken a surprisingly negative turn. That's in part due to the game's live-service aspects, including an always-online requirement and its only solo mode being detached from online progression. In yet another disappointing turn, it's now confirmed Back 4 Blood will be using Denuvo DRM.
Oddly enough, confirmation of Denuvo's use in Back 4 Blood was made in late September. However, it was done via a circumspect update to Back 4 Blood's Steam page that appears to have gone unnoticed until just recently. In one of the Back 4 Blood Steam profile's side panels, a notice reading, "Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-tamper," is slipped between confirmation of the game's support for controllers and details about the Back 4 Blood EULA.
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Needless to say, the confirmation of Back 4 Blood's implementation of Denuvo DRM was meant to be shared under the radar. It definitely worked, too, as enthusiasm for Back 4 Blood's beta overwhelmed any possible mention of Denuvo being a part of the game. Now that it's confirmed, it's unclear whether the news will impact perceptions of Back 4 Blood ahead of launch. There are just three days until release, after all.
Denuvo DRM has become a focus for frustration over publisher anti-piracy efforts since its first use in 2014. Denuvo is a layer of anti-piracy placed on top of PC games, often with little to no notice to potential players. When implemented, Denuvo has repeatedly been shown to impact the performance of the PC games it's built onto -- sometimes severely. Yet publishers believe the outcry from PC gamer players is worth accepting in trade for a launch window with perceived anti-piracy efforts.
What's particularly surprising about Denuvo's implementation in Back 4 Blood is that the game is already inherently built to combat piracy efforts. It's an always-online game, after all, even through its solo campaign mode. As such, piracy groups would have to build their own server infrastructure, which is an incredibly burdensome process that's rarely carried through.
Ultimately, the implementation of Denuvo in Back 4 Blood may never cause as big of controversy as it does for other games. That's because even if Denuvo results in a significant performance decrease while playing Back 4 Blood, players won't have a point of comparison for Back 4 Blood without it. At the very least, Back 4 Blood players come October 12 will be aware that their game has Denuvo running within it.
Back 4 Blood releases October 12 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.