Like many of Capcom's recent PC games, Resident Evil 7: Resident Evil Village (opens in new tab) included everyone's favorite anti-piracy software, Denuvo (opens in new tab), when it launched in May 2021. And like many of Capcom's recently released games on PC, the DRM was quietly removed.

As documented by VGC (opens in new tab), the removal of Denuvo from the Village was first reported by the website Dark Side of Gaming (opens in new tab) and then verified by SteamDB (opens in new tab).

Whatever one's attitude toward video game piracy, the Denuvo protection of "Resident Evil Village" caused more fundamental problems for many players, with some reporting that the presence of DRM could seriously affect the game's performance. These reports were confirmed when Capcom released an update for "Resident Evil 7: Resident Evil Village" to "optimize anti-piracy technology."

The release of PC versions bundled with Denuvo seems to be standard practice for Capcom's big games, with "Resident Evil 2 Remake" (opens in new tab), "Resident Evil 3 Remake" (opens in new tab), and "Monster Hunter" (opens in new tab ) worlds were all released with anti-piracy software bundled with them (all of which later had the software removed). However, Denuvo has remained in the Village for an unusually long time. The game's anti-piracy software was cracked about a month after its release, but it took Capcom nearly two years to remove Denuvo. At the very least, Capcom intentionally removed Denuvo. This is not like Warner Bros. Games Montreal, which accidentally removed Denuvo from "Gotham Knights" last October (open in new tab) and then added it back (that game was not well received).

The remake "Resident Evil 4" also shipped with Denuvo, and some players have complained in Steam discussions of the game (open in new tab) that it causes a variety of problems, ranging from traverse stuttering to corrupted save files. However, at this time, Denuvo has not been confirmed as the cause of these problems.