Ah, Capcom. Some have speculated that adding DRM to a title like "Resident Evil: Revelations" after the fact is primarily to control malicious mods (which may or may not be due to the worldwide distribution of the naked Chun-Li mod). Adding DRM to Revelations was so successful that Capcom had to quickly undo the update. Undaunted by

, Capcom pushed ahead with this new tactic, and this time they did something extraordinary: the excellent "Monster Hunter Rises" used Denuvo's DRM, and in a new patch replaced it with Enigma Protector DRM (the same DRM) replaced it. Many users have shared video evidence of this.

Please give a round of applause. In other words, Capcom has been good at pissing off users with their imperfect implementation of DRM, but this goes above and beyond.

Sure enough, Steam user reviews have gone from "very positive" to "mixed," with nearly every negative review mentioning this most recent update. The point here is that while Capcom certainly broke something with this update, there is no conclusive evidence linking the Deck issue to the addition of Enigma Protector DRM.

Capcom's patch notes have now been updated and read: "After updating to version 16.0.2.0, we have received reports of the game not working on Steam Deck. Our development team is currently investigating. We will let you know as soon as we know more details, so please wait for further updates."

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Some have reported that using the latest Proton hotfix has resolved the issue, as detailed on the Steam Deck support page: select Monster Hunter Rise on the Steam Deck, click the menu button, click Properties, Compatibility Properties, then "Force use of certain Steam Play compatibility tools." From there find and select the "Proton Hotfix" option, download the update and try your luck.

However, this fix would exclude players (which I imagine is the majority of players) who are not tech-savvy enough to dive deep into troubleshooting or simply don't want to deal with the hassle. Also left unresolved is Capcom's rationale for wrapping older games in the new DRM, and the irritation it is causing by doing so. So far, Capcom has not even acknowledged that new DRM has been added, much less explained its rationale. The widely accepted speculation is that Capcom wants to crack down on the use of mods, but that in itself is problematic: even if the whole thing goes perfectly smoothly and games without mods continue to function as before, if mods are suddenly disabled, it will inevitably piss people off. Not enough to break the game for all, but definitely not enough to PR.

As of now, it looks like another rollback is planned. But seriously: Rise was a dream game. The idea that Capcom would run a DRM redo and prevent the game from running on arguably the most popular and standardized PC platform is ...... It doesn't look good, and Monster Hunter players have every right to be angry.