UPDATE: Capcom has issued a statement that it’s currently working on a patch to “address” these issues. There’s no mention of a date anywhere, so best to keep expectations in check for now.
ORIGINAL STORY AS FOLLOWS:
A new report by Digital Foundry seems to ascertain that the best way to play Resident Evil Village on PC – at least at the time of writing – is the pirated(or the cracked version) of the game. Resident Evil Village on PC is incredibly optimized and scalable, thanks to the power of the RE Engine. However, a number of glaring issues have cropped up over the months that have seemingly been fixed by pirates with a crack version of the game.
A number of animations within the game can tank the framerate down to the mid 20-30s, which includes Lycans lunging on the player, certain shootout sequences, and most importantly the attack animation of the Maidens. As outlined in the report and corroborated by a number of fans, the recently released crack version of the game seems to resolve any and all issues with the game.
The pirates in question have listed that the reason for these frame drops is the poor implementation of Capcom’s own copy protection along with Denuvo DRM. To be fair, Denuvo already has a reputation of being taxing on the CPU which can cause performance inconsistencies although not to such an extent.
This isn’t as grave of an issue on lower-end hardware utilizing frame-rate caps and V-Sync to keep performance locked to 30/60 fps (as we did in our review of Resident Evil Village), but fans playing at framerates above 60 fps seem to have been experiencing noticeable drops that seem more like stutters.
Of course, this doesn’t justify the act of pirating the game altogether. However, it becomes a tough situation for a developer like Capcom, as fans freeloading off of a crack are having a much better experience than fans who have paid $60 or higher for essentially the same game.
Capcom hasn’t issued any statement on the matter, and fans are understandably enough furious at the developer since it has been over 2 months since the game’s launch. Of course, Denuvo DRM could also be at fault here, but hopefully, this is an issue that can be fixed with an update.
The best course of action seems to be to remove DRM protection from the game’s PC release entirely, as the game’s crack is readily available across a number of websites. At least this way, paying fans can have an experience on par with the cracked release. Furthermore, there’s also not a lot of risks involved in missing out on potential sales now.
