Ryan Goodrich
Doom Eternal just had its first big update on May 14. On PC, that included a new Denuvo anti-cheat system. So little surprise that several days later, the game is being review-bombed on Steam as players express their problems with the kernel-mode driver that powers Denuvo’s anti-cheat.
Problems with the anti-cheat
According to Denuvo’s launch-day blog post regarding the anti-cheat system, the kernel mode driver first starts when you launch Doom Eternal. It then shuts down when you exit the game for any reason. Denuvo indicated that the game is GDPR compliant, meaning it isn’t allowed to collect personally-identifying information from your system while it runs. Denuvo stated that the anti-cheat software doesn’t take screenshots or scan your file system. Instead, it will “collect information on how the OS interacts with the game and send the information to Amazon-hosted servers for cheat detection.”
One Steam reviewer with 29 hours’ worth of gametime said, “Get rid of the invasive software plaguing my good shooty game. The gameplay itself is great fun, roughly on the same level as Doom 2016. However, I can’t recommend this because of the anti-cheat that they decided to add in, that runs at kernel level.”
The negative review train
Granting ring 0 access to one’s operating system is a pretty big deal. This is especially the case after the ruckus with Riot’s always-on cheat detection system implemented for VALORANT. So many players find themselves struggling with Denuvo’s reassurances that it doesn’t want to do anything sinister with that access.
The patch first took place May 14. Since then, Doom Eternal attracted more than 1,200 negative reviews on Steam by May 15. It looks like more of the same business will be happening today as well.
Additional patch notes
The update additionally included empowered demons, enemies that killed other players and travel to your game. id also made changes to Battlemode, such as adding a few enhancements and echelon leveling.
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