Ghostwire Last Wednesday, a major update (opens in new tab) to "Spiderwire" added a new rogue light game mode, additional side missions, more enemies, more skills, and several tweaks and upgrades to the game's photo mode. Also inexplicably added was Denuvo's widely criticized tamper-proof DRM, more than a year after the game's initial release.

The addition of Denuvo to the game was first discovered by a player keeping an eye on Ghostwire (open in new tab): it was first discovered by a player keeping an eye on Tokyo's SteamDB page, and the 263MiB added to the game executable ( 4 times the size) added to the game's executable file was theorized to be Denuvo. It has since been confirmed in tests by DSOGaming (open in new tab).

Whether Denuvo's Ghostwire implementation causes the performance degradation and frame stuttering that is frowned upon with this technology remains to be seen (opens in new tab), but even if the integration is miraculously seamless, it is a rather puzzling move. A Denuvo-free version of the game is already widely available (and will inevitably be cracked anyway) on countless piracy hotspots on the Internet.

Some have speculated that this change was prompted by the game's recent addition to Game Pass, which has brought the game back into the public eye, but I cannot parse that logic myself. As I have said before, the Denuvo-free version of this game is already out there, and I don't see why releasing it on Game Pass would require a level of protection that is not needed at the actual launch.

DSOGaming suggests that this change may pave the way for some sort of expansion, meaning that Denuvo was added to protect it rather than the base game itself, which makes more sense. But until we hear from Bethesda or Tango Gameworks about the future of the game, this is all speculation.

We have asked Bethesda why Denuvo was added to Ghostwire: we will update this article if we hear back.

Usually the story is the other way around: a game is released with Denuvo DRM and players complain, but when game sales drop and piracy is no longer a threat to the publisher's bottom line, the technology is often removed. This week's Resident Evil Village (opens in a new tab) is just such a case, with the DRM software quietly removed almost two years after the game's release. Meanwhile, pirates managed to crack RE Village's Denuvo protections about a month after the game's release.