Resident Evil Revelations update reportedly adds DRM to decade-old game, breaks it, then removes DRM – for now

11-year-old game Resident Evil Revelations recently released an update that apparently introduced DRM, only to swiftly roll back the patch after complaints from players that it reportedly caused performance issues. Capcom aren’t giving up that easily on their vow to crack down on mods, though.

The recent update to Resident Evil Revelations sparked a wave of comments in its Steam forums about apparent performance problems, including reduced framerate, stuttering and sudden drops, crashes, and mods no longer working. (Thanks, Eurogamer.)

As players dug into the surprise patch, they appeared to find references to Enigma Protector, a piece of DRM software designed to stop the use of mods and tools such as Cheat Engine.

The introduction of the anti-tampering tool follows comments made by developers during an internal Capcom presentation last year that equated mods to cheats and expressed concern that some mods “offensive to public order and morals” could tarnish the company’s reputation – a worry no doubt fuelled by the appearance of a naked Chun-Li mod at a Street Fighter 6 tournament over the summer.

The introduction of DRM to a decade-plus-old game at the apparent cost of performance has, unsurprisingly, riled up players, who took to Revelations’ Steam page and sent its recent reviews crashing down to a “Mostly Negative” average.

Revelations isn’t the only Capcom game to get the DRM treatment, either, it seems. Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection saw Enigma Protector swapped in for its previous use of publisher-popular (and player-unpopular) DRM tool Denuvo last year, with the recent Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective re-release also using the anti-piracy tech. Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter’s 30th Anniversary Collection are also reported to be updated with Enigma Protector, though Capcom are yet to confirm any changes themselves.

In the case of Revelations, at least, the apparent hit to performance led Capcom to pull the patch a few days later, attributing the reversal to “an issue observed with the latest update” in a Steam blog. However, they promised that the update would be re-released once the problems are solved, signalling that they haven’t given up the war on mods just yet.