After three months (and a helpful push from pirates) Capcom finally fixes game broken by DRM

Capcom finally released an update this week that fixes problems caused by the DRM used in its hit game Resident Evil Village. It's a classic example of DRM hurting only honest buyers, with a pirated version of the game earning widespread media publicity when it became obvious it was the only sure way to play the game on PC without stuttering frame rates.

I've lined up performance data from the unpatched game, the cracked version and the newly released title update and essentially, the patched rendition of Resident Evil Village now runs identically to the cracked version – Capcom's adjustments to "optimise the anti-piracy technology" do work. However, it's still unclear as to why the issues were never addressed before the DRM fiasco was brought to light. The patch notes confirm that the anti-piracy technology is to blame, but does not explain how the problems made their way into user-facing code when they are so obvious and plain to see. Not only that, even in the face of user feedback and reviews, still nothing was done about it. Those who bought and paid for the game deserve some kind of explanation and apology.

Pundits can argue all they like about piracy, but when it's the only way to play a broken game with sales numbers in the millions, it's going to happen at scale. Capcom introduced a new generation of kiddies to the culture and infrastructure of game piracy with this farce, and it did it with DRM.