Capcom has been in the spotlight these past years due to their successful new entries in beloved franchises like Resident Evil, Street Fighter and Monster Hunter. However, during these past years they have had their fair share of controversy as well, like using Denuvo DRM in some of their titles, which has been proven to affect performance of titles like Resident Evil 8 compared with the same game with DRM removed, and today, something similar has been making the rounds online, as Capcom has been caught updating older titles with an intrusive DRM.

Resident Evil: Revelations was one such title, in which Capcom added a sneaky update on January 8th for Steam, which seemed to fix a couple bugs still remaining from the release (like fixing Jill's Samurai Edge's weapon recognition), but also added Enigma Protector DRM, which started to cause issues with mods already installed for the game, causing it to crash. Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection, Mega Man Battle Network Collection and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective have also been titles affected by this intrusive DRM update by Capcom as well.

The "Enigma Protector" DRM is yet another type of protection for executable files, and when implemented into games, it basically strips away the option to use cheats and mods into said games through a series of memory checks. Adding to this, it's important to note that a lot of Capcom's older titles up to this day still retain a lot of bugs, glitches, and even possible game breaking issues, which to this day have yet to be addressed officially by Capcom, and leaves only the fanbase to take action and fix some of these issues through mods, and with the inclusion of this DRM, some of these fanmade fixes could end up being completely broken, effectively rendering certain older games unplayable to some users.

However, the issues don't stop with just disabling modding and cheats for single player games, but it also has been confirmed to cause performance issues in titles with this DRM implemented, reducing framerate for some titles from 10 to up to 20 fps in some dire cases.

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Given the whole ordeal, users went into the Enigma Protector threads to bring forth the problem of their DRM causing performance problems when implemented into their games, and in a very professional way, the response of the Enigma Protector team on their threads leaves a lot to be desired, boiling down to a really aggressive and hostilie response given the light report.

It's important to note that as of January 9th, a statement was issued on Steam, mentioning that there was an issue observed in the January 8th update, and that the update will be rolled back, but they specify that once the issue is resolved, the update will be added back once again.

Due to an issue observed with the latest update released, we have reverted the corresponding update.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused, and once the issue is resolved, we will re-release the update.
Thank you very much for your patience and cooperation.

This seems to be yet another instance of DRM affecting legitimate users and legitimate users only, since those that desire it can either roll back the update through some of Steam's options, or just completely sail the high seas and play a cracked version of the games, more so for older and single player titles that have played just fine and have thrived from the modding scene without official interference for decades at this point.

To add salt to injury, titles that have seen this intrusive DRM added into them are no longer working on Steam Deck.

For those interested in how to roll back updates through Steam, user @MaxiBash has provided instructions on how to roll back the updates for the affected games on Steam so far in a post in this thread.

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UPDATE:
A supposed list of more Capcom games that have been affected by Capcom's inclusion of the Enigma Protector DRM has surfaced:

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Resident Evil: Revelations "Regarding the update" notice
Original Enigma DRM thread and archived link

 

[ShadowOne333]

I wanted to add that there's some talks online about the Enigma Protector DRM being circumvented already in some instances, which gives hope to those that want to retain their mods and cheats for non-online games.

 

[Ligeia]

This is so stupid. I want my nude Street Fighter V !

 

[ShadowOne333]

This is so stupid. I want my nude Street Fighter V !

Not my nude mods!
Those are sacred! >:c

 

[jeremy2020]

These companies refuse to learn that treating your paying customers like crap to where the superior version of your product is one that's obtained without paying you is a bad idea.

 

[TheStonedModder]

What even is the point in adding DRM to old already released games? Surely almost all of these have been “cracked” already and have already “damaged” capcom

Seems like a silly waste of time and money for everyone

 

[James_]

I wanted to add that there's some talks online about the Enigma Protector DRM being circumvented already in some instances

Ironic that they called it 'Enigma' then if it's so easy to, y'know, crack.

 

[SylverReZ]

This is really stupid. Everyone knows that DRM is one way to not get your game played. Bet its easier to crack, hence why they called it "Enigma".

 

[ShadowOne333]

What even is the point in adding DRM to old already released games? Surely almost all of these have been “cracked” already and have already “damaged” capcom

Seems like a silly waste of time and money for everyone

Precisely, this is nothing but an idiotic push to "remove" modding from older games, which is a mute point at this moment.
Those that want to can easily just get the cracked EXE of the game they want and continue as if nothing happened.

All Capcom's doing is just pushing customers to pirated binaries that allows them to do what they could without their intervention for decades.

 

[SylverReZ]

All Capcom's doing is just pushing customers to pirated binaries that allows them to do what they could without their intervention for decades.

Rockstar did the same with Max Payne 2 because they couldn't be bothered to crack it themselves. Not only this was the case, but two other games Midnight Club 2 and Manhunt was also using cracked releases.

 

[Alagara]

Guess I'll stick to Mega Man Battle Network on my modded Wii-U.

Imagine adding game breaking DRM to games from 3 generations ago.

 

[Naster]

PC-peasants must suffer

 

[LokeYourLord]

And this is why piracy is more prevalent and important than ever before. The recent disaster with Sony already proved this (and many, many examples before that incident), but at this point, companies are basically doing this to themselves. Sail the high seas mateys, old offline games that you paid for are yours, and no company can take them away from you nor do they have any right to do so as well. If they do crap like this, download a cracked binary, and flip off that company by never buying a game of theirs again.

 

[The Catboy]

Capcom is now on my list of pirate-only

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

capcom needs to be sued for this bullshit.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Capcom is now on my list of pirate-only

With Nintendo always topping that list of course.

 

[The Catboy]

With Nintendo always topping that list of course.

I don’t even plan on buying Switch 2 games. Those are straight up going to be pirated or bought used

 

[diggeloid]

Lol I just looked into it, and it seems enigma protector is some small company selling self-service licenses for $400 a pop. It's very strange to see that a large company like Capcom would use something like this for their AAA products. I almost feel bad for the enigma people since it seems like their product isn't even marketed towards games, just boring ol' Windows apps.

WTF Capcom?

 

[ShadowOne333]

Lol I just looked into it, and it seems enigma protector is some small company selling self-service licenses for $400 a pop. It's very strange to see that a large company like Capcom would use something like this for their AAA products. I almost feel bad for the enigma people since it seems like their product isn't even marketed towards games, just boring ol' Windows apps.

WTF Capcom?

Guess the only thing that's truly and Enigma here was Capcom's idiotic decision to:

1) Use this awful crap
2) Backport it to older games

That's the true Enigma

 

[MaxiBash]

Before this thread turns into 140 comments of people arguing endlessly with eachother, just remember you can use the Steam console and download_depot command to revert to an older version of these games without this crappy DRM.

Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection, Mega Man Battle Network Collection and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective have also been titles affected by this intrusive DRM update by Capcom as well.​

I couldn't find evidence of these three games receiving any recent updates, but I've included the commands for a previous version anyway. Not gonna get into detail what all of this means, though there's no guarantee the depots I've listed here are Enigma-free.

Press the Windows key + R together and type in steam://open/console. In the console, type in one of these commands for the corresponding game you want to downgrade.

Capcom Arcade Stadium
download_depot 1515950 1515951 3907366252234608556

Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium
download_depot 1755910 1755911 2601915893168365561

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
download_depot 1967430 1967431 993375542674616312

Resident Evil 5
download_depot 21690 21692 1482984638441703084

Resident Evil 6
REGULAR DEPOT: download_depot 221040 221041 91344656510953107
GERMAN DEPOT: download_depot 221040 221042 1508376640863714876
JAPANESE DEPOT: download_depot 221040 221043 3711287240693545962
TEST DEPOT: download_depot 221040 221044 7783255463673610611

Resident Evil: Revelations
download_depot 222480 222481 7506113651617344189

Mega Man Battle Network Collection Vol. 1
download_depot 1798010 1798011 6479892931656534289

Mega Man Battle Network Collection Vol. 2
download_depot 1798020 1798021 6414382211667678232

Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection
download_depot 999020 999021 5823837421081242067

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
REGULAR DEPOT (32-BIT): download_depot 586200 586201 2532967918655611210
REGULAR DEPOT (64-BIT): download_depot 586200 586202 9153671820816879466
JAPANESE DEPOT (32-BIT): download_depot 586200 586204 3096516810344735008
JAPANESE DEPOT (64-BIT): download_depot 586200 586203 4542850563357713729

STRIDER
download_depot 235210 235212 2519121740369006150

The finished download will be in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\content\app_[XXX]\depot_[XXX] (XXX corresponding to the app ID and depot ID, the numbers seen in the command). Optionally, overwrite the contents of the new versions present in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\[game name].

tl;dr fuck Capcom