DOOM Eternal will soon get an update to patch out a previous update from last week, which added in a form of Denuvo for anti-cheat measures. Following the addition of the anti-cheat to the PC version of the game, fans began to review bomb Doom Eternal on Steam, demand a refund, or show their disappointment across social media. The anti-cheat also appeared to introduce new bugs to the game, with many reporting performance issues and rampant crashing that would render the game unplayable. Publisher Bethesda mentioned that they were looking into the source of the update's performance problems.

A few days later, id Software's executive producer took to Reddit to announce that due to the instability and performance issues, a new v1.1 update would be issued soon to players on PC. According to the developers, Denuvo anti-cheat was added as an update to prevent cheaters from taking over the game's online BATTLEMODE and because "players were disappointed on DOOM 2016" for not including an anti-cheat closer to launch to combat hackers online. After the negative response to the new anti-cheat, id stated that they would be removing it from the game in the impending update, though they claim that the performance issues were not related in any form to Denuvo, instead attributing the problems to a new code change made to VRAM allocation, which will also be fixed with the patch.

Currently, there is no date for the release of the v1.1 patch.

I want to provide our PC community the latest information on a number of topics related to Update 1, which we released this past Thursday. Our team has been looking into the reports of instability and performance degradation for some users and we’ve also seen the concerns around our inclusion of Denuvo Anti-Cheat. As is often the case, things are not as clear-cut as they may seem, so I’d like to include the latest information on the actions we’re taking, as well as offer some context around the decisions we’ve made. We are preparing and testing PC-Only Update 1.1 that includes the changes and fixes noted below. We hope to have this rolled-out to players within a week.

Our team’s original decision to include Denuvo Anti-Cheat in Update 1 was based on a number of factors:

• Protect BATTLEMODE players from cheaters now, but also establish consistent anti-cheat systems and processes as we look ahead to more competitive initiatives on our BATTLEMODE roadmap
  
  
• Establish cheat protection in the campaign now in preparation for the future launch of Invasion – which is a blend of campaign and multiplayer
  
  
• Kernel-level integrations are typically the most effective in preventing cheating
  
  
• Denuvo’s integration met our standards for security and privacy
  
  
• Players were disappointed on DOOM (2016) with our delay in adding anti-cheat technology to protect that game’s multiplayer

Despite our best intentions, feedback from players has made it clear that we must re-evaluate our approach to anti-cheat integration. With that, we will be removing the anti-cheat technology from the game in our next PC update. As we examine any future of anti-cheat in DOOM Eternal, at a minimum we must consider giving campaign-only players the ability to play without anti-cheat software installed, as well as ensure the overall timing of any anti-cheat integration better aligns with player expectations around clear initiatives – like ranked or competitive play – where demand for anti-cheat is far greater.

It is important to note that our decision to include anti-cheat was guided by nothing other than the factors and goals I’ve outlined above – all driven by our team at id Software. I have seen speculation online that Bethesda (our parent company and publisher) is forcing these or other decisions on us, and it’s simply untrue. It’s also worth noting that our decision to remove the anti-cheat software is not based on the quality of the Denuvo Anti-Cheat solution. Many have unfortunately related the performance and stability issues introduced in Update 1 to the introduction of anti-cheat. They are not related.

Through our investigation, we discovered and have fixed several crashes in our code related to customizable skins. We were also able to identify and fix a number of other memory-related crashes that should improve overall stability for players. All of these fixes will be in our next PC update. I’d like to note that some of these issues were very difficult to reproduce and we want to thank a number of our community members who worked directly with our engineers to identify and help reproduce these issues.

Finally, we believe the performance issues some players have experienced on PC are based on a code change we made around VRAM allocation. We have reverted this change in our next update and expect the game to perform as it did at launch.

Please stay tuned to the official DOOM Eternal community channels for more on the roll-out of this update. As always, thank you for your passion and commitment to DOOM Eternal.

Marty Stratton
Executive Producer, DOOM Eternal

Source

 

[Silent_Gunner]

So people are mad that they made it so you can't cheat? Or that the anti cheat made the game not function well? I'm confused.

(This is probably why I don't play bethesda games)

This is the scariest part.

 

[DANTENDO]

Thank the lord for consoles

 

[HRudyPlayZ]

It's not really because peoples can't cheat, i would be fine with a server-side anticheat if it's done well... Or even better, custom servers being back do you can play the game without cheaters.

The real problems are that client-side anticheats (EasyAntiCheat, Denuvo, BattlEye, Vanguard) are:
- Useless and eazily bypassable if you know how (ex: Vanguard, EAC, BE)
- Unsecure, especially since they implement their crap in Ring 0, which means at the same level of Windows pretty much, so if there's one exploit found, an hacker could do anything they w1nt dith your system.
- Rootkits, they install themselves on Ring0, secretly and most of rhe times, don't do any good for the player.
- Can invade your privacy.
- Can affect your performance (yep, some AnriCheats do use a lot of CPU cycles or RAM)
- Hard to uninstall without bruteforcing them. (Meaning, Windows Safe Mode and using a batch script to bypass the file's permissions and delete them.)
- Unstable, lots of crashes as a simple bug in Ring0 could lead to a BSoD.

They should just use server-side anticheats, you cannot temper with them, can detect more efficiently, and most importantly, don't do any harm to the computers.
They should also bring community servers in games back, so if there's hackers, you could find a server without ones, with active moderation or even a custom-made anticheat.

I would still prefer to see cheaters (which are still there anyways as the anti-cheat are clientside) instead of a rootkit in my computer.

 

[Arras]

• Anticheats are kernel mode and have been for over 10 years because the good cheats are as well, and it's near impossible to detect them without.
  
• Regular non-kernel programs can do all of the data stealing and other scary stuff that people are worried about anticheats doing.
  
• It just shows up in programs & features and you can uninstall it like any other program.
  
• Serverside anticheat is great in principle, but it just doesn't work well for all genres of games. Especially for first person shooters, where you absolutely need instant responses, low latency, and it's near impossible for the server to tell whether it's a player or a bot that looks like a player aiming.
  
• The entire point of anticheats is to prevent people from messing with the game, so they have some of the most incentive to fix vulnerabilities out of any type of software developer. A lot more than the chinese manufacturers of most people's mouse drivers or whatever, anyway. Plus has there ever been a known anticheat that actually ran into those issues? DRM is not an anticheat.
  
• As for them being useless, going to need a citation on that besides "trust me they don't work". Preferably not from cheat manufacturers either since they stand to gain a lot by making people believe anticheat is useless - it makes their job easier.
  
  I do agree there should be an option not to use it if you don't care about multiplayer and to disable the multiplayer functionality instead though - the only reason that isn't there is probably because management figured it wasn't worth it.

 

[CORE]

If only Windows done the same regarding Privacy and Security.

 

[HRudyPlayZ]

• Anticheats are kernel mode and have been for over 10 years because the good cheats are as well, and it's near impossible to detect them without.
  
• Regular non-kernel programs can do all of the data stealing and other scary stuff that people are worried about anticheats doing.
  
• It just shows up in programs & features and you can uninstall it like any other program.
  
• Serverside anticheat is great in principle, but it just doesn't work well for all genres of games. Especially for first person shooters, where you absolutely need instant responses, low latency, and it's near impossible for the server to tell whether it's a player or a bot that looks like a player aiming.
  
• The entire point of anticheats is to prevent people from messing with the game, so they have some of the most incentive to fix vulnerabilities out of any type of software developer. A lot more than the chinese manufacturers of most people's mouse drivers or whatever, anyway. Plus has there ever been a known anticheat that actually ran into those issues? DRM is not an anticheat.
  
• As for them being useless, going to need a citation on that besides "trust me they don't work". Preferably not from cheat manufacturers either since they stand to gain a lot by making people believe anticheat is useless - it makes their job easier.
  
  I do agree there should be an option not to use it if you don't care about multiplayer and to disable the multiplayer functionality instead though - the only reason that isn't there is probably because management figured it wasn't worth it.

- Yep, though a good server anticheat would be enough for most of the cases, or in the worst scenario, have a small anticheat on client to detect programs and weird behaviour (custom one, only active in multiplayer) that communicates with a server one for the heavier testing parts.

- They can, but unless they are rootkits aswell, they won't be able to access the whole system.
- False. You can partially uninstall them but they still leave a lot of traces and not everything is removed. (For example, when i removed EAC from my PC i've had to run a custom script or else the anticheat would prevent Windows from messing around... Lots of Rust players would know).

- It can work if your anticheat actually detects behaviour instead of programs. Another option would be to couple that with a vote kick feature, so even if the anticheat isn't very efficient, you could always just kick hackers instantly. Again, custom community servers would be a great alternative to a bad anticheat.

- Kind off... a zero-day is so quick to discover though... I know that EasyAntiCheat had been compromised at some point, although it didn't do any hurt as at the time it didn't have any permissions to screw your system too badly...

- They don't work. But you don't have to trust my words for it, take a look at the number of hackers on something like Fortnite, Valorant, Rust... I can pretty much say that if you know how, you can easily bypass those ones, i can tell as i did it myself on Rust and when i tested Fortnite (pretty bad game btw), i did the same, although it wasn't because of hacks, you would need to be pretty bad to need those, just to not have a stupid driver mess with my system. I can't know for sure about others (except Vanguard as a lot of cheaters are coming by), but i know that, by the nature of the anti-cheat, as it is client and not server and as you can edit any file you want on a PC, there will always be a way to bypass it, period.
This is the same for DRMs anyways, as unless a newer version got released, most games can be cracked under 1 week after release.

 

[Arras]

- They don't work. But you don't have to trust my words for it, take a look at the number of hackers on something like Fortnite, Valorant, Rust... I can pretty much say that if you know how, you can easily bypass those ones, i can tell as i did it myself on Rust and when i tested Fortnite (pretty bad game btw), i did the same, although it wasn't because of hacks, you would need to be pretty bad to need those, just to not have a stupid driver mess with my system. I can't know for sure about others (except Vanguard as a lot of cheaters are coming by), but i know that, by the nature of the anti-cheat, as it is client and not server and as you can edit any file you want on a PC, there will always be a way to bypass it, period.
This is the same for DRMs anyways, as unless a newer version got released, most games can be cracked under 1 week after release.

After looking it up out of curiousity, it seems like Valorant was detecting cheaters but wasn't properly banning them for several months due to some sort of oversight. Lmao. They changed it at the start of this month though so it should be better now. I don't know about EAC, but it very well might use a similar system to Nintendo where it doesn't instantly kick or ban when it detects something wrong - instead it waits a while (though probably not too long) and applies the bans a bit later. Plus Fortnite has the issue of being a free to play game, so if someone cheats and gets banned, they can just make a new account and do it again.

 

[DuoForce]

Nice to see big companies like Bethesda listening to the fans, good on the fans to make their criticism loud enough to be heard and bring change!

 

[Mariemario]

Glad community's voice being heard! First AMD Ryzen Zen 3 debacle, now this.

 

[Espen84]

had absolutely nothing to do with performance issues. people were bitching because they couldn't cheat. kiss battlemode goodbye than hackers will take over that glad i dumped this game so early.

Yes to me it had. I love this game! But i dont play the multilayer. I just like kick back and kick demons as. But with this update I had micro stutters and random fps drops. I got my hold on the drm free version, and it play flawlessly. So I am pretty sure it's the anti-cheat. But pc world it's a huge amount of different setup and hardware so ofc not all will be affected by this. But what is really concerning is this sneak attack that implement a rootkitt to the pc. Couse that is what it is. It work on the kernel level of the computer. So it have full access to your computer. Do you trust them to do that. Or even if bethesda or Id is trusted, what if they are attacked and users computer data rome in the free. With access to visa cards, shopping history, or your web browsers dirty search histor. This is bad in so meny levels, I can't even. And they wherent forthcoming either. It was sneak implemented, weeks after ppl buy the game

 

[Mark McDonut]

STOP.GIVING.MONEY.TO.DENUVO.
IT.BREAKS.YOUR.GAMES.
FOR.F.SAKE.

 

[the_randomizer]

People who defend and enable Denuvo, whether it's the anti-cheat or DRM, deserve no right to play games from stupid developers

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yeah...not all of us play DOOM for multiplayer. There's probably other alternatives for the arena shooting genre that are better in the multiplayer department and don't require installing a fucking rootkit to Ring 0 of your Windows installation (and probably Linux if you're using Steam Proton, couldn't say for sure, though) to "prevent cheaters, piracy, and whatever else masks our true desires and sounds reasonable to normies."

There is absolutely no reason anti-cheat should need to be loaded when you're not playing online anyway. Just give the game an alternate launch mode that disables anti-cheat and online.

 

[gudenau]

Anyone have the driver? I'd like to have a copy, might be fun to look at.

 

[Chary]

There was an mmo I was trying out once, and it absolutely would not run on my PC. The reason it kept crashing? The anti cheat conflicted with my PC's RGB controller program. I had to disable RGBs and uninstall the program to get the MMO working. There's some crazy horrible anti-cheats out there.

 

[MarkDarkness]

History repeats itself. Somebody here must be old enough to remember when the corporations were installing rootkits via AUDIO FUCKING CDS. That one went well.

 

[Andy2001]

That was fast as fuck!

 

[Kioku]

So people are mad that they made it so you can't cheat? Or that the anti cheat made the game not function well? I'm confused.

(This is probably why I don't play bethesda games)

Anything Denuvo is already ill received in the gaming community. Adding a Ring 0 (kernel level) anticheat with the Denuvo name is asking for trouble. There's no valid reason an anticheat needs full, unfettered access to your system. It's asking for problems. I actually Uninstalled Valorant because of the same thing (different AC).

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Denuvo anti-cheat is still going to be in the game, but it'll only activate when you play multiplayer. Right now it's turned on even if you're just playing single-player, which is pointless unless they were planning on adding in MTX.

No, they're removing DAC from what I've read. Entirely. Unless I overlooked something. They also stated they will be communicating with the community in terms of future anti-cheats.

I also find it funny that some people in here think that DAC would keep cheaters out.

 

[SonicMC]

Denuvo was finally removed from Sonic Mania.

Still waiting on removal from Team Sonic Racing...

 

[SG854]

Glad community's voice being heard! First AMD Ryzen Zen 3 debacle, now this.

Include Apple in there. Remember the phone throttling debacle. They then released an update that stopped throttling.

If people complain loud enough and refuse to buy their products lots of money will be lost so they have no choice to but listen to us.

Being a fan boy/girl and endlessly defending a compabny is stupid because you miss out on opportunities like this for a better experience. Complaining does work.