It’s common practice for PC games today to launch with Denuvo, a form of DRM designed to stop the spread of pirated copies of games, and it’s also common practice for developers to remove Denuvo several months after launch as interest (and the risk of piracy) dwindles. Less common is a developer publicly announcing it’s removing Denuvo from a game before it’s even out, but that’s the surprise Starbreeze pulled this Friday.

“Hello heisters, we want to inform you that Denuvo is no longer in Payday 3,” the developer wrote in a post on Steam on Friday. That’s pretty much the whole message—short and to the point, and seemingly a win on the good will front, with the Steam post racking up 524 thumbs up on Steam so far and another 10,000 or so on Twitter.

Payday 3 is less than a week away from its September 21 release, and Starbreeze is clearly looking to roll into the launch with an excited community behind it. Two months ago a thread on the r/paydaytheheist subreddit called out the inclusion of Denuvo and the responses were characteristically negative. This afternoon, one of the game’s developers responded to that thread to highlight that Denuvo has been removed.

Denuvo has long had a reputation for hindering performance in games and bloating their executables, though the company behind it, Irdeto, insists that isn’t the case. This summer it announced a plan to provide media outlets with two versions of games, one with Denuvo included and one without, to prove it has no impact on performance.

  • Metal Zealot
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    -241 year ago

    So, do people actually play Pay Day? All I know is that it’s a game. Haven’t seen trailers, haven’t seen anyone play it on Twitch, it’s like a “fake” game that’s a joke that’s been going on for a really long time

    • @[email protected]
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      141 year ago

      I mean the last one was released in 2013, it’s not exactly super relevant but if you’re that unaware of it I assume you were playing habbo hotel or whatever little kids played 10 years ago.

      • @RedditWanderer
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        1 year ago

        Holy shitballs. It feels like just yesterday we were firing up payday 2 on release day with a bunch of friends and risking having a seizure at any moment on the “start heist” page.

        I figured yeah payday 2 was like 5 years ago, time for a new one. 10 fucking years… i need a drink!

        • TheaoneAndOnly27
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          41 year ago

          Oh man, I feel old now. It was so fun when it came out. I remember the first time I solo stealthwd the nightclub. I kinda got burnt out when it went more absurd. Like after John wick.

      • @drekly
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        31 year ago

        Man I was playing habbo hotel 20+ years ago

      • Metal Zealot
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        1 year ago

        I’m aware of it like I’m aware of NFL games. They’re just kinda there and offer nothing new

        • all-knight-party
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          1 year ago

          Some people, like me, are probably just waiting to see what happens. Payday 2 was awesome, but after release it got microtransactioned and piecemeal DLC’d to high fucking heaven. I don’t care if the beta is good, I want to see what it’ll become before I get invested.

    • TheBlue22
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      1 year ago

      …are you an A.I.? Your comment is so incomprehensible that I fr think it was A.I. generated

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      Yeah it’s one of those fake games they put in the movies so the movie company doesn’t have to pay licensing fees

      • Metal Zealot
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        01 year ago

        They could have just called it “Game” and I wouldn’t have been any the wiser