Denuvo is everyone's least favourite anti-piracy software. The DRM, which comes as a sneaky passenger alongside games like Payday 3, Far Cry, and—inexplicably—Ghostwire: Tokyo, has been accused of causing performance issues (not without reason) in the games it comes with, and is generally regarded as an unwelcome guest pretty much wherever it's used.
So perhaps we should take heart, because although Tekken 8's EULA currently says the game will use Denuvo's anti-tampering tech, game director Katsuhiro Harada has come out and denied that's the case, in the strongest possible terms. In a response to a now-deleted tweet from a fan, Harada said the current Tekken 8 EULA is "probably simply a copy/paste of Tekken 7 or something," although he's not certain of that, and that he has "no plans to introduce Denuvo or anything else in Tekken 8".
He probably could have stopped there, but this is Katsuhiro Harada we're talking about, of 'busting into a guy's stream threatening to "SHOW my power"' fame, so—perhaps inevitably—he got a bit more colourful with it. I'm not sure what the tweet Harada was responding to originally said, but it clearly got his hackles up a bit. The game director implored the fan to "stop your tedious allergic reactions to every single thing and sit quietly". Then, in case you weren't clear, he added "(sit the hell down)."
- Final Fantasy 16 is the latest game to be freed from the shackles of Denuvo, though its 7-year-old predecessor still remains in DRM jail
- 'Oh, don't worry about this': Tekken boss denies he's leaving Bandai Namco after saying he's open to work on LinkedIn, claims it's just because he wants to 'meet more people'
Well, that's that then. Unless it's not. To be frank, despite Harada's vocal and vivid denial, I'm not sure I necessarily buy that Denuvo's absence from Tekken 8 is a sure thing. It was in the last game, after all. Plus, the man himself said he's not sure if the current version of the EULA is a cut-and-paste of Tekken 7's or not.
Could the software have snuck in beneath Harada's notice? I don't know. But if the game comes out in future and, somehow, does actually end up featuring Denuvo, I wouldn't be enormously surprised.
It'll be a while until we find out. Tekken 8 has no firm release date just yet, but we do apparently know about its roster thanks to a recent leak and some trailers out of EVO. But as someone whose last Tekken game was 3, all I want to know is if Heihachi will stoically toss his grandson out of a helicopter again. No throw, no buy.
