‘Total War: Warhammer 3’ developer is “extensively” investigating Denuvo

Creative Assembly has shared that it is “extensively testing” anti-piracy software Denuvo to see how much of an impact it’s having on Total War: Warhammer 3, following reports of poor performance.

In a Steam post shared yesterday (March 3), Creative Assembly has updated fans on its progress on making the game more stable.

As well as outlining what the team is working on, Creative Assembly acknowledged that Denuvo has been a “divisive topic of discussion” since the launch of Total War: Warhammer 3, as fans have accused the unpopular software of causing performance issues in the game.

The studio said that although it is “extensively testing the product to determine its full impact on the game,” there are some “misconceptions” it aims to clear up.

Creative Assembly goes on to clarify that Denuvo was included in pre-release builds send out to critics and content creators, and “was not purposefully omitted and then later added for the sake of the reviews.”

The studio added that Denuvo has been included in previous Total War games, though clarified that “this does not absolve it of any potential issues it is causing,” and “there may be some other factor at the heart of the problem that you/we can explore together.”

“The impact of Denuvo on performance is not yet conclusive. Many players have presented evidence both ways, and there are likely to be many factors that weigh into the conversation. When we are confident in our results, we will make a call at that time,” added Creative Assembly.

“With all of that in mind, we would ask that you be patient as we seek out answers in the matter. Calling for its removal and derailing otherwise constructive discussion threads is both disruptive and rarely adds any new or helpful information to the conversation at hand.”

As for what the next patch will bring, Creative Assembly says to expect fixes for Alt+Tab crashes, V-Sync locks, improvements to performance on Alder Lake CPUs, multiplayer desync, and more.

In other news, here’s a roundup of how the games industry has responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.