Kingdom Come: Deliverance will debut with no DRM

Warhorse Studios, the developer of gorgeous, magic-free medieval first-person action title, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, has announced that when the game launches in mid-February, that it won’t have any sort of DRM. It won’t have SECUROM, or a keycode or anything classic like that. Nor will it ship out with an always-online check for its single player experience. Better yet, it won’t even have Denuvo or some form of anti-tamper system in place. It will simply ask that you don’t pirate it.

This is quite out of character with most modern developers, who rely on Steam for a base-layer of protection and then often add additional systems on top. The most vogue of late has been Denuvo which prevents the already-existing DRM from being breached, at least in theory. In some recent instances that hasn’t proven effective enough, so Assassin’s Creed: Origins actually implemented two pieces of anti-tamper on top of Uplay’s own protections: Denuvo and VMProtect.

While that has proven effective, fans have not been happy at the multi-layered approach to DRM, suggesting that it’s impacting in-game performance. It also seems like a slippery slope. How many anti-tamper systems will eventually be applied to games if adding more seems so effective?

Also of interest with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, as PCGamesN notes, is that Warhose isn’t planning some overblown DLC strategy for the game. It’s made it clear that there will be no season pass that gamers can buy in the hopes that future DLC is good. There will also be no microtransactions in game.

What a refreshing take on modern game development.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance debuts on February 13.