Developer id Software has back-tracked on the inclusion of anti-cheat features that were introduced to Doom Eternal last week.
Public outrage saw the developer pummelled with criticism over the perceived intrusiveness of Doom Eternal’s kernel-level Denuvo Anti-Cheat.
Players reported issues with performance, and in some cases, the game not working altogether, alongside concerns that the software may offer a conduit to identifiable personal information. The backlash led to players review bombing the Doom Eternal listing and heated discussions on familiar gaming haunts such as Reddit.
Doom Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton has announced that id Software will now remove the controversial anti-cheat from the game in the next update as a direct response to the negative feedback.
Stratton says, ‘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.’
The executive producer was also quick to point out that the decision to remove the anti-cheat was id Software’s alone, seemingly in response to speculation that publisher Bethesda had a hand in forcing the U-turn.
In the same vein, id Software noted that the quality of the anti-cheat itself wasn’t in question, stating that reported performance and stability issues were not linked to the software.
After conducting an internal investigation, id Software says the problem is rooted in code-level issues that are causing crashes, notably several memory-related crashes and VRAM allocation issues, that have since been fixed and will arrive alongside the removal of the Denuvo Anti-Cheat in the next update.
Looking to the future and how it will tackle the problem of cheating, id Software says it is driven by a desire to ensure that campaign-only players can play without anti-cheat while ensuring that provisions are in place for competitive aspects of Doom Eternal that align with player expectations.
As it stands, there’s no firm release date for the next patch, but id Software says it will share news as and when it becomes available on its social and community channels.