Does Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora use Denuvo?

There are few things gamers hate more than Denuvo. Unfortunately for them, some developers continue to use Denuvo in their PC games as a way to prevent piracy.

As we get closer to the release of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which is coming in December, many gamers are concerned about whether Ubisoft will use Denuvo once again, as the major gaming publisher has used it in the past.

Does Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora use Denuvo?

Yes, all versions of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on PC require Denuvo Anti-Tamper and VMProtect DRM. This was somewhat expected, however, as Ubisoft has been using Denuvo for years in its games and didn’t seem to be walking it back for Avatar. The developer will once again use Denuvo even though Overlord Gaming‘s benchmark proved Assassin’s Creed Origins had a better performance in a cracked version without Denuvo.

What is Denuvo?

Denuvo is an anti-piracy digital rights management (DRM) service some developers include in their games released for PC. Unlike what many people think, Denuvo isn’t a program that is installed separately when you install a game. Denuvo is actually integrated directly into games’ codes, so whenever the game is running, Denuvo is running too.

While Denuvo has proved effective in diminishing piracy and consequentially boosting sales as crackers usually have a hard time breaking the Denuvo protection, it’s an anti-piracy solution that many gamers absolutely despise for various reasons. The most notable of them is Denuvo hurts performance.

Denuvo says the anti-tamper protection doesn’t have a “negative impact” on the performance of a game, but tests made by the YouTube channel Overlord Gaming show Denuvo might increase loading times by up to 80 percent. Most notably, it was proved in 2021 that a pirated version of Resident Evil Village that removed Denuvo ran better than the original version.