After a decade, Square Enix removes Denuvo from Just Cause 3

Just Cause 3 has received its first PC update in over nine years

Over a decade after the game’s launch, Square Enix has released a new PC update for Just Cause 3 to remove Denuvo from the game. This was an undocumented change to Just Cause 3. However, change logs on SteamDB confirm that significant changes have been made to the game’s exe file. This file is now 73MB smaller. This kind of change is common when Denuvo is removed from a PC game.

Despite its age, Just Cause 3 still has a notable playerbase on PC. Every day, the game still peaks at around 1,000 players. That’s much higher than its sequel, Just Cause 4.

Why do PC gamers hate Denuvo?

Denuvo is a controversial anti-tamper technology designed to prevent piracy of PC games. While preventing piracy is beneficial for developers, Denuvo’s technology has been found to negatively affect game performance. Additionally, Denuvo also interferes with the modding of many games, another factor that makes the technology unpopular amongst PC gamers. Most conversations about Denuvo online involve PC gamers expressing their dislike of the anti-tamper technology. With this in mind, we can see why removing Denuvo’s tech from games is seen as a popular move.

Has removing Denuvo boosted the PC performance of Just Cause 3?

So far, there have been no reports of notable performance gains as a result of the game’s Denuvo removing update. Sadly, we do not have pre-patch performance data for this game, which prevents us from doing any comparative testing.

You can join the discussion on Denuvo getting removed from Just Cause 3 on the OC3D Forums.