Yes, Death Stranding will use Denuvo on PC – No, it won’t have a “1 machine activation limit”

Death Stranding’s PC release date was revealed earlier today, and with that announcement also came confirmation that the game would use Denovo on PC. 

Denuvo isn’t uncommon on PC, and while we don’t like the technology (as it prevents timely benchmarking), we won’t see it as the game killer which many claim it to be. 

When Death Stranding’s Steam listing was updated earlier today, users of the Steam Forums were shocked to discover that the game “incorporates [the] 3rd-party DRM: Denovo” with a “1 machine activation limit”. This listing, understandably, caused fans of the game to take their dissatisfaction to Death Stranding’s section of Steam’s forums, asking 505 Games (the publisher of Death Stranding’s PC version) and Kojima Productions for a detailed explanation. 

If true, this “1 machine activation limit” would prevent PC gamers from upgrading their hardware, as doing so would stop the game from working on any new systems. When it comes to Denuvo, any hardware change can create a new system, be it a GPU change, a CPU swap or an adjustment to your CPU’s core count settings in your BIOS. This would be a disaster for PC gamers, especially for a £54.99 game. 

505 Games quickly responded to these concerns by editing the Steam listing of Death Stranding to remove the “1 machine activation limit” and state that the “1 machine activation limit was a store listing error and has now been corrected.” This statement has been made on Twitter and Death Stranding’s Steam Forum. 

We expect Death Stranding to feature Denuvo’s standard activation limit, which allows a specific number of hardware changes within a given timeframe. Exceeding these limits will lock players out of their copy of a game for 24 hours, though it is worth noting that consumers are unlikely ever to be impacted by this limitation. We frequently hit this limit when benchmarking PC games, but only after 6 or more so GPU changes (it varies from game to game).