Denuvo Anti-Cheat Trial Feedback
If you are on Steam, please share your feedback here about your experience with the Denuvo Anti-Cheat Trial.
Thank you!
If you are on Steam, please share your feedback here about your experience with the Denuvo Anti-Cheat Trial.
Thank you!
Read THIS post.
Tldr: This is an archived version of the DBD forum, it has all posts, comments and media. The archived data will be published at the end of October. This site is not in any way affiliated with or endorsed by Behaviour Interactive.
Comments
I really don't understand why Denuvo Anti-Cheat is being added to Dead by Daylight.
Since it was introduced, the game has been running noticeably worse for me, with lag and performance issues. Friends of mine are having an even worse experience — they are continuously getting disconnected from matches and receiving bans because of those disconnects.
The game runs so badly for some of them that it's genuinely unplayable.
Please reconsider using Denuvo Anti-Cheat. Whatever benefits it provides aren't worth making the game perform worse and causing legitimate players to get disconnected and punished for it.
Is there any indication on when this trial is ending? 2v8 is all but unplayable to me. I also submitted a support ticket for transparency's sake. Please be forthcoming with this, I really would just like to play the game.
The Light lives in all places, in all things. You can block it, even try to trap it, but the Light will find its way.
We are the last
Children of the cataclysm
Awoken in a silent prison
Out into the great collapse we ride
We are the last
Shadows of a ravaged paradise
Sanctuary born of sacrifice
Supernova dying stars collide
Eyes up Guardian, your Special in this Universe, don't let anyone take your Light from You, don't let the Darkness win, I need You here with Me
Since the release of this, my game has been unplayable on keyboard and mouse. I run and my character runs for 5+ seconds after I've already changed keys or stopped pressing W. There's a huge, noticeable delay and luckily I have a controller but game quality has dramatically reduced for me since I haven't used a controller in years. With how many people are experiencing this, it feels like there definitely needs to be a fix, change, or at least some kind of transparency on when this trial is over.
I am a Veteran player since 2016 and I have multiple things to say:
Personally, I haven't experienced any issues with Denuvo… so far. My friend, however did have massive lag spikes and his CPU would get pinned at 100% usage, both of which he didn't have before, likely due to Denuvo.
That said, I think it is incredibly outrageous to install kernel-level AC onto users computers when cheating reports go unchecked, no server-side heuristics or watchers are applied AT ALL to stop speedhackers or teleporters from doing whatever they want and not to mention the incredible security risk of installing software with Ring 0 rights to watch over any process running on the device - which is a massive, unacceptable overreach.
Instead, BHVR does what they always do: choose the easiest way out, slap a bandaid over it and make their users pay for their laziness:
-Oh, your operating system got corrupted because of our new Anti-Cheat? At least you will see 5% less speedhackers who will find a way to circumvent it anyway!
-We are too lazy to optimize our game properly? Let's sneakily install a software onto your PC which will monitor anything and everything happening on your PC and on top of that will increase the load on your hardware even more!
I do not care how much they want to defend this, but in my eyes, you cannot use blatant laziness and possible incompetence as an excuse to sneak drivers onto people's devices that - when inevitably breached - will pose an insane security risk without you even knowing, not to mention the privacy issues this causes by giving a random company full and utter control to see what processes are doing what.
I hope they see this and end this trial right then and there without giving Denuvo - or any Kernel-level anti-cheat - any chance ever again. If they wanted to make their game more fair and protect themselves again cheaters, they'd do so by implementing watchdogs and safeguards on their own servers instead of your PCs and most of all: take your reports seriously instead of letting obvious cheaters do their thing for weeks on end without getting banned.
Until they end this trial and completely and permanently remove Denuvo from the game, I will join in the boycott of playing this game to send a message - and if you value your privacy and security, you should too.
Dead by Daylight is so laggy now for half of the steam playerbase ever since BHVR added their new anti-cheat, i can't go one match on either killer or survivor without having massive lag spikes and crashes to the point where i just want to play something else, this needs to be fixed ASAP otherwise i don't see the point in playing Dead by Daylight for a while.
I dont know if its the trial Anti-cheat at work, but I cant play a single game as either killer or survivor.
I use Keyboard/Mouse and there is this insane input lag when I use the directional keys. If I press a directional key for a few seconds and let go, the character will wander in that direction for the next few seconds after I had already let go of the key.
At first I thought it was a keyboard issue, so I switched out the keyboard with a spare, but the issue continued.
Restarting my PC didnt help, and reinstalling didnt help either. In its current state, the game is unplayable for me.
for a feedback thread the devs are oddly not present, almost like our feedback doesn’t matter.
For me, like many others, the game is unplayably laggy. If you decide to keep this, you are going to lose half your playbase going by steam numbers.
What numbers? Player ammounts are quite static.
This can't be serious, right? You do NOT believe that all these reports about performance issues and crashes, which seem to have started at the exact time of the Denuvo anti-cheat trial update, are connected in any way?
I'm also experiencing massive lag spikes which happen randomly, roughly every 10 minutes (so typically once or twice per match), and which freeze the screen for about one second. Sometimes the audio is also completely interrupted during these lag spikes. It can also happen while being in the menu, not only during a match.
Furthermore my game did crash 2 times during roughly 10 hours playtime since the update last week, and before the update the game basically never crashed on my computer. So maybe it's not as terrible for me as in many of the reports from other people here and on the Steam forum, but I'm still kind of scared to start the game because I fear that whatever causes these lag spikes and crashes might not be so good for my computer hardware.
Is there any estimated date when the Denuvo anti-cheat trial is going to end?
I have not experienced any lagging or frame drop issues until patch 10.1.2 - some 2v8 killer games were noticeably laggy with frame drops.
Also since the Denuvo trial, CPU usage is consistently about 15-20% higher than normal. My computer almost can't handle it.
Has there been any resolution for those of us having this problem? I read all 4 pages in this forum and did not find a fix. I have not been able to launch the game since the trial started 9/2/26. I already submitted a support request and never heard back. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game, restarted my computer, uninstalled and reinstalled Denuvo. From the header on the second popup, it appears Easy Anti-Cheat is still running and is blocking Denuvo. Many people are posting about this on the subreddit as well.
already get Something Went Wrong twice, this is annoying, i need to make killer 2v8 content and have to deal with this again, come on, before using denuvo this kind of thing never happened
An Appeal to the Community and Management: Consumer Misdirection and Accountability
The ongoing silence regarding the Denuvo trial since September 2nd is unacceptable. A massive portion of the of the PC community (across Windows, Linux, and Steam Deck) is being actively excluded from the highly anticipated 2v8 event, timed rifts, and code redemptions due to severe system collapses (100% CPU loads, WASD input drift, and kernel crashes). Trust has been completely breached.
Instead of clear communication, we are met with a wall of silence. The platform population is shifting to other games, while new players continue to fall into this technical trap because Denuvo is still not disclosed on the official Steam store page. This crosses the line into consumer misdirection.
Furthermore, Denuvo’s own documentation reveals that once the trial ends, the driver is merely deactivated server-side, leaving obsolete kernel files as "corrupt debris" on our private operating systems. We are forced to manually clean up BHVR’s software experiments ourselves just to maintain our PC stability.
We demand:
An official, transparent end date for this trial.
A full compensation package for all locked-out players regarding missed rift progress and event rewards.
Universal server-side anti-cheat validation instead of invasive ring-0 software that jeopardizes end-user hardware.
Fellow players, know your rights. Do not let your system stability be exploited for corporate telemetry without transparency!
I have input lag in some of my games but the worst problem of all for me is higher and inconsistent ping. NOTHING changed with my connection otherwise but I've had 15 - 20 higher baseline ping (from 70 to 80 - 90) with additional spikes going up into the 100 - 110. Thanks a lot, I feel much safer from hackers with 2 anti cheat software running at the same time.
This is my case as well. I can handle the occasional cheater, but having 10 - 20 higher ping and more unstable as well feels horrible.
Running this test while in the middle of a Rift and a new paid DLC was a terrible idea.
I seriously want compensation for paying for access to the Rift and then suddenly being denied access, because I refuse to take part in your short-sighted test that could impact my PCs performance.
Either elongate the Rift or finish filling it out for me. I will not cross-play to another platform that is full of cheaters to have access to the game. Especially, when you're running the test only on one platform that isn't even notoriously known for being part of the cheating epidemic.
Next time, think this through more soundly, and have nothing that would impact players paid experiences interrupted before you suddenly decide it will lock them out of playing.
I couldn't play the game for almost a week (September 3rd to September 8th) because it simply wouldn't turn on and would freeze/brick my entire PC.
I don't know what changed, if anything, but my game finally opened for me yesterday, but I think I was better off NOT being able to play because I'm experiencing so many issues that the game is pretty much unplayable for me anyway.
Input lag that gets me stuck in one place/walking into walls/having to fight the camera to the point where it makes me feel sick. The chase music doesn't play when I'm being chased, and one of the two killers in 2v8 is always t-posing/floating at least on my end (also with no terror radius no matter the class). Sometimes my skill checks are invisible so I can't do anything worthwhile. Any time I try to open a chest to look for the salt I need to complete the quest, my character cancels the interaction. And this is all me just playing survivor. I don't even want to KNOW what bugs are waiting for me on the killer side.
Forget me trying to complete all the milestone quests, I'll be lucky if I can complete the 2v8 ones. Actually, I'll be lucky if this invasive testing doesn't blow up my whole computer.
I don't want to be that person, but I'll take the 2 million bloodpoints I would have otherwise earned from my grades as compensation, thanks. Since I lost an entire week's worth of time being unable to open the game I paid for. And the 2v8 rewards. And whatever the final bloodpoint total is for all the milestone quests since I can't finish those, either.
sorry, but this anticheat is absolute garbage. i have to be straight forward in what i'm about to say.
denuvo has a recorded, lengthy history of causing severe performance issues and instability much like every other stupid anticheat. i'm having to fight with my inputs the entire time i'm playing killer because keystrokes are being locked as well as significant mouse delays.
it is also kernel-level which is an invasion of my privacy, as well as making me, the end user, be very vulnerable to any sort of uncontrolled modifications or system-breaking bugs that can be published by the developers that i was not even given the opportunity to opt out of because this was forced upon users as part of a "live trial" of a product i purchased a license for. because its kernel-level, it's still easy to bypass much like EAC is through poisoned drivers, virtualization, and external devices attached to memory. another buggy, third-party software is NOT going to stop this problem. if you're going to investigate DRM and anti-cheat methods, at least look at the game itself and stop relying on third-party solutions to remedy a problem that can be heavily mitigated at the source. software is supposed to be a supplement, not an end-all-be-all.
i will repeat: please stop relying on anticheat to do everything for you. stop invading my privacy. stop harming the user experience. stop involving your paying players in this dumb arms race that gets more unstable and invasive by the minute. stop buying into the sales pitches that these third parties are giving you, because majority of it is exaggerated in order to secure your signature.
from a sys admin's perspective, your focus needs to be on what information your server is checking and accepting, while your clients needs to have limited exposure in what data can be sent and received. focus on limiting the attack surface.
edit: i forgot to include my second thought on why this is something that's only targeted towards steam players, when a good majority of cheaters come from windows and epic games platforms. why are steam players the only group being targeted for this "test"? this completely defeats the purpose of testing the anticheat when you're not even testing it on the correct audience. cheaters do exist on steam, but it's nowhere near as bad as the amount of bot-created accounts that were made on epic. most of the cheating i've seen done on steam was injected accounts, which you clearly prioritized first.
I just watched some videos on YouTube showing how cheaters have absolutely no trouble despite Denuvo: The Youtuber was playing as Killer, and in every match there was one Cheater. Everytime they teleport away, run faster, fly, become invulnerable while working on generators, and can't be pulled out of lockers…. and one of them even wrote in the end-game chat, "Don't rely on the new anti-cheat."
Wow, just wow… I simply have no words left for this disaster
I have crashed 6 times in the last four hours of playing the game. 2 of the times, it has caused my entire computer to crash. My matchmaking bans are increasing beyond what they have ever been to. I've at most had 5 minutes from time to time. I would rather deal with cheaters than this. It's bad for my computer and it make the game unplayable.
honestly, i don't mind if the developers want to test new anti-cheats, but, honestly, this test is absolute garbage, i can't even get into the game because i haven't figured out how fix this, i have tried the three methods mentioned many times but they didn't work, i hope this test ends as soon as possible before 2v8 ends, or better the next few days
cant even play. i have done all of its "suggestions" and still wont work. this is so dumb. fix it
haha same, the three things they told were not all useful
I've found how to launch DBD without denuvo error.
At first, I tried anything as re-boot, install & uninstall denuvo anti-cheat.
Find other games using denuvo anti-cheat (I'm Korean and there is 'Arcraiders' of Nexon.
Launch the one and launch Dead by Daylight. (running both of them)
You'll be able to play DBD
Depending on Proton Logs it looks like i got now choosen to test the denuvo anti cheat. On Linux. Which is instantly crashing.
When you are going to drop support for linux somehow, i will create a refund ticket on steam and ask a refund for all DLCs and the game. And I bought every DLC on release date since 2016. And I hope every one else with the drop of linux support will follow me.
too much trouble, although there's no harm in trying
Its been working fine for me on liunx so I dont think its just blocked on linux. (Fedora / bazzaite)
Im running using forced proton experimental. I saw someone had to do some launch options on protondb to get working.
Denuvo isnt anywhere near better than EAC. All this misinformation about TPM 2.0 claiming it harvests data at the kernel level is driving me absolutely nuts. its total BS.. and simply not true. EAC anti cheat already runs at the kernel level even without TPM 2.0.
And do you know why the cheater problem never stops? Because developers solely rely on software instead of motherboard security features: TPM 2.0 for permanent HWID bans, and HVCI plus IOMMU against ESP wallhacks, etc. These are hardware features built directly into the motherboard that you cant just spoof on the fly, but people keep missing the point.
I wrote a full technical proposal outlining how Behaviour can actually fix this using EACs native hardware security stack:
How to completely remove Denuvo driver debris:
Step 1: Official Uninstallation via Game Folder
Step 2: Wipe the remaining Denuvo Folder
Step 3: Burn hidden Kernel remnants via CMD
sc stop dacsvc
sc delete dacsvc
del /f /q %WinDir%\System32\drivers\dac.sys
del /f /q %WinDir%\System32\drivers\denuvo-anti-cheat.sys
(Note: If Windows displays "Error 1060" or "File not found", that is great news! It means Step 1 already automatically removed the service and the driver files.)
Step 4: Clear the GPU DirectX Shader Cache
Note on Hardware & Linux: This guide works universally for all Windows PCs (regardless of whether you use NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel). If you are on Linux or Steam Deck, your system handles kernel drivers differently, meaning a standard Steam uninstallation usually clears the debris automatically. If you are still experiencing system issues under Linux, simply copy-paste your error log into ChatGPT or Google Assistant – AI tools are incredibly efficient at finding the exact terminal commands for your specific distro, just like I did to build this guide
If your system has been damaged by Denuvo, you can do the following:
How to create your MSinfo.nfo file:
If support asks for your system diagnostic file (MSInfo32), but your PC instantly freezes or crashes while trying to save it, the kernel anti-cheat is actively blocking Windows from reading its own hardware info.
How to generate the file correctly and get AI support:
SPECIAL STEP: What to do if your PC crashes while saving MSInfo?
Scan & Repair System Files (sfc /scannow)
If the game blocks you with an error message like "Untrusted system file", your first step should be to check and repair your Windows system files.
How to run the scan:
text
sfc /scannow
CRUCIAL WARNING (The Update Trap):
If you have manually blocked your Windows Updates in the Registry (like many of us do), this scan will silently overwrite your blocks and reactivate the Windows Update servers in the background!
To protect your system right after the scan finishes, you MUST enter this command into the CMD and press Enter:
text
sc config wuauserv start= disabled
Afterwards, check your Control Panel under Programs and Features to make sure no new Windows Update (like KB5001716) sneaked in. If it did: Uninstall it!