Hollow Knight Silksong, a game we’ve all been waiting for, has a lot of people talking about whether it will use Denuvo DRM. There have been a ton of claims and rumors, especially on places like Reddit, that Denuvo is going to be in the PC version.
This has the gaming community worried about how Denuvo might affect the game’s performance, which is a known issue with other titles. However, there’s a lot more to Denuvo than you think, especially how it relates to Hollow Knight Silksong.
Hollow Knight Silksong – Does It Use Denuvo Protection?
Hollow Knight Silksong will not use Denuvo protection on release. For a lot of us, Denuvo is a huge red flag because of its history of causing problems like slower loading times, frame rate drops, and putting extra strain on your CPU and storage.
While the people who make Denuvo claim it doesn’t have any noticeable effect on performance, there’s plenty of evidence from other games, including benchmarks and even some developer admissions, that says otherwise. To be fair, some developers have even removed Denuvo from their games after launch and seen a major boost in performance. This is why a lot of Silksong fans are worried—they just want a smooth, uncompromised experience.
However, there’s a key piece of information that might calm some of these fears: it looks like Silksong is also coming to GOG. As we know, GOG is famous for its DRM-free policy, which means any game released there typically doesn’t have anti-piracy software like Denuvo.
Why didn’t Silksong use Denuvo?
Silksong backed out of using Denuvo at the last minute. There was no reasoning given as to why. How long Denuvo stays in games really depends on how game developers use it. The whole idea is to get a “longest crack-free release window” to encourage people to buy the game early instead of pirating it. This is super important right after a game launches, when sales are at their highest.
With Silksong being confirmed for GOG, a platform that’s all about being DRM-free, it’s totally possible that if Denuvo is used on the PC version, it might just be a temporary thing. Developers have to weigh the anti-piracy benefits against the potential backlash from the community over performance issues and needing to be online.
If the game follows the same pattern as others that have had Denuvo removed post-launch, it suggests the developers might decide it’s not needed once the first sales rush is over and the game has been cracked. The final decision on how long Denuvo would stick around in Silksong would depend on the developers’ judgment, what the community says, and the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Denuvo and crackers.
Still, having a DRM-free version on GOG might just influence the whole strategy and lead to Denuvo being removed from other platforms a lot sooner than it would in games without that kind of alternative. Basically, we’ll have to wait and see. There are other games that questioned using Denuvo like Cronos: The New Dawn, but every developer needs to make its own decisions.
What Anti-Piracy Measures Does Hollow Knight Silksong Use?
Hollow Knight: Silksong does not have any DRM in GOG and no protection for Steam. Denuvo is a digital rights management solution that gets baked right into a game’s code, so it’s not a separate program you install. Its whole job is to stop people from “cracking” the game’s copy protection to distribute it illegally.
We’ve seen developers remove Denuvo after a game’s launch, and sometimes the performance improves by as much as 50%, which just adds fuel to the fire. It has even made games temporarily unplayable, like when it caused problems with Intel’s 12th-generation processors. When we wonder if games like Lost Soul Aside use Denuvo, it’s not hard to wonder why Silksong uses it.
Despite all the bad press, the gaming industry keeps using Denuvo because it’s so good at delaying cracks, especially during the critical launch period. Some games have been protected for months, but Denuvo isn’t a silver bullet—most titles are eventually cracked. For example, Black Myth: Wukong, another big release, also uses Denuvo and is still uncracked, which shows it can be effective.
To be fair, though, Denuvo is also expensive for developers, which adds to the overall cost of making a game. Ultimately, the biggest issue is that legitimate customers feel punished by the potential performance hit, while pirates usually find a way around it anyway. For Silksong, not adding Denuvo is a calculated move by the developers to protect their investment during launch.
