EA’s plan to revive Immortals of Aveum by removing this one feature failed, having little to no significant impact on players or performance.

Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter game developed by Ascendant Studios. The game was released back in August of 2023 for Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. Although the title was made using the newest features of Unreal Engine 5, the game sold poorly with less than 100 players, playing the game right now.

Immortals of Aveum failed horribly when it was launched | Image Credits: Electronic Arts

Immortals of Aveum was published by Electronic Arts, the same publisher that is notorious for their use of Denuvo across several major titles. But what is Denuvo and why did they remove it? Let’s find out.

Why did Immortals of Aveum fail?

EA spent $40 million on marketing the game | Image Credits: Electronic Arts

Immortals of Aveum was a massive failure from the beginning. The magic first-person shooter was the debut game of Ascendant Studios and had failed to gain any lasting impressions on players. In a recent interview between an anonymous former employee of Ascendent Studios and IGN, he revealed how the developer studio had spent around $125 million for the whole game.

At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project. The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution.

The former developer also mentioned how the game was a bad idea in the current game market and had resulted in layoffs affecting more than 50% of the company’s employees. After the game’s massive failure, EA has taken several steps to keep it relevant.

Four months after the game’s release, it received a significant price cut on Microsoft’s online store, where players could purchase the deluxe edition for just $7.99 instead of the usual $79.99 if they have an Xbox game pass. Although the $7.99 sale is no longer available, the game remains discounted with the deluxe edition selling for $31.99.

Immortals of Aveum has continued to receive new updates, including bug fixes and new features such as HDR. Another step that EA took to sustain the interest of the players towards the game was the removal of Denuvo anti-tamper from it.

It’s too late to remove Denuvo at this point

Removal of Denuvo barely made any difference | Image Credits: Electronic Arts

Denuvo anti-tamper DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a feature in modern video games that is designed to prevent piracy of games. It makes the titles significantly harder for hackers to crack and distribute illegally. The feature is generally considered controversial because of its high system resource demands often causing performance issues, increased CPU usage, and excessive background processes that negatively impact gameplay.

EA has finally removed the Denuvo anti-tamper feature from Immortals of Aveum and it took them more than a year and a half to do it. Many players had hoped that the removal of Denuvo would give the game a performance boost. However, despite the anti-tamper feature being removed, the game had barely any effect on its performance, sales, or player count.

While the removal of Denuvo by EA is sort of a positive step for gamers, it’s like watering a dead tree. It does very little to revive the game’s relevance. Taking any step to revitalize a title nearly two years of being dead after its release is just bad judgment on EA’s part.