Resident Evil 4 PC Performance Hit: Enigma DRM Update to Blame – Digital Foundry

A recent update to Resident Evil 4 on PC has resulted in a significant performance drop, according to testing by Digital Foundry. The core issue stems from a change in the game’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) system.

Digital Foundry’s team conducted comparative tests between the current and previous versions of the game. The key difference lies in the encryption technology used: Resident Evil 4 previously utilized Denuvo DRM, which has now been replaced with Enigma Protector DRM in the latest update. This new encryption technology is causing a substantial bottleneck on CPU performance, with Digital Foundry reporting a CPU processing time loss of nearly 2ms in certain test scenarios.

In testing environments where the CPU is the primary limiting factor, this change led to a dramatic decrease in game frame rates, dropping from 217fps to 144fps. The performance slowdown may be less noticeable, or even undetectable, for players running the game in GPU-bound scenarios or where game AI processing demands are low. Nevertheless, this represents a negative case where an official update has altered a product’s performance years after its release without providing tangible benefits to players.

Digital Foundry speculates that Capcom may be using existing products to test different versions of DRM systems, a practice that ultimately impacts the player experience. The history of the Resident Evil series on PC supports this theory, as both Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil Village had Denuvo Anti-Tamper services removed several months after launch. Capcom’s ninth mainline installment, Resident Evil: Revelations, slated for release later this month, is currently expected to ship with Denuvo DRM. Resident Evil 4’s adoption of Enigma Protector appears to be Capcom evaluating performance for future products.

Resident Evil: Revelations, the latest entry in the long-running survival horror franchise, is scheduled to launch in late February 2026. The game aims to break new ground for the series with a dual-protagonist mechanic and the introduction of “talking zombies.”

參考資料