BioWare released a new patch for Mass Effect Legendary Edition earlier this week that introduced a series of fixes and improvements for the remastered compilation of fan-favorite sci-fi RPGs. It appears that the patch notes neglected to mention something pretty major, however—according to changes documented on SteamDB, Mass Effect Legendary Edition’s latest update also resulted in the removal of a portion of its anti-piracy DRM, the infamous Denuvo. This is an interesting surprise, being that Mass Effect Legendary Edition didn’t release all that long ago. While it isn’t clear whether this will have any beneficial effects in regard to performance, the removal of Denuvo has decreased Mass Effect Legendary Edition’s overall file size by nearly 1 GB.
- Modified file – Game/ME1/Binaries/Win64/MassEffect1.exe (-299.86 MiB)
- Modified file – Game/ME2/Binaries/Win64/MassEffect2.exe (-287.79 MiB)
- Modified file – Game/ME3/Binaries/Win64/MassEffect3.exe (-312.45 MiB)
This was later confirmed by multiple users with the Protection iD software checker. As you can see, the only remaining “DRM” was the EA DRM Stub Loader. However, this is a pretty basic level of protection, and between me going to bed and getting up this morning, that’s already been bypassed.
Sources: SteamDB, r/CrackWatch, r/pcgaming, eTeknix