Most gamers have a fractious relationship with DRM. Sometimes it doesn't have much of an impact on the game, but more often than not, it can lead to a worse experience than those who pirated the game and don't need to have anything to do with the checks and balances the DRM puts in place. The system employed in Assassin's Creed: Origins though is being blamed for much more than that. Its combination of Denuvo and VMProtect is being blamed for causing player CPUs to run at full tilt when not required by the game.
This has been highlighted by a few Steam reviews and discussions, suggesting that it doesn't matter what graphics card you're running, sometimes the CPU usage spikes and if you don't have enough to handle it, that causes big frame rate drops. One user was even running a 1080Ti with a Core i7 CPU and it still made no difference.
The culprit being blamed right now is the double dose of DRM (thanks Hexus). Ubisoft purportedly tacked VMProtect on top of Denuvo in a desperate effort to stop the game being cracked shortly after release. That could have as much as 30-40 percent impact on game performance, we're told.
This doesn't appear to be something that affects every user, and many report having a great time with the game. Others have suggested it's a bit dull and that the combat has been muted. Time will tell whether these issues persist, as typically anti-tamper DRM like Denuvo is removed a few weeks after a game's debut.
Have you run into performance issues trying to run Origins?
