In an unexpected twist, the developers of Stellar Blade claim that the game actually performs better on PC with the infamous DRM protection Denuvo enabled. This according to official tests they had conducted where the game achieves an average frame rate of 59.9 FPS both with and without Denuvo.
With the protection disabled, however, the lowest dips become more noticeable and the game can drop as low as 48.6 FPS, which can be compared to Denuvo turned on where Stellar Blade never drops below 58.2 FPS. On X, Shift Up writes the following:
“The DRM has been tuned to maintain the same average frame rate, with even higher minimum frames in some cases.”
This is something Shift Up explains by saying that Denuvo has been optimised to not only protect the game from piracy, but also to help provide more stable performance, something that goes against the general perception of the protection that is notorious among PC gamers.
Is Denuvo protection something that makes you want to skip the PC version of Stellar Blade?