Summary
Square Enix has officially removed Denuvo from the PC version ofFinal Fantasy 16around six months after its release on the platform. Denuvo is a digital rights management (DRM) system that is considered invasive by most gamers, so this is great news for anyone looking to playFinal Fantasy 16on PC in the future.
Final Fantasy 16was originally released for the PlayStation 5 in June 2023. The latest mainline entry in the popular Square Enix franchise was praised by critics and fans, withFinal Fantasy 16celebrating a solid reception, obtaining an average critic score of 88 onOpenCritic. Following this, in September 2024,Final Fantasy 16was finally released on PC, as well as its DLC.
Now, as spotted byDark Side of Gaming, Square Enix has finally removed Denuvo fromFinal Fantasy 16. The change comes around six months after the game’s release on Steam and the Epic Games Store, and it was a move expected by many, as Denuvo is generally only used to prevent a game from being cracked and pirated during the first months of its release. Square Enix made a similar decision to remove the controversial DRM after only a few months with other PC games such asThe Diofield Chronicles,Forspoken,Octopath Traveler, and others in the past. It’s currently unknown if this will impact the performance ofFinal Fantasy 16on PCin any way, though, as the game did not suffer from major stuttering issues before as long as gamers had a powerful GPU.
Gamers Can Now Play Final Fantasy 16 on PC Without Denuvo
While it’s possible that this will be one of the last changes that gamers will see made to the PC version ofFinal Fantasy 16, the game is currently expected to appear on another platform in the near future. Back in January, somerumors indicated thatFinal Fantasy 16could be released for the Xbox Series X/Ssoon. While the game was not announced in the Xbox Developer Direct as some rumors suggested, it’s still expected to be launched on the platform at some point.
Other good news for gamers who loved the design and story of this recent entry in theFinal Fantasyuniverse is thatFinal Fantasy 16’s director Hiroshi Takai is already working on a new project. According to reports, this unannounced project was recently started in 2025 as the developer finished his work onFF16at the end of 2024. However, there’s not much information about the specifics of the new game as of this writing, so fans can only speculate.
