Monster Hunter Rise Update Adds Controversial Feature

22.01.2024 - 17:03 / gamerant.com / Dominik Bo

The latest Monster Hunter Rise update has added Enigma DRM to the game, which seemingly broke its Steam Deck compatibility. Arriving mere months ahead of the three-year anniversary of Monster Hunter Rise's critically acclaimed release, the game's newest PC patch also raised some other concerns among the fandom.

The PC port of Capcom's hit ARPG originally reached Steam in January 2022. That version of the game launched with Denuvo Anti Tamper, which has long been among the most widespread DRM solutions in the gaming sphere. While a vocal portion of the fandom bemoaned the game's usage of Denuvo, its inclusion was far from unprecedented; the PC port of Monster Hunter World also launched with Denuvo, as did plenty of other Capcom games in recent years.

The situation with Monster Hunter Rise's DRM got more complicated on January 22, when its PC port received its latest update. Identified by version number 16.0.2, the new patch seemingly removed Denuvo from the game, but only to replace it with a competing solution in the form of The Enigma Protector. The change was first spotted by Twitter user DakaRFT, who found traces of the new DRM software by inspecting the Monster Hunter Rise 16.0.2 executable with a hex editor.

First released in 2004, The Enigma Protector is a digital rights management solution designed specifically for licensing Windows software, which makes it inherently incompatible with Linux. Since the SteamOS is based on the Arch Linux distro, this DRM switch broke Monster Hunter Rise's Steam Deck support. Numerous players have already attested to that issue, reporting that the game no longer works on Valve's handheld console following the 16.0.2 update.

Capcom, for its part, acknowledged the reports within hours of the new patch going live, stating that its team is currently investigating the Steam Deck compatibility issues. The developer also apologized for any inconveniences resulting from the situation. This is not the first controversial implementation of Enigma that Capcom performed since the turn of the year; a similar move recently led to Resident Evil: Revelations getting review-bombed 11 years after launch.

A number of fans have already taken to social media to express their disappointment with the contents of the latest Monster Hunter Rise update. Specifically, some of them argued that Capcom should be removing the DRM shackles from a three-year-old game instead of replacing them with an even more restrictive solution. On a brighter note, popular Capcom modder FluffyQuack has reported that the transition to Enigma did not break the game's invalidation-style and PAK mods.

There have been reports of the game not running on Steam Deck after updating to Ver.16.0.2.0. The dev team is currently