V2 launches on PC with Denuvo or an equivalent anti-tamper provider, subject to publisher security sign-off and platform certification. The game relies on anti-cheat, entitlement, progression, and live balance hotfix services even for single-player profiles, so a DRM-free single-player SKU is excluded for launch.
Trade-Off#
The launch DRM protects first-window revenue, licensed roster obligations, competitive asset integrity, and anti-cheat trust. The trade-off is startup overhead, compatibility risk, support burden, and player sentiment. Engineering must keep the DRM integration isolated from deterministic simulation and rollback code paths, and QA must include low-end CPU, handheld PC, offline boot, sleep/wake, and crash-recovery coverage.
Removal Plan#
The release plan includes a 6-12 month removal review. Removal can proceed only after publishing, security, platform, legal, and fair-play sign-off confirms that launch-window piracy risk, licensed-content exposure, and anti-cheat coupling no longer require PC anti-tamper at boot.
Measurement Guardrail#
DRM A/B testing for sales/piracy impact can proceed only with aggregate storefront sales cohorts, privacy-safe piracy-rate proxy telemetry, legal privacy review, publishing approval, security review, and a rollback runbook. Raw account identifiers, raw PII export, and automated penalties are forbidden.
Safe-Boot Behavior#
Cooked assets are integrity-checked at boot. A failed integrity check enters safe-boot mode: offline-only, no ranked access, no online progression grants, and a reinstall or verified repair is required before normal online play resumes. Console builds rely on platform-native anti-piracy in addition to the same cooked-asset integrity gate.