007 First Light has Denuvo DRM added just before launch - and a pre-order cancelling rebellion is underway

007 First Light is a keenly awaited release, but the reception around the game just turned stormier with the news that it's going the Denuvo route.

In a last-minute revelation on the game's Steam page - well, technically a last-week revelation, as 007 First Light is out on May 27, but you get the point - the developer IO Interactive added: "Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-Tamper."

To say that hasn't gone down well in some quarters is an understatement, although it's not entirely surprising in that there's been something of a trend of waiting until very near launch before letting gamers know that Denuvo is going to be implemented with a game. (Crimson Desert being a notable example in recent times).

There are quite a number of annoyed people who pre-ordered 007 First Light and are now saying that they are going to cancel.

The other point of frustration here is that Denuvo is hardly watertight against piracy at the moment, given the situation with hypervisor-based bypasses (which we've covered before).

As one Redditor observed:

"All this does is affect paying customers at this point now that every game has Denuvo bypassed within 24 hours with hypervisor. Anyone who wants to pirate this can do so within 1 day, anyone who wants to buy it now has to deal with DRM."

On the other side of the coin, cracking a game with such a bypass method is putting the security of your PC at risk - but that won't stop a good many folks from the temptation of piracy, no doubt. It's also true that Irdeto, which owns Denuvo, is working on countermeasures to tackle these bypasses.

The main worry for PC gamers with Denuvo - aside from potential issues around security and privacy - is that it'll interfere with performance. As someone else on the above Reddit thread puts it, it's an "FPS killer".