On January 30th, 2019 there was an update over on the SteamDB entry for the base version of Hitman 2 from IO Interactive and Warner Bros., which indicated that the Denuvo anti-tamper DRM had been removed from the Steam version of the game.

This comes three months after the game’s release back in November of 2018.

The update was actually spotted by a Steam community group known as Denuvo Games.

In the post it’s mentioned that so far the DRM from the base version of Hitman 2 has been removed. They also note that some games – especially the ones from Ubisoft – sometimes have multiple entries on Steam and will sometimes contain different content per each iteration, writing…

”Denuvo has been removed from Hitman 2. I will keep an eye on it and tell you if they add it back. More and more games are getting Denuvo removed, which is good news. Even EA removed it from 2 games.

 

“Watch out for Ubisoft though, they have between 3 and 6 versions for their games, preorder exclusives, Denuvo in almost all games, microtransactions in most of their games, including boosters, in single player games I might add. They have never removed Denuvo from a game.”

It’s true that some games have multiple entries on the Steam database, and in the case of Hitman 2, the Gold Edition doesn’t make any mention about Denuvo being removed from the SteamDB. The same also applies to the Silver Edtiion of the game, which also makes no mention of Denuvo being carved out of the game if you check the SteamDB history.

Only the base game has had Denuvo’s DRM removed.

Surprisingly Yakuza Kiwami also had Denuvo removed ahead of its release, but some people think that Sega may actually re-implement the DRM for the actual release of the game. So that’s worth keeping an eye on.

For now, though, Hitman 2 is Denuvo-free.

The game is currently available on the Steam store for $59.99.

(Thanks for the news tip Dynasty)