Denuvo May Have Messed Up Total War: Warhammer 3's Optimization

Reviewers praised Total War: Warhammer III for its many improvements and fixes, but not for the outdated engine and visuals, as some journalists claimed. Unfortunately, one would be wrong if, after hearing these accusations, would expect a game that does not put a strain on the computer. Players report that after release the game runs much worse than during the reviewer tests.

Denuvo Messed Up Total War: Warhammer 3?

If you take a peek at Steam, currently the third part of the Total War: Warhammer series has only 59% positive reviews out of more than 8 thousand user ratings. This is partly due to the Chinese players who launched a review bombing compaign - in short - matters unrelated to the quality of the game itself.

However, after reading reviews on Steam and the threads on various social networks you can see that the poor optimization did its part. Complaints about the game's performance appear quite often, even in positive reviews.

1. Players report that even very powerful rigs have trouble maintaining stable 60 or even 50 fps with high graphics settings enabled.
2. Some players also report frequent crashing.
3. There are also those who reported no problems even on weaker hardware. In fact, they claim that Total War: Warhammer III works much better for them than the previous game..
4. Problems with TW: Warhammer 3 were supposed to appear after the day 1 update, which introduced the Denuvo DRM. This was confirmed by PC Invasion - editorial tests show that the game runs between 21 and 53% worse than when the staff reviewed the game a few days ago.

Comparison of Total War: Warhammer 3 animation fluidity before and after the release. Source: PC Invasion.

For now, it's not entirely certain that Denuvo is the culprit, but it wouldn't be the first time that the security feature has hurt honest buyers. Recently, players complained about the implementation of this technology in Dying Light 2 and problems with Denuvo servers, and in earlier years one or another title was supposed to run worse because of this DRM.

Total War: Warhammer 3 Optimization Fixes Inbound

Whatever the reason for the problems with Total War: Warhammer III, Creative Assembly has confirmed that optimization and stability fixes are a priority for the team and should be coming soon. However, no exact dates were given.

For now, players must use temporary solutions to improve performance or at least reduce the load on the PC. These were shared by gamers on Steam's forum and social networks.

1. Changing more demanding settings (including shadow and terrain detail) from ultra to medium.
2. Updating GPU drivers to the latest version.
3. Setting an fps cap in the GPU control panel and, in some cases, disabling V-Sync (some players report that this feature can remain active despite disabling it in the game settings).
4. Right-click on Total War: Warhammer III in the game collection menu of Steam, select "Properties" and in the "Boot Options" section type "-dx11" (without the quotes). Note: this method does not work for everyone.