I feel like this is just a new cash grab technique, and it’s actually pretty smart. The audience of people who will buy immediately despite DRM will do their thing, first wave of money complete. Over the next few years, trickle in more cash through steam sales. Once that well dries, get one more wave of cash by removing DRM, which appeases the audience that abstained the whole time, collecting their cash.

Edit: my half baked conspiracy theory got some attention. the argument that companies remove DRM like Denuvo because of cost makes way more sense, Occam’s razor holds true. Both can be true, they save money by removing the DRM, which has the nice side-effect of creating a small new wave of sales. Win/win. I’m sure Denuvo hates this and will one day make it more difficult for studios to just remove their software, because money.