I posted this about a year ago, sadly according to Ubisoft support the game is still bundled with this malware.
Denuvo costs Ubisoft money. I'm not talking about lost sales from people (like me) who refuse to buy games that have this malware. It costs roughly $125k euros for the 1st twelve months of Denuvo and then 2k euros monthly after that. In March 2021, Valhalla was cracked. I could understand if they kept it for the full 12 months, since they already paid for it. WHY do they keep paying for it though? Denuvo has been shown to decrease framerate, increase load times and system resource use. It is now, pointless to keep it bundled with the game.
The Uplay store doesn't even state the game has Denuvo. On Steam, any 3rd party DRM is clearly listed on the store page. Could this be why Valhalla was never put on Steam since they couldn't hide the fact it comes with Denuvo?
Conspiracy theories aside, it's time they removed it. Game has been out a while so it's not like revenue is going to take a hit if it was removed. They make even make some extra money from new players eager to play but wouldn't before.