UPDATE 15/7/21 11.25am: Capcom got in touch this morning to give us an update on this situation. "The team are working on a patch to address PC performance issues, it should be available soon - we'll have more details shortly." This sounds like a positive move and will update with analysis of any update as and when it appears.
ORIGINAL STORY 14/7/21 4pm: The recent story surrounding the notion of a pirate, DRM-free 'cracked' version of Resident Evil Village out-performing Capcom's launch code had me in turns fascinated and horrified. I can accept that anti-piracy measures are a necessity, and I can equally accept that their sophistication these days may have a certain level of CPU overhead. However, putting out a game that has performance issues because of the DRM crosses a red line - it's something that a developer or publisher absolutely should not do. And yet, I can confirm that Resident Evil Village on PC in its cracked form does run smoother than the flawed official release.
In fact, the compromised code addresses the two key performance issues my colleague Alex Battaglia noted in his Resident Evil Village PC tech review. Firstly, key animations during combat - enemies recoiling or lunging at you - cause noticeable split-second stutter. In the original review, we tested at 60fps, finding that the stutter could hit 66ms - four frames - but with frame-rate uncapped, I noted that the freezing could actually hit a maximum 130ms. This is a key problem because, not surprisingly, shooting zombies is a key part of this particular survival horror shooter. The second problem concerns encounters with the maidens - the daughters of Lady Dimitrescu - where their arrival in-game coincides with huge, sustained frame-time stutter. Suffice to say, none of these issues crop up in the console versions of the game.
