Honest question here. Could it be possibly that as they improved their DRM with more triggers and methods that it has started to impact performance since 2016?
As Empress was cracking Denuvo, I wouldnt be surprised if they started to quickly add extra defencive measures compromising what could have been optimised in the past.
The problem with algocracy is someone has to define the laws in which the algorithm has to base it's decisions. And if someone is writing those laws, how can we know they're impervious to corruption.