Denuvo wants to convince you its DRM isn’t “evil”

Boiglenoight@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 111 points – Denuvo wants to convince you its DRM isn’t “evil”
arstechnica.com

Kudos to Ars Technica to interviewing the Devil. The comments section of that post is *not *kind.

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What grinds my gears with all the people (whether Denuvo officials or elsewhere) that claim that it has no effect on performance: they only focus on average FPS. Never a consideration for FPS lows or FPS time spent on frames that took more than N milliseconds. Definitely not any look at loading times.

I'm willing to believe a good implementation of Denuvo has a negligible impact on average FPS. I think every time I saw anyone test loading times though, it had a clear and consistent negative impact. I've never seen anyone check FPS lows (or similar) but with the way Denuvo works I expect it's similar.

Performance is more than average framerate and they hide behind a veil of pretending that it is the totality of all performance metrics.

That’s true too.

Is it a regular practice by devs to remove Denuvo after a certain sales period? The time it takes me to buy certain games these days, I could be unaffected by default.

The article mentions that most publishers will license it for 6-12 months, but it's going to vary. Basically keeping Denuvo in use indefinitely costs more money than only using it for a short time.

From a business perspective I think it makes sense to license it for that first 6-12 month period. As a consumer too I wouldn't mind that: let them protect the initial sales period and then remove the DRM for long-term use. Early adopters will get the shitty version of the game... but that's already true in so many other ways.

Huin said publishers license Denuvo technology "for a certain amount of time, [maybe] six months or a year," mainly to protect that initial sales period. After that, many publishers decline to renew that lease and instead release an updated version of the game that is not protected by Denuvo.

That's interesting! But what about physical media that ships with Denuvo? If someone decides to play the game years later after updates are no longer being pushed (is this even a plausible thing?) are they stuck with it?

Truthfully I don't know the answer to that question. I started trying to make an educated guess at it, but I kept finding holes in my thoughts: I got nothing.