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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They can fuck right off. Their approach about how emulation is evil was ratio’d big time on Twitter, do they really think people believe a dime what they’re saying?

"Emulation is evil"? Are you talking about this book?

The book argues that “pirates have unfortunately tarnished emulation’s original goal of preserving gaming heritage,” and that “there should be an acceptable length of time where developers get paid for their hard work and it must be up to them to decide when the time is perfect to open up the game to everyone (including emulators).”

Nevertheless, the book argues that “game emulation is not necessarily detrimental,” and that “the use of emulators to bring some of the old and nostalgic games back to life on PCs is popular.”

They're addressing the idea that people will emulate brand-new games specifically in order to pirate them, not fearmongering about older games. This is not the place for your useless hyperbolic 180-character tirades on Twitter. Talk about things people actually say.

I just made my view on Denuvo clear: I don’t like them, they’re hurting the video game industry more than they’re helping it, so they can fuck off.

It’s a fact that their tweet about their book was ratio'd. Most people probably haven’t read it, me included but that’s not the point. It just shows the view the public has on Denuvo.

It’s also a fact that Denuvo decreases the performance of games, to a point where even legit buyers pirated a game because it ran better on their PCs than the official version.

There are enough reasons to dislike Denuvo and no one in their right mind should be defending them - this is my point of view.

This is a free place where everyone can express their opinion and it’s okay that you don’t agree with mine but there’s absolutely no reason to get personal.

And I'm making my statement clear: I had to look up what "ratio'd" even means, because it's a term that would only be used by people that believe any conversations on Twitter even matter. The format is terrible for honest discourse.

The article itself points to Denuvo being willing to hire independent reviewers of people's choice to verify that Denuvo, when implemented well, does not affect game performance. The article also has a number of rational explanations as to why game builds that people claim "prove Denovu decreases performance" are not always the best proof.

If they've picked reviewers, and they're people you don't trust, that's a perfectly fair stance for argument. But requesting an independent review makes perfect sense to me. If, on the other hand, they prove themselves right, it would not be the first time "hero internet detectives" got things completely wrong.

We're bringing some bad behaviors from Reddit and Twitter here. Let's not start with not reading the article.

I read the article and they can hire all the reviewers they want, but my experience with DRM is not a positive. I haven't gained any benefit from it, but instead barriers to getting the game to work when I want it to. Even more so since getting a steam deck, and now going periods where I don't have internet access.

The benefits of no DRM versus DRM have become even more prevalent since then with games just working with no additional work arounds to renew the license for games that don't have DRM.

These pitches of DRM not being a negative are corporate ones. Why should I care about whatever excuses they make when the only concern for me is one as the end consumer. They are only selling points to me if I'm a customer of denuvo or an employee of denuvo. I am not being paid enough to try and spin my negative experiences with DRM as a positive.

Gamers: We've removed you DRM and gotten better performance, your DRM is obviously causing a hit

Denuvo: Nuh uh

Like seriously we're not gonna find out? The fact that the DRM has been bypassed means it's useless anyway. All it does it hurt paying customers

If it's bypassed in the first week, sure. They've said in interviews, they tend not to care about people that bypass 6-month-old games since most sales come in the first week. It's even baffling to them people would pay for the software license after a long time (not that they're going to refuse free money). As long as hackers take a bit of time to achieve a crack, they've done their job.

Crackers don't remove the DRM, they just bypass it. So it's still there. Also performance tends to improve over time as patches come out, so even a version that has it removed doesn't necessarily compare to an older protected copy.

However, there have been times where the protected version and an identical non-protectd version were released, such as in Devil May Care 5. Denuvo does objectively reduce performance based on that, but the performance loss is so negligible that you would have already needed to be well below the game's requirements to actually see any notable difference.

Lastly you have cases like Rime and Injustice 2 where Denuvo completely ruined the game's performance.

All in all, best case it does barely anything, worst case the game is unplayable. And even when it works totally as intended, comes the actual need for online verification. Meaning that the best most convenient way to play said game is just to pirate it.

I had my fill, thanks. Sure, it's not Starforce or Securom, but it still begs the question: Why? Just why? Why should I, as the paying customer, have to deal with this crap? Meanwhile, pirated content gets cracked and has it removed. Mission failed successfully I guess. There's also always those stupid ass shills that end up simping for whatever DRM. I can't tell if that's like bought accounts or just useful idiots but they love to drown out issue threads and start flame wars to get them closed.

My Steam Deck heavily disagrees with that statement. Also why would I want to downgrade the experience for myself for a product I brought. It's not up to me to care about whatever rationalization they use to put in DRM that provides a worse experience than pirated games. If they want me to care they'll have to pay me to defend a practice that is worse for me.

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.

But Huin stressed to Ars that he sees Denuvo as a positive force for the gaming community as a whole. "Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher's] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game," he said. "But people typically don't think enough of that."

Alternatively, if everyone pirates a game that shipped with Denuvo instead of buying it, publishers will see that Denuvo is a detriment to sales, will stop putting it into their games, and your future gaming experience will increase because you won't have shitty performance on launch day anymore.

So pirating a game that ships with Denuvo is good for consumers, and practically a moral obligation for anybody that likes video games.

So pirating a game that ships with Denuvo is good for consumers, and practically a moral obligation for anybody that likes video games.

I think Denuvo prevents the piracy effectively enough that consumers would need to spend their money elsewhere to prove a point. Either way, developers get screwed with potential layoffs due to poor sales.

Piracy and DRM both suck. I say buy games from devs whose publishers choose not to use DRM besides say, Steam.

Can't blame people for emulating games when the only choices to playing it legit are either shelling out hundreds or thousands to scalpers or needing to be constantly online for a service that isn't even reliable. It says a lot when you gain 30 fps just by simply getting rid of DRM

In my opinion if you bought the game, you can do whatever you want to it to enhance your use of it.

Assuming, in the case of online games, it does not affect the game for others, I agree.

These guys demonized emulation despite the fact that game companies frequently use them in their classic game collections, right? Oh yeah, Denuvo can eat my ass with a spoon.

Denuvo is a smart investment for PC. I won't buy any game on pc without it, otherwise it'll be on torrents the same day. And why bother paying when it's there

If I were a publisher and I saw a difference between having Denuvo and not when it comes to how long it takes for it to show up on the salty seas, I’d probably consider it too.