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