The Big Denuvo Thread

[Elegant Caveman]

NOTE TO NEWCOMERS: As much as I can understand the desire to create a new/your own thread about Denuvo, know that it's just going to end up merged into this thread, so you might want to consider posting here instead.

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EDIT (14 Oct, 2022): Changed the title to make things clearer, since a bunch of threads were merged.

EDIT (5 Jan, 2023): Just noticed something interesting - all the awards this thread got are not displayed anymore. Never seen that before, and didn't even know that could happen. Guess it's another form of censorship, to try and mask support. Shunting the thread to "Feedback/Suggestions" wasn't enough.

EDIT (23 Mar, 2023): Oh, neat, the awards are back. Thanks to whoever fixed that.

EDIT (26 Mar, 2023): So apparently the awards didn't get "fixed", they're just new ones. Still wondering wtf happened to the original.

EDIT: (26 Apr, 2023): We've been moved back to General Discussions; thank you Harbinger. This also elucidates the mystery of the disappearing awards - it would appear that they get wiped when a thread gets moved to a different forum.

Original title: "Please, no third-party DRM". Original post follows.

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This looks really interesting. I'd hate to see it ruined by invasive third-party DRM.

[GrumpyPirate™]

Just a quick word of appreciation to the people pointing out Frontier Games always does this, i was not aware. Had a couple other games from them on my list, where i had missed the denuvo sign, but unlisted them now. They can sod off with their Denuvo cancer.

[Nishikawa]

All the responsibillty for this lies with the Chinese. if your PC performs well, this is only a minor issue.

[Wuulfe]

glad i put games on follow for like 6 months now.. this is the reason I have absolutely no faith in a game being reliable or eventually abandoned.

[Excitable Boy]

To mention the fact that Denuvo generates additional income from stopping piracy, consider the fact that Denuvo's going rate to be used in software is $100,000 last I heard. Since software is even increasing it's prices due to Brandon's economy, who knows what Denuvo is now charging? My math says that the price of Denuvo ='s 3,333 copies which need to be sold just to recoup the cost. That isn't even taking into account Steam's 30% cut.

Pirates thrive on challenges. One kind of pirated software is known as 0 Day Wares meaning the game's protection was defeated on day of release. Pirates love Denuvo due to the fact that they change their protection methods with each game it's used in. "Oh boy it's Denuvo, dig into their new code guys!" Most Denuvo games don't last a week before the hackers succeed. Since this discussion is now starting to head in directions not sanctioned by devs & Steam It might just get locked or deleted. Let's see if censorship becomes an action of the dev's in this regard.

[Caz]

Publicado originalmente por ゲ-で:

Publicado originalmente por LadyAth:

Your loss

More like their loss, game is a game, but 30$ is 30$
These numbers are calling for help.
911 all-time peak 10 hours ago

They aren't going to feel any loss from the huge crowd of 5 people that throw a tantrum about denuvo.

I will agree it's silly to have denuvo on such a game, but you're not "sticking it to the man" like you think you are.

[BREEZ]

DENUVO: How Is This Anti-Cheat Working?

In case you need a basic understanding of Denuvo:

'Why is Denuvo so controversial?
Denuvo has been criticised for high central processing unit (CPU) usage and excessive writing operations on storage components, the latter causing significant life-span reductions for solid-state drives (SSDs).'

'Denuvo's anti-piracy and anti-cheat technology has a reputation in the PC community for adding bloat to games, which can lead to performance hits. The company's digital rights management system has also temporarily prevented some PC games from running due to glitches in connecting to Denuvo third-party servers.' Aug 24, 2022

[Ghojo]

Yeah, I was really hyped for this game and just about to click the buy button, but then I saw it has Denuvo so now I will pass.

Not supporting publishers using Denuvo, the only thing they accomplish is that it makes the experience worse for the player - the game is getting cracked by the pirate groups anyway, with Denuvo or not.

[Ghojo]

Publicado originalmente por Excitable Boy:

Pirates love Denuvo due to the fact that they change their protection methods with each game it's used in. "Oh boy it's Denuvo, dig into their new code guys!" Most Denuvo games don't last a week before the hackers succeed.

Exactly, the only effect Denuvo really has is that it makes the experience for the customer aka us players much worse, to the point the game becomes unplayable.

I was about to buy the game since I was quite hyped for it, but then I saw it has Denuvo so now I will pass and not buy it.
If they remove Denuvo then in a few months I will probably get it, but not now with it.

[Polysorbate]

Publicado originalmente por Ghojo:

Exactly, the only effect Denuvo really has is that it makes the experience for the customer aka us players much worse, to the point the game becomes unplayable.

citation needed

A game not being developed at all in the first place because of risk of piracy does actually make a game "unplayable" though, and not just in the minds of butthurt pirates.

[Nobody]

Another game bites the dust, as long it has denuvo it's gonna go on my ignore list, devs you screwed over your player base by going with Frontier foundry

[Azurika_]

Denuvo, oh no. i'm happy i saw this before i bought it, i'll avoid it until Denuvo is gone i think, i've had plenty of experience with Denuvo halving my performance in a game, or worse.

such a shame! game looks great but i can't support them including something like Denuvo that actively hurts their customers.

Denuvo should be banned from steam, it is literally Malware, the Only reason it exists is to "stop" pirates getting hold of the game without paying, but we've seen it is absolutely ineffective at that, as in the past Denuvo games have been successfully pirated in under a week from release, ironically then leaving the paying customers with a WORSE version of the game because they still have to deal with Denuvo eating performance.

[The Lunatic]

Denuvo seriously restricts the ability to mod a game.
Games like this benefit greatly from modding, so, to restrict what to many is the biggest appeal of these games seems like a very poor move...

[Ghojo]

Publicado originalmente por Polysorbate42:

citation needed

A game not being developed at all in the first place because of risk of piracy does actually make a game "unplayable" though, and not just in the minds of butthurt pirates.

You are ridiculous, Denuvo does NOT stop piracy. Many games who had Denuvo integrated have been cracked just a week after launch.
In fact, cracking groups specifically target Denuvo because it poses a slightly larger challenge for them, as it's like a puzzle to solve, but they always succeed.

Also, the threat of piracy is immensly overblown, otherwise all the games on GOG would not have been made in the first place as you say - yet GOG with it's DRM free games remains highly profitable both for GOG & the game developers.

[Ghojo]

Publicado originalmente por Azurika_:

ironically then leaving the paying customers with a WORSE version of the game because they still have to deal with Denuvo eating performance.

lol yeah, this is coming up again and again, where people who paid for a game with Denuvo had a much worse experience than the people who pirated it and oftentimes couldn't even get it to properly start.

Yet the people who pirated it just played a version without Denuvo, which worked flawlessly. So much that people who bought the game actually went to pirate it, just to be able to play it.

[⎛⎝Arky⎠⎞]

Publicado originalmente por Polysorbate42:

"It gets cracked immediately" is a made-up pro-piracy talking point and is demonstrably untrue. There's a huge list of non-cracked Denuvo games, many are months or years old. For example, The Quarry came out 4 months ago and is still uncracked.

Denuvo is the only effective means of stopping all piracy for any period of time and it has little or no performance cost when implemented competently. Even if it only lasts a week, that's the main purchasing window for a game: the time when people are talking about it and they don't want to miss out on Latest Thing.

I'm familiar with piracy, I used to pirate tons of games when I was younger (now I have a thousand games on Steam). Every time a new game comes out on Steam, there's almost immediately a pirated version out with downloads in the tens of thousands, sometimes more. Same thing for Android - where virtually no good games ever come out due to its >90% piracy rate. And it was the same thing for PSP and DS - both killed off due to ease of piracy. And it has been the same thing on PC in the past - why do you think Crysis 2 was consolized trash? Too much piracy on PC, we aren't a viable market.

Piracy is a service problem but it's also a greed problem. Steam solves the service part, Denuvo solves the greed part. Denuvo makes people angry because they want something for free. That's the only reason these threads exist.

People know where these threads actually originate, you're not even trying to hide it. It's hilarious sometimes I see a thread in a piracy forum and people Denuvo-squealing on the Steam forum under the same bloody username, or making identical posts in both places under different usernames. Could you at least try not to be so transparent?

Many Denuvo-equipped games are among the best-selling on Steam. I wish Denuvo didn't need to exist, sincerely. But due to the nature of PC, you own the hardware and you can do anything you want to it, so extreme measures are required. Denuvo, thankfully, has little or no impact on users, unlike virtually every past DRM technology.

Hopefully Denuvo works with Steam Deck someday though, I would like that.

Bravo. I completely agree.