Denuvo

[TehOwn]

I bought Two Point Hospital after Denuvo was removed (great move, btw) but Campus still has it (with no end in sight) and now this?

I refuse to buy a game that has Denuvo with no time-limit and no guarantee of removal in future. I don't want to rent a game. I want to be able to play it 20 years from now, just like Theme Hospital, Sim Tower, Sim Golf, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, all the greats.

So, will you guys commit to a removal plan in future? One year? Two years?

Otherwise, I guess I'll just wait for it to be in a free giveaway.

[Aurora]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ardbug:

So they cut out a chunk of the game and selling it as DLC even though it is clearly content that is ready on day 1, and on top of that they add Denuvo as well ??
The 2 point series started out well, they should have gone with that and made it better, instead they made it worse and cut content for release day greed ... yeah I have other games to play.

just don't buy the game and please don't annoy us. Everyone else has fun with the game!

[Talso]

Cut out...
Play it! Doesn´t seem to be cut out... anything!
Adding Denuvo is not cutting out... Argh

[gamertyp95]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Zusuper:

The Explorer Edition makes the game easier

Yeah. Pay to win in a single player game. Pure madness and people are happy about being scammed. Another game where it is better to wait half a year to get the complete game for half the price.

[Duffelcoat]

Shame it has Denuvo, would have liked to have got this, but Denuvo is the deal breaker for me...

[Duffelcoat]

Denuvo = No buy

[Aurora]

because the developers don't want their game to be copied? Afraid because it is kernel level? Funny that everyone has fun with the game and nothing bad happens.... I will never understand this Denovo hate. But why don't you develop a free game?

[DoReMi]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Aurora:

I will never understand this Denovo hate. But why don't you develop a free game?

Probably because Denuvo doesn't get cracked anymore. Especially when most arguments against it are hyperboles and doomsday scenarios.

[lukaself]

Despite excellent reviews, the game sold what, 50k copies, tops? If the goal was to stop piracy, mission accomplished… but was it worth it? The silver lining of Denuvo is that when a good game underperforms, piracy can't be used as the scapegoat. Two Point Museum had everything to be a success, so maybe, just maybe, the focus should have been on delivering a smooth, hassle-free experience rather than implementing DRM that might have turned away potential buyers.

Valve has been clear on this for years:

Erik Johnson: There hasn't been a case where we're making a trade off that could negatively impact a customer's experience to reduce this theoretical piracy rate. Those always seem like awful decisions.

Gabe Newell: You were just saying, you're making this trade off, and it's always the wrong one if any customers can be affected negatively by it.

Erik Johnson: Being able to log into any computer and play our games on Steam was a feature that we thought was interesting in the early days of Steam, but has turned out to be an incredibly high value thing for customers, and that's the kind of thing where a flawed anti piracy strategy would be at odds with that.

Doug Lombardi: The other thing, too, is that gamers are generally good people. If you're making a good game and you've done a good job both from a quality and on the communications standpoint, they're more than happy to give you their money.

And most importantly:

Gabe Newell: We’re a broken record on this, this belief that you increase your monetisation by making your game worth less through aggressive digital rights management is totally backwards. [...] I think publishers with excessive DRM will sell less of their products and create more problems,

[Caduryn]

Opprinnelig skrevet av lukaself:

Despite excellent reviews, the game sold what, 50k copies, tops? If the goal was to stop piracy, mission accomplished… but was it worth it? The silver lining of Denuvo is that when a good game underperforms, piracy can't be used as the scapegoat. Two Point Museum had everything to be a success, so maybe, just maybe, the focus should be on delivering great value to paying customers rather than obsessing over non-paying ones.

Valve has been clear on this for years:

Erik Johnson: There hasn't been a case where we're making a trade off that could negatively impact a customer's experience to reduce this theoretical piracy rate. Those always seem like awful decisions.

Gabe Newell: You were just saying, you're making this trade off, and it's always the wrong one if any customers can be affected negatively by it.

Erik Johnson: Being able to log into any computer and play our games on Steam was a feature that we thought was interesting in the early days of Steam, but has turned out to be an incredibly high value thing for customers, and that's the kind of thing where a flawed anti piracy strategy would be at odds with that.

Doug Lombardi: The other thing, too, is that gamers are generally good people. If you're making a good game and you've done a good job both from a quality and on the communications standpoint, they're more than happy to give you their money.

And most importantly:

Gabe Newell: We’re a broken record on this, this belief that you increase your monetisation by making your game worth less through aggressive digital rights management is totally backwards. [...] I think publishers with excessive DRM will sell less of their products and create more problems,

Every Two Point Game has or had Denuvo, so the "how many sales" Point is void.
How many did Campus sold btw...?

[lukaself]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Caduryn:

Every Two Point Game has or had Denuvo, so the "how many sales" Point is void.
How many did Campus sold btw...?

Two Point Hospital had Denuvo for 3 days - it was removed in Hotfix v1.02. Looking at the SteamDB charts, the game's concurrent player count peaked at 34k after that point. It was also available on GOG.
Two Point Campus, still has Denuvo and isn't available on GOG. Despite being praised, its sales were evaluated on SteamDB at a sixth of what TPH sold.
And now, Two Point Museum, in spite of even higher review scores than Two point Hospital on release, has only the third of the concurrent players TPH had after removing Denuvo.

To be perfectly clear, I'm not establishing a causation here but rather an absence of correlation between DRM strength and sales. Even though I would be tempted to draw conclusions considering that DRM-free games seem to always outsell games with Denuvo on the long term.

A perfect example of that in the same management sim model and DLC strategies as the Two Point County universe would be Paradox. By policy, all their games are completely DRM-free: They have absolutely no anti-piracy protection at all. See also Prison Architect, RimWorld, Factorio, Cities Skylines... All DRM-free. They could be downloaded and copied an infinite number of times on any number of computers, yet people massively chose to pay for them instead.

Let that sink in for a moment.

[Elijah Baley]

I could live with Denuvo if it was less intrusive or (as OP suggests) came with a removal date. As it is now, I won't be buying this game.

[TehOwn]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Aurora:

I will never understand this Denovo hate. But why don't you develop a free game?

I've published two games. The first, we removed the DRM after a period of time (I personally pushed for this but my boss agreed completely), the other has nothing but a pretty minor anti-cheat. In both games, we allowed pirated copies to use our servers and we saw an increase in sales correlated with popular repacks of our game.

My issue with Denuvo is simple. It is maintained far beyond when it is effective or even economical. It hurts game preservation because it is inevitable that we'll end up with another SecuRom situation. No company lasts forever and plenty of games are abandoned without DRM being removed.

I will defend a company's right to use DRM (although I personally think it's unnecessary for most games) for the first few months. Beyond that, it's pointless. It also reduces modability (due to anti-tamper tech) and legitimate fan-made fixes (another thing I've been personally involved in).

That said, I'm glad the game is seeing success. I just personally wish they committed to a Denuvo removal time-frame. I asked them similarly for Campus and they essentially said "never". No-one lasts forever and neither will that game, unless the DRM is removed eventually. I still play games that are over 30 years old. Imagine if they were unplayable due to DRM. What a waste.

[TehOwn]

Opprinnelig skrevet av lukaself:

A perfect example of that in the same management sim model and DLC strategies as the Two Point County universe would be Paradox. By policy, all their games are completely DRM-free: They have absolutely no anti-piracy protection at all. See also Prison Architect, RimWorld, Factorio, Cities Skylines... All DRM-free. They could be downloaded and copied an infinite number of times on any number of computers, yet people massively chose to pay for them instead.

This is the correct answer. I will point out, though, that Factorio provides an absolutely huge incentive to buy the game... built-in, official mod support / mod hosting. A carrot always works better than a stick.

I'll offer another example. Minecraft. No DRM and it was written in Java, so the source-code was reverse engineered very quickly. That is exactly what led to the insane modability and turned it into the best selling game of all time. Minecraft with Denuvo would be dead by now.

[Q]

Denuvo = No buy

[ThrakathCZ]

Denuvo = No buy ☹️ sadly