Stellar Blade’s last minute Denuvo disaster

[Cephei]

I was absolutely pumped to dive into Stellar Blade. I’ve got a beast of a machine with an RTX 5080, Ryzen 9800X3D, and a 4K OLED monitor and I was ready to crank this game to max settings with HDR for a mind blowing experiience.

As a PC-only gamer, I’ve been hyped for this release forever. But then they pulled a fast one with Denuvo at the last second? That’s such a scummy move. No way I’m touching this now, screw supporting anti consumer nonsense. I already learned my lesson with Resident Evil Village; that Denuvo garbage tanked my FPS . Hard pass on this one, sadly.

[AmourAngels]

Denuvo + Overpriced + Region Locked.

They take our trust, then they betrayed.

[kuzma_x]

Originally posted by AmourAngels:

Denuvo + Overpriced + Region Locked.

They take our trust, then they betrayed.

they did last year with censorship. I even sign petition.

[Shinyhunter]

Originally posted by Cephei:

I was absolutely pumped to dive into Stellar Blade. I’ve got a beast of a machine with an RTX 5080, Ryzen 9800X3D, and a 4K OLED monitor and I was ready to crank this game to max settings with HDR for a mind blowing experiience.

As a PC-only gamer, I’ve been hyped for this release forever. But then they pulled a fast one with Denuvo at the last second? That’s such a scummy move. No way I’m touching this now, screw supporting anti consumer nonsense. I already learned my lesson with Resident Evil Village; that Denuvo garbage tanked my FPS . Hard pass on this one, sadly.

WHO asked ?

[odysseas4os]

Originally posted by Shinyhunter:

WHO asked ?

You did, when you clicked on the post after reading the title.

[IGhost]

Its always funny to me how they pull this sht at the last second. They KNOW its not going over well, they KNOW people hate it, yet they sneak it in anyway... Well all we can do now is keep pestering them about it (Mainly on Twitter as the official account seems quite active) and hope they change it!

[Richieツ]

How much of a performance loss will this result in, if any??

[Zhiger]

Totally agree with you. I’ve made it a personal policy not to buy any game that comes with Denuvo. It’s just not worth dealing with the performance hits and intrusive DRM. I’d rather wait or skip it entirely than support that kind of anti-consumer practice. If a game launches with Denuvo, it's an automatic pass for me.

[Tazor]

Originally posted by Richieツ:

How much of a performance loss will this result in, if any??

Depends on your CPU. The stronger your CPU, the lower the performance loss caused by Denuvo. The weaker it is the higher the performance impact. Do keep in mind that the extra power consumption and CPU strain caused by running Denuvo on top of the game remains there. Nothing you can do about that no matter how good your CPU is.

[Richieツ]

Originally posted by Tazor:

Originally posted by Richieツ:

How much of a performance loss will this result in, if any??

Depends on your CPU. The stronger your CPU, the lower the performance loss caused by Denuvo. The weaker it is the higher the performance impact. Do keep in mind that the extra power consumption and CPU strain caused by running Denuvo on top of the game remains there. Nothing you can do about that no matter how good your CPU is.

The game is playable on Steam Deck.

[Centuryt]

Originally posted by IGhost:

Its always funny to me how they pull this sht at the last second. They KNOW its not going over well, they KNOW people hate it, yet they sneak it in anyway... Well all we can do now is keep pestering them about it (Mainly on Twitter as the official account seems quite active) and hope they change it!

It's a done dead they already have at least a 1 year contract with denuvo and they're not going to cancel it just because some gamers were mad (im some gamers and im relaying whats going on inside thier heads)

I seriously have problems with japanese publishers and devs because they always pull stupid ♥♥♥♥ like this or their games don't work well with mnk most of the time or some other stupid ♥♥♥♥ problem they have with pc market. Its like their brains are only designed to work at 30fps with a controller anything else is a technical difficulty

[IGhost]

Originally posted by Centuryt:

Originally posted by IGhost:

Its always funny to me how they pull this sht at the last second. They KNOW its not going over well, they KNOW people hate it, yet they sneak it in anyway... Well all we can do now is keep pestering them about it (Mainly on Twitter as the official account seems quite active) and hope they change it!

It's a done dead they already have at least a 1 year contract with denuvo and they're not going to cancel it just because some gamers were mad (im some gamers and im relaying whats going on inside thier heads)

I seriously have problems with japanese publishers and devs because they always pull stupid ♥♥♥♥ like this or their games don't work well with mnk most of the time or some other stupid ♥♥♥♥ problem they have with pc market. Its like their brains are only designed to work at 30fps with a controller anything else is a technical difficulty

It was a done deal wit InZoi aswell, and people got them to remove it. It would probably be a financial hit sure, but these numbnuts should have thought about that before going to bed with Denuvo. Its not like its widely known that Denuvo is despised or anything.

[Tazor]

Originally posted by Richieツ:

Originally posted by Tazor:

Depends on your CPU. The stronger your CPU, the lower the performance loss caused by Denuvo. The weaker it is the higher the performance impact. Do keep in mind that the extra power consumption and CPU strain caused by running Denuvo on top of the game remains there. Nothing you can do about that no matter how good your CPU is.

The game is playable on Steam Deck.

"Playable" is a completely irrelevant term. 24 FPS is playable. So is 60 FPS. So is 240 FPS.

I was talking about the difference in performance on different CPUs caused by running extra programs at the same time with the game. Plus the extra power consumption and strain put on your CPU from running said programs for extended periods of time.

I am well aware some people couldn't care less about game longevity, optimisation, their electricity bill or killing a few years off the life of their CPU. If you are one of them Denuvo does not affect you.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Richieツ:

How much of a performance loss will this result in, if any??

Depends on the CPU and how well the game optimizes its drawcalls. In essence, Denuvo pipes the drawcalls from the CPU to the GPU via several VM layers. The more drawcalls the game issues for certain tasks, the worse the impact will be.

Japanese games have a history of doing this rather poorly. With any game they release having massive CPU overhead (Dragon's Dogma, etc). So I suspect it's going to be noticable.

But the issue is, you cannot test the differences. To date, noone tested between a game that is compiled without denuvo. The "disabled" denuvo games they test basically omit the VM flag, but its still routed through the VM's and causing the CPU overhead.

You would need access to sourcecode and compile it without Denuvo to have an accurate test.

[Richieツ]

And let me guess: you can't tell how many "years" it supposedly takes off a CPU's lifespan, either?

Originally posted by Tazor:

Originally posted by Richieツ:

The game is playable on Steam Deck.

"Playable" is a completely irrelevant term. 24 FPS is playable. So is 60 FPS. So is 240 FPS.

45-50 fps on one of the weakest hand helds is playable imo.

https://x.com/StellarBlade/status/1923087233198002687

[Gucky]

Originally posted by Cephei:

I was absolutely pumped to dive into Stellar Blade. I’ve got a beast of a machine with an RTX 5080, Ryzen 9800X3D, and a 4K OLED monitor and I was ready to crank this game to max settings with HDR for a mind blowing experiience.

As a PC-only gamer, I’ve been hyped for this release forever. But then they pulled a fast one with Denuvo at the last second? That’s such a scummy move. No way I’m touching this now, screw supporting anti consumer nonsense. I already learned my lesson with Resident Evil Village; that Denuvo garbage tanked my FPS . Hard pass on this one, sadly.

You must have blown all your money on the PC and not having left any for the game.
All Denuvo=no buy people would have never bought the game and only pirated it.

FYI I have the same rig AND I preordered the game on GMG.

And "last minute"? It is still 3,5 weeks till release and it was the first page refresh since it was started.