What is Denuvo and why are people crying about it?

[「CharlemagneRex」]

I was looking at PREY because the trailers look interesting. Read a few reviews and one of them said 'Another game ruined by Denuvo DRM.' And something about false advertising???

I googled it and it just looks like an anti-piracy thing. So I'm asking here instead.

I have no shortage of money and buy my games legit so I can use online features and such, while also being able to track hours and achievments by getting games through Steam, or playing on consoles.

So what exactly is Denuvo DRM and why are people giving PREY bad reviews for it?

[Randver]

It's a DRM that gets cracked relatively quickly so it only only works short term to stop pirating of the games that include it.

Some of the games that have used it have had performance hits and there have been rumors that it can shorten the life of SSD drives by constantly writing to them.

As with all DRM I think the biggest issue most people have with it is that it punishes those of us who purchase the games but does nothing to prevent piracy,

[「CharlemagneRex」]

Hmmm...

I just upgraded my HDs to SSDs so that's somewhat alarming...

I'm confident my rig can handle the game, but if the performance hits are rough, that could be an issue too.

But, thank you for the straightforward answer! Now I can google the finer details and see what's up.

[Forcen]

It's a relatively effective and pretty unnoticeable DRM if you are connected to the internet.

If you plan to play the the games that have it offline for weeks you should not get it, if not then go for it.

EDIT: Oh yes, you can't mod the game as easily. However the games often doesn't support mods officially in the first place.

Isn't that performance and ssd stuff pretty unsubstantiated?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Forcen:

...Isn't that performance and ssd stuff pretty unsubstantiated?

by what i see, yes. i have many denovo drm games and my 5 year old ssd is still as great as when i first installed it. nothing wrong with it at all.

[Tev]

Never had an issue with Denuvo on my end. In fact, most of the games that have Denuvo I didn't even know used it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo#List_of_games_with_Denuvo

Originally posted by Forcen:

EDIT: Oh yes, you can't mod the game as easily. However the games often doesn't support mods officially in the first place.

Well, NieR: Automata still got F.A.R, ReShade and allowed DualShock 4 prompts by adding in files. People were even able to get the character model exported relatively quick. Not sure how extreme the mods would have to be to not work. Probably the type that alter the executable are a no-go.

EDIT: Well, granted - none of those files replaced any of the base files.

Originally posted by Forcen:

Isn't that performance and ssd stuff pretty unsubstantiated?

Myth, yeah.

[Randver]

Originally posted by Forcen:

It's a relatively effective and pretty unnoticeable DRM if you are connected to the internet.

If you plan to play the the games that have it offline for weeks you should not get it, if not then go for it.

Isn't that performance and ssd stuff pretty unsubstantiated?

The performance hits have some meat to them for some of the games but it's really going to impact the people running lower end rigs.

Anything writing to a SSD drive shortens it lifespan so the debate was how much writing was actually occurring and it depends on who you want to believe as far as the numbers.

I won't buy games with it for the third reason I gave......I paid for it so don't do anything to the game that may cause me any grief. I was a victim of the SecuRom mess that bricked optical drives so any thing beyond the Steam client annoys me.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Forcen:

Isn't that performance and ssd stuff pretty unsubstantiated?

I think there was one or maybe two games where the pirated version wokred allegedly(!) better than the original with Denuvo.
Games where Denuvo has been removed have been close in performance or no change at all
http://www.game-debate.com/news/22656/denuvo-pc-performance-impact-tested-doom-benchmarks-with-and-without-denuvo-drm
It obviously runs a bit smoother if you take out some operations that need to be performed. But normally there are also patches involved which alter the results. So nothing conclusive can be said.

The SSD issue is thouroughly debunked.

As far as DRM goes, Denuvo is one of the most un-intrusive ones. It might impact modding for games that not officially support modding due to its anti-temper nature, but since it is pretty quickly removed once cracked, that isn't an issue for very long - if any.

[Dakuwan]

People want to get games free, so instead of saying that, they make things up in an attempt to have it removed.

Denuvo has had no effect on my gaming ever. Aside from letting me play and not the thieves.

[Forcen]

OP, what you should watch out more for is SecuROM. That limit the amount of times you can install the games. Denuvo lets you activate without limits.

More info and list of games with secuROM: (and other limited activations games)
http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_on_Steam#Hardware-based_DRM

Publishers also tend to remove denuvo after a while, they did this with doom.

I wish publishers did this with securom: http://store.steampowered.com/app/45730/Dark_Void_Zero/
This game still has only 5 installs..
EDIT: There has been games that removed secuROM. or just increased the limits to 50..

Not sure why SecuROM didn't get as much flack as denuvo, maybe because it was so easy for pirates to bypass it?

[「CharlemagneRex」]

The only games I've modded in the past were Fallouts or Skyrim. Aside from that, when I was a kid I added blood mods/skin mods to Medal of Honor Allied Assault - but that was back when you had to manually download patches and servers didn't really regulate mods.

I'm happy to hear about SSDs being safe, considering I just got them and don't plan on deleting/installing more than once.

Aside from that, it seems for someone who just wants to casually enjoy their games with a good rig, this program won't be an issue. Thanks a ton!

[Randver]

Originally posted by cinedine:

Originally posted by Forcen:

Isn't that performance and ssd stuff pretty unsubstantiated?

I think there was one or maybe two games where the pirated version wokred allegedly(!) better than the original with Denuvo.
Games where Denuvo has been removed have been close in performance or no change at all
http://www.game-debate.com/news/22656/denuvo-pc-performance-impact-tested-doom-benchmarks-with-and-without-denuvo-drm
It obviously runs a bit smoother if you take out some operations that need to be performed. But normally there are also patches involved which alter the results. So nothing conclusive can be said.

The SSD issue is thouroughly debunked.

As far as DRM goes, Denuvo is one of the most un-intrusive ones. It might impact modding for games that not officially support modding due to its anti-temper nature, but since it is pretty quickly removed once cracked, that isn't an issue for very long - if any.

The SSD isn't actually debunked, in fact it depends on your system.

Denuvo uses your RAM and if you don't have enough it'll do swapfiles to your HD or SSD. I run 32 so it's not an issue and I won't see my disk usage go up because of it but if your running 4 or 8 it'll be an issue.......of course most people running SSD's I would assume have at least 16.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by 「Kalafonte」:

Hmmm...

I just upgraded my HDs to SSDs so that's somewhat alarming...

I'm confident my rig can handle the game, but if the performance hits are rough, that could be an issue too.

But, thank you for the straightforward answer! Now I can google the finer details and see what's up.

Trust me. The write life time of SSD's is enough that this sort of thing won't bother you. Very likely you'll swap your current drives for bigger and better a good while before the extra writes become an issue.

Originally posted by Dakuwan:

People want to get games free, so instead of saying that, they make things up in an attempt to have it removed.

Denuvo has had no effect on my gaming ever. Aside from letting me play and not the thieves.

This more or less. Gamers see DRM the same way some people see Taxes. It generates an irrational and instinctive response.

And yea, Securom was a ♥♥♥♥♥. The problem is really that they need to do something and while all DRM gets cracked one could say the same thing about the lock on your front door. There does exist a perfect form of DRM and trust me you do not want them to go there.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Forcen:

Not sure why SecuROM didn't get as much flack as denuvo, maybe because it was so easy for pirates to bypass it?

Are you kidding me?
SecuRom was the worst thing that could happen to game after StarForce. It's just that it was a looong time ago. The issue was re-ignited with W7 I think, because there were no drivers on this platform, so all your physical games were literally unusable without a crack. Even on Vista there were already problems.
Don't get me started on the issue that it wouldn't let you run games if you had certain programs installed or the wrong brand of optical drive.

It's just that it has been a long time ago and few people care about the old games now that still have it.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Randver:

Denuvo uses your RAM and if you don't have enough it'll do swapfiles to your HD or SSD. I run 32 so it's not an issue and I won't see my disk usage go up because of it but if your running 4 or 8 it'll be an issue.......of course most people running SSD's I would assume have at least 16.

And that can be said for literally any application. If you need to go into swap, there is a problem on your machine - and it's not Denuvo. The RAM usage is also considered when stating minimum speccs.
Also: who the ♥♥♥♥ plays with swap?! The performance impact should be more than enough to make you quit the game imediatedly.

[Randver]

Originally posted by cinedine:

Originally posted by Randver:

Denuvo uses your RAM and if you don't have enough it'll do swapfiles to your HD or SSD. I run 32 so it's not an issue and I won't see my disk usage go up because of it but if your running 4 or 8 it'll be an issue.......of course most people running SSD's I would assume have at least 16.

And that can be said for literally any application. If you need to go into swap, there is a problem on your machine - and it's not Denuvo. The RAM usage is also considered when stating minimum speccs.
Also: who the ♥♥♥♥ plays with swap?! The performance impact should be more than enough to make you quit the game imediatedly.

Plenty of people play games on toasters. Those are the people that are complaining about games crashing and blaming the game rather than their hardware.

Anytime I start a new game I run hardware monitors and it's amazing how poorly optimized some games are which can tax even high end systems. Denuvo is used in lots console ports and those are always a concern as far as optimization.

If the devs can't optimize their games the last thing I want is something else running that has absolutely no upside for my gaming experience.