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Denuvo is tired of gamers saying its DRM is bad for games (www.gamesradar.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by monstoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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""I think it's super hard for a gamer," Ullmann tells Rock Paper Shotgun. "I'm a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I'm talking about. I think it's super hard to see, as a gamer, what is the immediate benefit for me that a certain game developer, game publisher, is using our anti-piracy services." This gap, coupled with the fact that Denuvo "simply works" and "pirates cannot play games" which use it, as Ullmann puts it, are two main contributors to its negative reputation, he argues."

Let's not forget about being always-online or not being able to test different wine/Proton setups for fear of activating the DRM. Or even trying simply to run the game in some situations...

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[-] Glide@lemmy.ca 154 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

"I'm a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I'm talking about"

Should we call it a fallacious call to authority, meme on it for being a "how do you do, fellow gamers" moment, or simply mock the guy for whoring himself out in favor of daddy corporate? I could write an essay on the ways this is an absurd statement.

Gamers hate Denuvo because it doesn't "simply work". It limits paying customers from accessing their content, bogs down mid-range machines that are already overtaxxed by poor optimization and, in admittedly uncommon cases, full on breaks some games until patches and fixes roll out. Stop pretending that "gamers" are out here rioting because they're too cheap and immoral to pay for content. Quit your fuckin' lying.

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 52 points 3 weeks ago

What's crazy is that it's more than that.

"I'm a gamer so I know what I'm talking about, that gamers know nothing about this topic."

The logic is very backwards.

[-] biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone 47 points 3 weeks ago

I thought this was an onion article.

[-] Astertheprince@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 3 weeks ago

Think it would go over well at !nottheonion@lemmy.world, or do you think they'd reject it?

[-] potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish 10 points 3 weeks ago

[-] FreshLight@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 weeks ago

Spot on, bravo!

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago

Option 4: All of the above.

[-] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 105 points 3 weeks ago

and we're tired of Denuvo lol

[-] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 82 points 3 weeks ago

Well I'm a game dev myself and drm is bullshit. Denuvo can get fucked

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 16 points 3 weeks ago

Too bad you're not a gamer like Denuvonian Man, you'd know a thing or two about games.

[-] jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 80 points 3 weeks ago

Denuvo's DRM is bad for games.

DRM is shite by itself as well.

[-] bitwolf@lemmy.one 51 points 3 weeks ago

Its simple.

Pirates don't ruin games for other players.

Pirates ruin games for the dealers.

[-] RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 weeks ago

Not necessarily even that. Piracy can benefit the developer by increasing popularity. Piracy made Bill Gates a billionaire despite his fighting tooth and nails against it.

[-] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 weeks ago

Pirates mostly enhance games, in my experience

[-] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

And also for longevity of the games, I heard that one company (I don't remember the name) selling pirated version of their games for modern system because they can't get rid of DRM themselves

[-] kbal@fedia.io 43 points 3 weeks ago

Well, he's not wrong that it's "super hard" to see any benefit of Denuvo for anyone other than the beneficial owners of Denuvo Software Solutions. Gamers might have a better than average ability to suspend disbelief, but that "new study" was pushing it a bit far.

[-] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 39 points 3 weeks ago

Good luck trying to PR like this garbage is useful to the end user, you gonna need it.

[-] icerunner_origin@startrek.website 25 points 3 weeks ago

Let's not be too hasty to call it garbage when it could in fact turn out to be rancid dog shit.

[-] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 38 points 3 weeks ago

Gravity is tired of humans saying it causes things to fall down.

[-] A_Asselin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 weeks ago

well... it doesn't. Mass bends space-time which is the reason why things appear to fall. Einstein figured that out a long time ago.

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 18 points 3 weeks ago

Is that the phenomenon commonly known as "gravity"?

[-] Louisoix@lemm.ee 9 points 3 weeks ago

It's like Jimmy Neutron calling salt sodium chloride lol

[-] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 weeks ago

That’s a long way to say “falling down”

[-] madjo@feddit.nl 38 points 3 weeks ago

Boohoo, Denuvo, cry me a fudging river!

[-] GrammarPolice@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 weeks ago

fucking*

[-] madjo@feddit.nl 13 points 3 weeks ago

Ducking heck! 😄

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 3 points 3 weeks ago

Fudging gremmar nazis

[-] 100@fedia.io 33 points 3 weeks ago

only good thing about their drm its so expensive very few companies will pay a subscription to keep it active forever

[-] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 29 points 3 weeks ago

How do you do, fellow gamers!

[-] Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 3 weeks ago

Well, is because its true.

[-] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Denuvo: I'm tired of this grandpa!

Everyone: THAT'S TOO DAMN BAD

[-] mister_newbie@sh.itjust.works 25 points 3 weeks ago

Denuvo rhymes with "fuck you, no."

[-] potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish 23 points 3 weeks ago

Denuvo and every employee there can suck my hairy, unshaven, sweaty, salty, moist, oily ball sack.

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

[removed by mod]

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 3 weeks ago

Denuvo Games Curator Gives a great and clear indicator so there's no way you could possibly buy one by accident, like the trolls keep trying to argue will happen.

[-] bitwolf@lemmy.one 9 points 3 weeks ago

This list is awesome. Unsurprisingly nearly every game has bad reviews.

They're not even for denuvo itself.

I wonder. Do the shitty shovelware games gravitate towards Denuvo? Or do they install denuvo as part of their enshittification process

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 weeks ago

I figure they must think they can make their games sell better if they include it because it still hasn't occurred to these dumbasses that if your games suck people just won't buy them. Maybe its cope, after all you can't tap into a market of people who don't want your game (well I mean you can, but most companies don't consider scamming people), so they assume all the people not buying it are pirating it.

[-] juliebean@lemm.ee 1 points 3 weeks ago

unless you buy a game that later adds denuvo, of course

[-] DesolateMood@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago

Adding denuvo later wouldn't do any good, if a game launches without it it's going to get cracked instantly

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 weeks ago

Exactly, adding it later just means people can use the earlier versions. Some wiseasses may argue about missing content but that's a stupid argument since cracked games don't get updates to them either unless new cracks are published, and that doesn't happen as often as actual updates are published.

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thankfully it doesn't happen very often and if a game is out for a long while it's a safe bet it very likely won't be added. If they do though that curator still helps because it makes it more visible on the store page, so you can give a negative review, block its updates, and downgrade to a previous version without it (whether that's officially through Steam's downgrade tools, or downloading it elsewhere depends on the circumstance). Or remove it from your account if you don't care about it anymore.

[-] mogranja@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 3 weeks ago

Didn't steam allow refunds regardless of hours played for some game that did this recently?

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

Not sure, I guess it would depend on the game, and whether or not it was badly affected enough by the update for Valve to consider it broken by the update.

[-] style99@lemm.ee 17 points 3 weeks ago

We should totally just go along with DRM, or they might decide to break other stuff. This is totally an innocent request, and far from attempted extortion.

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I am not going to say that I think Denuvo is good for gaming. I fully accept the importance of DRM for week one sales (which make a huge difference to publishers) and understand that activation models are incredibly useful for that but I also think activation model DRM is fundamentally shite because it renders games unplayable in order "Why is this random ass server plugged in in this closet?".

But I do think people overly attribute negative performance to denuvo. Implemented correctly, there are MAYBE a few checks per hour and that is system noise. The problem is that, for whatever reason, so many games end up adding the denuvo checks to critical path operations that either completely delay the loading of a new area or tank performance completely because it is checking a dozen times per minute. And that is 100% on Denuvo for not working properly with the studios they license their tools to.

But for the ones who DO implement it sanely? It is barely noticeable to the end user... from a performance standpoint.

Remember kids: Hate mother fuckers for what they actually do. Rather than going the "bitch eating crackers" route.

[-] Drathro@dormi.zone 16 points 3 weeks ago

Regarding performance implications: I believe Denuvo DRM runs through a type of virtual machine environment. While this theoretically should be relatively transparent, there are definitely documented instances of it negatively impacting performance, sometimes severely. Maybe the VM it runs in is just bad with certain instructions/calls on certain CPU's or api's, hard to tell for sure. But it's not nothing.

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 weeks ago

Basiaclly all DRM models have had variations of that problem. It, again, boils down to what the check is, when they do it, and how often they do it.

For example:

Back in the day, Splinter Cell Conviction (and a few other ubi games) actually connected to a remote server for game logic. If you were running a cracked version and a blocker (I think peerguardian is what we used? Been a minute) then you would actually notice your game just completely hang when you went through certain doors and Sam wouldn't start talking until you turned PG off.
Similarly, quite a few securom and even starforce games would add the DRM check as part of the fundamental gameplay loop so you were potentially checking dozens of times per SECOND. This was a rapid checksum or a value in memory but it was still very noticeable

And Denuvo is kind of the worst of all worlds since it is an activation model which, potentially, involves phoning home to a server.

To my knowledge, every single case of "Denuvo killed performance in mah gerhms!!" was either

Complete noise. Like, less than 5% difference which could just as easily be a case of having a different tab open in your browser
A case of a poor implementation where the checks were way too frequent

I am not aware of anything that was fundamentally denuvo itself. I would love to know more if you can point to a documented example but everything I have seen that actually has numbers ends up being one of the above.

[-] Drathro@dormi.zone 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You seem to be arguing it's all about the implementation of the phoning home itself- I'm arguing that running the entire executable/binary through a virtual environment likely has far more drastic performance implications than a phone home, regardless of frequency. It probably IS mostly an implementation problem, but I'm more inclined to believe that the implementation of the Denuvo virtual environment is at fault, not just a server call and response delay. **EDIT: Apologies, forgot to include a link- see HERE. Looks like a substantial/measurable difference. Not massive, as measured here, but certainly enough that if your hardware is just barely able to run a game it could easily make or break the entire experience.

[-] Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

I can't forget how my PC get lagged as fuck every time to time in sonic mania when it have denuvo... I mean, sonic mania, my PC can run monster hunter world full graphics with 60fps stables.