Legendary PC developer says Denuvo is “a punishment to the consumer” : piracy

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 100 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Running With Scissors is a "legendary" developer?

Postal was a violent mess that didn't age well.

Postal 2 was a buggy mess that also didn't age well.

After that, it was just legitimately bad games on top of the humor not aging well. (They literally don't even acknowledge Postal 3)

Seriously, who the fuck would label them legendary? They've been a broken mess for over a decade.

[-] Zorque@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago

People who agree with their stance on DRM.

Theres a definite trend of people elevating the value of opinions of those they agree with. It makes any kind of intelligent discourse very hard to do.

[-] wolfshadowheart@kbin.social 20 points 1 year ago

They didn't release the third game, it was done by a third party (I believe with some licensing shenanigans?), which is why they don't acknowledge Postal 3. They didn't make it. Which is why they (somewhat recently) have given the A-OK to pirate that game.

I'd assume that last part is why they say legendary.

[-] miracleorange@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

No one said the legends were good.

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 year ago

All this serves to prove is that you have fucking god awful taste

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

I'm thinking that's gonna be a bit of projection on your part.

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 year ago

I'm honestly disappointed to see people disrespecting two absolute classics in such a way.

I can understand not liking the first postal, but postal 2? I'm afraid there is no hope for you

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Glad to know you never grew out of your edgy gamer bro stage. Being able to pee on things is peak gaming, amirite? /s

I'm literally saying this as one of the few people who watched the Postal movie more than once simply because it had David Foley in it and I'm okay with bad movies.

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 year ago

Pretty much, yeah. I don't feel the need to posture as somehow intellectually superior to a game that is designed to be fucking stupid. I appreciate and recognise all art for exactly what it is.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's more that there's actually games that rise to the level of great art that are designed to be fucking stupid, like Katamari Damacy, which leans hard into absurdism, and is often quite funny, but more importantly the gameplay is original, brilliant, and fun. The art direction in KD is also off the charts quality, especially the music, all of which was written for the game.

Look, I loved Postal 2 back in the day (I always sort of rolled my eyes at Postal, but 2 seemed less serious and more tongue-in-cheek). I might even replay it someday, but it's not great art. Especially now it's ugly, it's clunky, more importantly it continues to be a buggy mess. Not even a Gary Coleman cameo could save it. They were fun games for what they were and for the time they existed in, and it's okay to remember them for that, but it's a little absurd to just act like the world hasn't moved on and that they were great art to begin with. Art direction was bad, level design was bad, there was a lot of bad stuff about the game, beyond even getting into the edgelord shit.

Bad art is okay. I love B-movies, but we don't have to pretend they're anything other than what they are: B-movies.

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 year ago

I'm sorry but that is exactly why postal 2 is good. Unpretentious, offensive, provocative, unpolished raw art designed to generate chaos - whilst simultaneously having that certain charm which is impossible to put into words (hence the cult following) - which is exactly what it did. All of that without punching down (OK there was a bit of dodgy stuff, but for the time period it isn't too bad). Truly one of the greats and you can't change my mind, so we'll have to agree to disagree.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it's fine to agree to disagree, but just one caveat

OK there was a bit of dodgy stuff

Man this game came out two years after 9/11 and went whole hog on the "all muslims are terrorists" stereotype. It punched down quite a bit.

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

Just my opinion, but that was an intentionally outrageous caricature of the narrative being served by the US government, and in fact the way many americans viewed Muslims at the time. Or it could be outright racism/sectarianism but idk I haven't looked into it at all. Thats the beauty of postal 2 I guess

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

but that was an intentionally outrageous caricature of the narrative being served by the US government

I actually agree with you here, but I had a serious experience years later that changed my mind on the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for folks like us who have any kind of media literacy to understand that it's maybe not meant to be making fun of Muslims, but rather America, but...

GTA 5 has this torture scene, right? It hit me like a brick wall one day when I met people who read that scene way, way, way differently than I did. I had read it as an indictment of torture. The problem is, there's way too many people who think that scene is cool as fuck and want to do that kind of shit in real life. It's like the people who look up to Scarface from the movie Scarface. Like these characters aren't good people or people to look up to, but because America is full of violent uneducated fucking yokels you had a bunch of absolute fucking idiots taking the exact opposite message from it. ( I mean, just look at Trump voters...)

You can't control how others interpret your art, and if you're not clear enough, you might end up in a similar position as the people behind Postal 2 and GTA 5, where you have a lot of folks totally misinterpreting what you're trying to say, and then deciding it means vile, horrible things are not just okay, but cool.

It's actually something I worry about a lot in life, because I've had so many times where I thought I was teaching a person one thing, but it turned out I was accidentally teaching them something horrible. In a country with basically no media literacy and an average 7th grade reading level, we can't actually take it for granted that absolute fucking morons might misunderstand us.

The problem in particular with Postal 2's caricature of the views of Muslims in America is that functionally, most Americans who played the game never understood that intent or cared. So when it came down to it, they further entrenched those ideas in the American consciousness, instead of them being read by most people as a critique. Was that their intent? No. Does it matter that the opposite happened? Yes.

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

That's a valid take, and actually explains why a large number of people will never understand the nuances or even primary message of art. For example, conservatives discovering the true meaning of "killing in the name of" by rage against the machine.

I suppose RWS knew the consequences of this, which reveals the nihilistic backbone of the game's theme.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not sure they knew the consequences, I think at the time, like me, they actually had more faith that the majority of Americans would read it as what it was. As a young person, I definitely thought there were more thoughtful people.

It's easier to critique now, 20 years on, because we're not experiencing the same things the video game industry was at the time. From the insufferable Jack Thompson to Hillary Clinton wanting to ban GTA over the leaked Hot Coffee code that wasn't in the main game, but locked away in files inaccessible to most, the industry was under attack and being blamed for all Americas ills. Several games, but mostly GTA and Postal, were holding up a mirror to American society and saying things similar to what I said in my last comment: "America has a bunch of ignorant violent gun-toting people living in it, and they were there before video games were, it's a violent consumer and celebrity obsessed society, so America maybe you need to sort your problems first before blaming us." At the time, a fair stance to take, but 20 years on, a decision that lead to a lot of negativity and more mixed feelings on the legacy of the game due to it.

It was easy to think back then that acceptance of gaming in the mainstream wasn't a given, but games now out-profit movies, and some of the biggest "blockbusters" are games. We were honestly probably worried over nothing.

[-] aksdb@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

I piss on people who talk shit about Postal 2 and then I throw a cow head over their fence. If they dare to continue I get the cat ...

[-] 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Poor cat, his hole can only take so much

[-] unonessun0centomila@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

While I'm not fond of the company, and perhaps legendary is a bit excessive, they're still a big name that made remarkable videogames. With Postal 2 they nailed it, can't say about the other 3 because I've never played them.

[-] verysoft@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For clicks and to bait comments exactly like this one.

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[-] privadesco@feddit.nl 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Denuvo is the apex of a long history of bad choices.

Maybe actually sell us the games in a way we really own it, without any sort of online activation/account/telemetry/data-gathering like when we could buy a disc and just use it, and it should all be ok.

I feel like a dinosaur every-time I think this nowadays, but what is so problematic with the "own as in physically own" that is so hard to implement? If they want to provide a service, sell a service.

In the past I used pirate versions of games I bought just to be able to play them offline, or because I did not agree with the terms of service. It is so much for our info, it goes beyond just knowing you are the real owner of the software copy: it comes to the point where it looks like it's to guarantee we are not its' owner.

Now some DRMs even destroy gaming performance and its just faster to use 'ked versions. I hope it changes somehow.

[+] BrownianMotion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

[deleted]

[-] Alimentar@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

That's the problem though. They want you to commit to a purchase and hope that you forget about your 2h grace window

[-] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago

Actually yes.

In my childhood it wasn't very easy to find a licensed copy (TBF, even pirate copy sometimes), but demos would be distributed with magazines etc.

And after playing a demo which you like a licensed honestly bought copy becomes emotionally much better than piracy.

It was a working mechanism. For games which are not crap anyway.

[-] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

You can return games on Steam tbh, enough of a demo for me if you're a Steam user.

I think you can also return physical copies? Depends.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Two hours really isn't enough for a lot of games. Some games you can't even get through the tutorial in two hours.

[-] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 1 year ago

Even the devs hate denuvo. It slows down the build times and makes it hard to debug.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 24 points 1 year ago

Crackers: We don't do it for the piracy, we just like the challenge.

Denuvo: Try this one then.

Crackers: Too hard bro, at least give us a chance!

I acknowledge that this isn't going to be a popular opinion in a piracy sub, but the main reason people hate Denuvo is that it works.

It's basically killed the entire game hacking scene, because by the time they break it, nobody is interested in the game any more. There's like one person left that can do it, and they're more than a little bit odd.

It may be "anti-consumer", but you know what was worse? All the other shit they tried on PC. Always online bullshit. Single player games that you couldn't save any more if your connection wobbled. Actual rootkits.

[-] ne0phyte@feddit.de 42 points 1 year ago

People hate Denuvo because it requires a regular connection to the Internet and has a big impact on the performance of games.

I'm not buying these games not because I can't pirate games with Denuvo (I don't really pirate games at all anymore) but because they tend to run like shit.

[-] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 18 points 1 year ago

I pirate because the original runs like shit.

[-] jsdz@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago

I haven't pirated any actual software since the 1990s (too cowardly) but my hatred for Denuvo and the like burns with unsurpassed intensity. I will never knowingly buy a game that includes it. "Anti-tampering" indeed. I'm not sure if that shit should be legally allowed at all, but certainly not in ordinary mass-market PC games.

It does require you be online, and it is essentially a "rootkit." Its malware features are more polite and better hidden than some of the worst of what has been tried before, but that just adds to the danger that it might be seen as acceptable by people who don't know any better.

[-] SlippyCliff76@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

I've seen Denuvo combined with the always online requirement with the latest Far Cry 6 on steam. The always online requirement makes a cracked version worth it in my use case.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

Most bad Denuvo stuff seems to come from any extra DRM they add as well, just in case Denuvo wasn't enough. Always online sounds like one of those extras, because I don't think it's part of Denuvo itself. I think the Denuvo online requirements are when you install, every X days (seems to vary from two weeks to a month, probably configurable per game), and when you change your hardware configuration.

Denuvo alone is enough, because as soon as Denuvo is removed, the rest can be removed by regular mortal hackers.

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[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 18 points 1 year ago

I think the best way is to just have basic piracy detection, if someone trips it, then have a message that you can get past appearing guilt tripping them for it lmao

[-] CluelessDude@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago

Back to OG times in gaming where you would have stupid hats saying pirate or other weird things happening in game like not being able to complete it if it was cracked, good times.

[-] HeavyCream@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

I’ve seen RWS’s take on this a bunch recently. This feels like a feel-good PR move because they don’t have any substantive updates on their actual games.

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[-] cyberpiggy@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Basically lit the fuse to keep people pirating...

[-] jray4559@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

It is bad for the consumer... but the alternative is instant cracks, as seen with a lot of games on r/Crackwatch that don't have the DRM.

Denuvo is the first software in a long time that has been able to successfully stop the supposedly inevitable march to cracking. It's a miracle that more AAA devs don't use it, since it works so well. (EMPRESS aside)

You can hate me all you want for saying this, but the war against piracy, for the most part, has been won.

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