When people try to defend denuvo because at best ‘doesn’t change anything’ but what does it add? That company is spending money and dev time to implement something that has 0 value to paying customers and you think that is good?
I did say ‘at best’, some rare cases of good implementation benchmarks show almost no performance degradation but those are the best cases and somewhat rare
I could maybe see an argument being made in favor of having these kinds of security measures for the first month after release to protect sales, since it’s usually the period in which most sales are secured; devs do need a sustainable income after all. But that would also necessitate ignoring the potential performance degradation resulting in a poor first experience for players, and many publishers just leave it in for the lifetime of a game, which is a disaster waiting to happen (as seen here).
Overall, I think piracy is mostly a pricing issue above all else. With AAA titles getting increasingly more expensive and being released in broken states, it’s not surprising that people don’t want to spend $70 on a game that they might end up hating and opt to “demo” the game first. Refund policies can help alleviate the issue, but are hardly a silver bullet, with games inserting tons of fluff at the beginning to ensure you exceed the playtime threshold.
Either deliver the games you promise, or price them according to what’s actually there, and I’m sure the majority of gamers would be content in paying full price. DRM only serves to increase friction for the honest people paying for your games.
The only devs who could maybe benefit from sales protection are precisely the devs who can’t afford to utilize it. Namely indie developers who actually see all the profit directly, instead of having been paid up front.
I get what you’re saying about devs needing income but devs already got paid for making the game. All revenue after goes to executives who had little to nothing to do with making the game and I know some people could argue that if the company doesn’t make money then the devs will be out of a job but that’s a BS propaganda argument. Even when games make record profits teams get let go. Fuck blizzard.
When people try to defend denuvo because at best ‘doesn’t change anything’ but what does it add? That company is spending money and dev time to implement something that has 0 value to paying customers and you think that is good?
I still remember AC: Origins. Crackers completely removed Denuvo from the executable and saw a significant boost in performance.
the latest i heard about this was atomic hearts.
a denuvo free version leaked and it performed much better, like upgrade better.
Except that it does change stuff: It can have massive performance impacts on some games, which really sucks, considering these games are 70 bucks
I did say ‘at best’, some rare cases of good implementation benchmarks show almost no performance degradation but those are the best cases and somewhat rare
True.
I could maybe see an argument being made in favor of having these kinds of security measures for the first month after release to protect sales, since it’s usually the period in which most sales are secured; devs do need a sustainable income after all. But that would also necessitate ignoring the potential performance degradation resulting in a poor first experience for players, and many publishers just leave it in for the lifetime of a game, which is a disaster waiting to happen (as seen here).
Overall, I think piracy is mostly a pricing issue above all else. With AAA titles getting increasingly more expensive and being released in broken states, it’s not surprising that people don’t want to spend $70 on a game that they might end up hating and opt to “demo” the game first. Refund policies can help alleviate the issue, but are hardly a silver bullet, with games inserting tons of fluff at the beginning to ensure you exceed the playtime threshold.
Either deliver the games you promise, or price them according to what’s actually there, and I’m sure the majority of gamers would be content in paying full price. DRM only serves to increase friction for the honest people paying for your games.
The only devs who could maybe benefit from sales protection are precisely the devs who can’t afford to utilize it. Namely indie developers who actually see all the profit directly, instead of having been paid up front.
I get what you’re saying about devs needing income but devs already got paid for making the game. All revenue after goes to executives who had little to nothing to do with making the game and I know some people could argue that if the company doesn’t make money then the devs will be out of a job but that’s a BS propaganda argument. Even when games make record profits teams get let go. Fuck blizzard.