It’s common practice for PC games today to launch with Denuvo, a form of DRM designed to stop the spread of pirated copies of games, and it’s also common practice for developers to remove Denuvo several months after launch as interest (and the risk of piracy) dwindles. Less common is a developer publicly announcing it’s removing Denuvo from a game before it’s even out, but that’s the surprise Starbreeze pulled this Friday.
“Hello heisters, we want to inform you that Denuvo is no longer in Payday 3,” the developer wrote in a post on Steam on Friday. That’s pretty much the whole message—short and to the point, and seemingly a win on the good will front, with the Steam post racking up 524 thumbs up on Steam so far and another 10,000 or so on Twitter.
Payday 3 is less than a week away from its September 21 release, and Starbreeze is clearly looking to roll into the launch with an excited community behind it. Two months ago a thread on the r/paydaytheheist subreddit called out the inclusion of Denuvo and the responses were characteristically negative. This afternoon, one of the game’s developers responded to that thread to highlight that Denuvo has been removed.
Denuvo has long had a reputation for hindering performance in games and bloating their executables, though the company behind it, Irdeto, insists that isn’t the case. This summer it announced a plan to provide media outlets with two versions of games, one with Denuvo included and one without, to prove it has no impact on performance.
Dude that pre release beta was terrible almost everything was inferior to payday2 there is zero chance if me buying this game.
Didn’t play it but I had to drop PD2 with about 200 hours on it after all the microtransactions got too much to deal with. Coupled with the fact that hosts could leave games in the middle of a heist with no punishment and risking your account being banned for accidentally getting on a crew with a hacker, the game lost a lot of its appeal.
It is basically impossible to be banned at all from playing payday 2. The worst you can do is equip invalid stuff, which marks you as a cheater and most people kick marked cheaters.
Idk my account was banned for about a month within the first year of the game coming out because a hacker started spawning infinite money bags on the Harvest bank. It took about a month of emails with support to get my account unbanned. It’s possible that they’ve since slacked off on enforcement, but I haven’t played the game in easily 5 years at this point.
Payday 2 did two things that drove me away: fundamental changes to the gameplay long after release that did not improve it (heavyhanded stealth nerfs), and an absolute mountain of DLC, complete with power creep.
I will be waiting quite a while before touching Payday 3 because I want to see how they will monetize it. Remember, it’s up against the likes of Deep Rock Galactic which is not at all abusively monetized. We do not need to suffer that shit again.
Good it’s on gamepass after release so you can test it out until it eventually leaves.
I mean, to be blunt, the game was never going to beat PAYDAY 2. PD2 is years of updates and content additions to make it fun despite the shitty engine, PAYDAY 3 is a brand new game with a lot of potential but all of it unrealized.
Damn that’s sad to hear.
All they had to do was remake payday 2 with a few improvements/new puzzles/ maps and they would have made bank.
Payday 2 sold 40 million copies full AAA price too (like 79$ back then or wtv). They should have had the money to make a good game.
Tbh I’m not really a fan of this stance either. If I’m buying a sequel I expect meaningful improvements, otherwise you’re just ripping me off for something that could have been a dlc or expansion to the first game.
Tbh, a large part of payday2’s problems stem from being built on a racing game engine. Redoing pd2 on unreal straight would be of course a lot of work, but the end result would be a better product that I would pay for. Payday3 on the other hand doesn’t look like something that I would enjoy based on the fact unlike pd2.
I played the beta.
It’s prettier Payday 2 with some quality of life tweaks. Plus it’s cross platform multiplayer which means I can PC with my Xbox friends.
That other guy is just salty. Whatever, it’s a brand new game for $40, not $70. I’d say give gamepass a shot if ya wanna rent it for a month.
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Hell yeah we love to see it
Alright!
As soon as I saw they would be using denuvo I said to myself “nope! Fuck this game”
Hope they keep their promises
Appreciated but strange. Did they look at the sub cost and went nah or something else? I mean could have just wanted it for the beta but idk seems overkill (heh heh).
I don’t understand why anybody would pay for it while it can be cracked… sure its likely only one person in the world can crack it atm but if she wants to crack it she can and then it’s gonna be uploaded and repacked by multiple people.
But its multiplayer only (which has its own problems). So a crack would be pointless. Its always pinging home, so it just wouldn’t work.
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I’ve never played any of the paydays so yeah I’m not sure, some multiplayer can work with self hosted servers etc.
But yeah if it’s only official servers even more reseaon not to pay for the service
Good. Having Denuvo in an always online game was fucking stupid
I still won’t play it because it’s another always online live service
a plan to provide media outlets with two versions of games, one with Denuvo included and one without
If end users cannot test it’s useless.
Based Starbreeze
I used to play PD2 with international friends, but latency being what it was I could only really play loud missions. Here’s hoping modern netcode somehow solves the issue of being spotted by guards that are behind a wall from my perspective.
So, do people actually play Pay Day? All I know is that it’s a game. Haven’t seen trailers, haven’t seen anyone play it on Twitch, it’s like a “fake” game that’s a joke that’s been going on for a really long time
I mean the last one was released in 2013, it’s not exactly super relevant but if you’re that unaware of it I assume you were playing habbo hotel or whatever little kids played 10 years ago.
Holy shitballs. It feels like just yesterday we were firing up payday 2 on release day with a bunch of friends and risking having a seizure at any moment on the “start heist” page.
I figured yeah payday 2 was like 5 years ago, time for a new one. 10 fucking years… i need a drink!
Oh man, I feel old now. It was so fun when it came out. I remember the first time I solo stealthwd the nightclub. I kinda got burnt out when it went more absurd. Like after John wick.
Man I was playing habbo hotel 20+ years ago
I’m aware of it like I’m aware of NFL games. They’re just kinda there and offer nothing new
Some people, like me, are probably just waiting to see what happens. Payday 2 was awesome, but after release it got microtransactioned and piecemeal DLC’d to high fucking heaven. I don’t care if the beta is good, I want to see what it’ll become before I get invested.
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Look at steam charts. Payday 2 is always in the first page. It’s very popular.
…are you an A.I.? Your comment is so incomprehensible that I fr think it was A.I. generated
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Yeah it’s one of those fake games they put in the movies so the movie company doesn’t have to pay licensing fees
They could have just called it “Game” and I wouldn’t have been any the wiser
