Denuvo DRM Pricing Structure Specific to Crysis Remastered Leaked, over $100k for a Year

[Nside]

There is no hard data, only anecdotal evidence like "I know someone who buys games when cracks aren't available..."
or leaps in logic like "If they can't pirate it, they have to buy a copy."

All of those can be countered with "The pirates I know don't buy games" which I would argue is true for most.
For the few would-be-pirates that might buy a game that they couldn't find cracked, I would guess there's an equal amount of would-be-legit-customers that won't buy a game that has intrusive DRM. (Me being one of them)

I don't play cracked games, though I used to (as one poster said) as a demo. Since you can't really trust game reviews these days, it makes sense. I had always bought games I ended up liking, and uninstalled those I didn't. I just can't be assed to do it anymore though, or I use the 2-hour Steam return policy.

Again, there's no actual data on any of this, but there is proof that pirates don't make a company go broke. CD Projekt Red being an example, making enough off of DRM-free Witcher games to make one of the most highly anticipated games this year (unless it gets delayed again)... I'm hoping they get to Rockstar status after Cyberpunk, GTA needs competition.

One thing is for certain though, all legit customers that buy a game with intrusive and buggy DRM have to deal with intrusive and buggy DRM. I would suspect that the cost of the DRM and everything discussed above in this post probably equals out financially for publishers, and DRM just punishes legit customers.

 

[Delicieuxz]

I notice how only the Warez monkeys are whining about drm here... Interesting.

I buy all of my games, and I own over 1,000 across various platforms.

I don't like Denuvo because it threatens the integrity of games into the future - such as when a game relies on Denuvo servers to unlock or play, meaning that when the activation servers go-down, the game might become non-accessible. Denuvo also drastically eats-up FPS in many cases, and due to its performance-hungry nature it costs a person more in power consumption and can make their system run noisier. It is a very performance-intensive DRM. Denuvo also causes much longer loading times in many situations, and it can also cause other issues, such as non-smooth frame-times.

Opposing Denuvo isn't just about opposing DRM. It's about opposing stolen and significantly-worse performance, and about a paying customer's game being undermined and posterity of access to it threatened for the sake of combatting piracy. Denuvo is also often cracked within days of a new game's release. So, what was the point of it in those cases and why wasn't it immediately removed from the games once it was cracked?

Evidence continues to mount about how bad Denuvo is for PC gaming performance

 

[Nside]

One thing I forgot to mention, DRM is likely a solution decided on by committee.

Publisher CEO: "Our new sequel isn't selling quite as fast as the previous sequel we released 6 months ago. Why? I want answers!"

Executive Manager of Microtransactions: "It must be pirates."

Chief Director of Sequel Over-Saturation: "Definitely pirates"

Senior Vice President of Ensuring That Day-One-Patches Only Get Games Up To Beta Quality and Stability: "Oh, I heard that pirates are pirating more than ever these days."

 

[DukenukemX]

It's true, too.

Nice job outing yourself?

'
I'm outing myself, and look at all the shits I give. I'm sure everyone here has done it at some point.

 

[Crotan]

I mean this is hard forums, and we're several generations into both camps AMD and Intel offering a significant number of cores. It sucks that Denuvo has a performance impact, whether that be load times, fps whatever, but isn't that the point of progress. We all have the systems to run all these awful background tasks while also gaming. Whether that be anticheat/antipiracy etc. I mean I remember when my single single core computer was unusable during a virus scan, but now I have 16 logical cores, if the developers want to utilize some of those to protect their content go for it. Can a 4 core system even be considering a gaming machine in 2020? I do wish there was a little more transparency, I'm sure the developers/publishers are perfectly aware of the drawbacks of including Denuvo, but the gains to their release sales outweigh them. If they didn't they wouldn't use it. I'm also surprised at the price, that's pretty cheap when you compare the salary of a seasoned software engineer.

I buy a lot of games, and I have a beastly machine to play them at the fps I desire. if everyone bought the products they used, we wouldn't have denuvo, but that's not the world we live in. Coming from someone with the unpopular opinion that more PC FPS's should include kernel level anticheat, and with Denuvo being in that space now, I wish them well even if it seems everyone else would like to burn down their headquarters.

 

[DPI]

It sucks that Denuvo has a performance impact, whether that be load times, fps whatever, but isn't that the point of progress.

Unsubstantiated outside of one or two clickbait youtubers with questionable methodology. When you hear "DeNuvO Killz FPS!" it's people outing themselves as lacking understanding of how the tech even works, but want the narrative to be true, and believe that if they repeat the mantra enough that it will manifest into reality.

If Denuvo really "kills performance" then it wouldn't be some secret - every gaming/review site would have numbers to back it up. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the latest big AAA protected by Denuvo and runs just fine.

 

[Ranulfo]

This has nothing to do with the topic.

Sure it does. Denuvo didn't save them enough money to make a stable game that is hacker free and want people to keep buying their in game currency. They can't even keep the game launcher stable since a patch 2-3 weeks ago that boots off players from online in 30s - 2mins no matter what. Now they drop the prices to $5 for online only which will bring in more hackers. They've been fire selling GTA5 to get people into GTAonline for 2-3 years now. $15 for the game, $30+ combo deals with shark card cash. But Denuvo like totally saved them from crackers/pirates getting the story mode for free man.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I don't believe GTA5 ever had Denuvo, they do something in house.

 

[Delicieuxz]

Unsubstantiated outside of one or two clickbait youtubers with questionable methodology. When you hear "DeNuvO Killz FPS!" it's people outing themselves as lacking understanding of how the tech even works, but want the narrative to be true, and believe that if they repeat the mantra enough that it will manifest into reality.

If Denuvo really "kills performance" then it wouldn't be some secret - every gaming/review site would have numbers to back it up. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the latest big AAA protected by Denuvo and runs just fine.

Where do you get an idea that Denuvo significantly impairing performance is some secret? Why would every site have data up showing benchmarks of it if it was true? They aren't doing that showing it isn't true - so that undermines your theory that every site would be on this to prove it one way or another.

Denuvo is documented as being able to impair a game in 3 ways: FPS, load-times, and frame-times / stuttering. How much impact it has on any of those things varies from game to game. Some games don't show next to no impact (though there's typically always some, no matter how small), while others show a big impact. The benchmark videos above also show that in some games there's next to no average-FPS difference between Denuvo and no Denuvo - but that's not the case in every game, and there are other ways games can be impacted by Denuvo other than in average FPS.

https://www.dsogaming.com/articles/...significantly-less-stuttering-faster-loading/

The "methodology" of the presented video benchmarks, which is simply running each game both while it still had Denuvo and then after Denuvo was officially removed from the games by the publishers (except in the case of Origins, where it was meticulously cracked-out) isn't questionable at all. The tests are as straight-forward as can be: Launch the game, measure load times, run benchmarks, run graphs to measure FPS and frame-times.

Also, a game running "just fine" isn't evidence that it isn't being impacted by DRM, and isn't evidence that other games aren't.

You're stretching really far to create a dismissive narrative that isn't particularly substantiated by things. And in the process you're maybe outing yourself as someone who lacks understanding of how Denuvo's tech even works. Denuvo is interwoven into a game's code and is running constantly while a game with Denuvo runs. So, it's something that is able to affect a game at all times.

 

[Aireoth]

It's true, too.

Nice job outing yourself?

I think you know I don't really agree with M76 on almost anything, but he is right here. Pirates largely don't care to buy things, regardless of having the means or not. I wouldn't go as far as calling it a principle because thats a slight against principles.

Denuvo and other DRM have a larger impact on the legitimate user than the pirate, its a garbage system developed by marketers to try and push sales and marketers are only a step up from a pirate.

The BEST single way to combat piracy is price and availability, always has been, always will be, contrary to the puritanical nonsense spouted by many.

To me, it removes drm and makes my end experience better (and sooner) as I will not buy a game with denuvo until denuvo is removed some time later. I am not paying for a experience marred by DRM, plenty of other titles deserving of my cash and attension on steam or gog these days.