CTO of Machine Games on Piracy of Wolfenstein II: "you only proved that no drm is a bad idea"

[Beje]

I honestly do not give a shit at all about DRM. I have better, more important things to worry about, and it has never ever effected me once.

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Until it does. There's a lot of people that bought games in some online platforms from the mid 00s that can no longer access they product they paid for. Games using SecuROM are unplayable nowadays since the servers are down. Any old game from the early 00s using CD checks is straight-up unplayable on modern OS's since the anticopy measures left wide open security holes in the system that Microsoft won't tolerate any longer. I do have legitimate physical PC games that I have to patch with a "pirate" crack in order to be able to play them ffs. And you know what the publishers' response has been so far (with some notable exceptions) to these problems? Either a shrug or a middle finger.

 

[shimon]

So...they released a game with DRM...it was cracked before it was even released...meaning that only the paying customers will ever have to deal with it...and that proves that games should have DRM?

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No Denuvo was never there. Bethesda decided to skip it for TEW2 and Wolf 2.

 

[Jebusman]

I know we are on a gaming forum but I always found it interesting how for example if I said I pirated a game here everyone would jump on me or even get banned (at least on the other site), but music, tv, basically anything not gaming is kind of accepted or not really scoffed at. Piracy is piracy in my opinion - whatever the medium.

I am no saint as I am sure 99.9% of us here are not. Things like netflix, spotify, and steam sales have made being a legit consumer really easy and fairly priced in my opinion.

DRM sucks. I get the frustation of the dev here as I know what goes into making a game and seeing years of hard work basically stolen from you is a real tough pill to swallow. But with or without Denuvo this would have been cracked. Good games that don't punish the buyer (like DRM does) sell. Period.

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The thing about TV/Music is people sort of get disconnected on the legality of it when they're so used to just "seeing" it in places seemingly for free. If I go on Youtube right now I can find tons of music uploaded by the labels themselves. People see "Oh they're just giving it away for free I might as well just download it" and not make the connection that really only Youtube was given a license to distribute, and ad revenue is what pays for it.

On the TV side of things, it's more people used to broadcast TV and essentially getting it for free, again not making the licensing connection or realizing commercials are what allows broadcasters to obtain the rights to show these shows. Or making the connection that "You pay the cable company. The cable company pays the broadcaster. The broadcaster pays the studios".

Then you have the age/availability/support argument. If I want to watch a show, that is not legally available on any platform in my country, nor is being broadcast on any channel in my area, or is only available via third party resellers of old DVD/VHS/LDs or something, while downloading these would still be considered piracy, it's easier to morally justify the fact that there is no remaining legal way for you to give money to those who created it, so pirating at this point really does not equal a lost sale. When a legal avenue is available people should go out of their way to actually replace anything they've pirated with the legal alternative, but it's not a perfect world and I can imagine most people just won't bother.

Piracy is always a "bad" thing, but I wouldn't hold it against anyone if they've pirated something in the past. Hell I used to be an admin at a rom site years back, it's not like I've got a squeaky clean history.

 

[Blyr]

As long as it isn't something stupid like always-on DRM, sure.

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Oh yeah, definitely. Always online DRM is incredibly frustrating, there are just too many times where you might be left without internet (an outage, you're travelling, or what-have-you) and you simply don't have internet access. One of the (many) cases where the consumer is punished for legally buying a product vs. someone who pirates it :/

Absolutely. My biggest worry about DRM is that it'll make games in the future unplayable. This has happened far too often already between Securom, StarForce and GFWL.
If all publishers would pledge/guarantee to remove any and all DRM from their games like 2 years after launch, i would be much more accepting of it certainly.

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That's completely fair, for preservation purposes this should most certainly be in place! It's depressing enough to think about all of the history we've lost in games that are primarily online only as-is, like MMO's.. losing something we could otherwise hold on to because of anti-piracy measures is just salt in the wound.

This wouldn't happen because most would never remove. Some did with Denuvo but there are many games there that still have it. But, for the sake of the argument, yes I wouldn't mind, in the end I would just add 14 days to every single game and ignore the launch.

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This is also very fair, (I'd likely do the same, honestly)

 

[Deleted member 6949]

No Denuvo was never there. Bethesda decided to skip it for TEW2 and Wolf 2.

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Oh. I went back and read the op again and I still don't understand it honestly.

 

[Aeferis]

I get that he's upset but that's honestly a pointless statement. Denuvo would've been cracked day one anyway and, since there are many anti-DRM people, we don't know how many bought the game specifically because there was no Denuvo.

 

[shimon]

Oh. I went back and read the op again and I still don't understand it honestly.

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Basically he's mad that the game was pirated by some people bc he thinks the game is great and deserves to be bought. Blames not putting Denuvo into the game for all this I guess? Or just pirates overall.

 

[Xer0]

God, I can't imagine working on something for years, have it release, have a bunch of people steal it, and then having those people (and others) yell at you for being upset about it.

I know there's (a little bit) more nuance to that, but, I'd be just as pissed as he is.

 

[Durante]

For people who are inherently against DRM -- would you accept a middle ground where it exists for the first two weeks of a game's launch, and then is promptly removed after? I ask because I remember reading that's what publishers mostly intended to use it as a deterrent for anyways, and seems like a happy middle ground?

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Personally, I don't believe in DRM in any case, but I'm not against all forms of compromise.

That said, at least with current technology, your idea relies on trusting publishers to actually get around to removing the DRM. I'm absolutely not willing to do that.
If someone were to come up with a technology which guarantees self-un-drmification after a set period that would be a different matter.

 

[Blyr]

Personally, I don't believe in DRM in any case, but I'm not against all forms of compromise.

That said, at least with current technology, your idea relies on trusting publishers to actually get around to removing the DRM. I'm absolutely not willing to do that.
If someone were to come up with a technology which guarantees self-un-drmification after a set period that would be a different matter.

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Yeah, I don't blame you tbh, because publishers have no incentive to remove DRM themselves once they release a game, because as long as you bought it, then what do they care? (and with many of the larger publishers heading towards the games as a service model, an online connection will likely be required, so DRM itself won't be as necessary)

I really like the idea of a DRM that self terminates after a specific period of time though, it would be nice if companies who developed DRM kept the consumer in mind.

 

[Shuri]

Until it does. There's a lot of people that bought games in some online platforms from the mid 00s that can no longer access they product they paid for. Games using SecuROM are unplayable nowadays since the servers are down. Any old game from the early 00s using CD checks is straight-up unplayable on modern OS's since the anticopy measures left wide open security holes in the system that Microsoft won't tolerate any longer. I do have legitimate physical PC games that I have to patch with a "pirate" crack in order to be able to play them ffs. And you know what the publishers' response has been so far (with some notable exceptions) to these problems? Either a shrug or a middle finger.

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But why would they?

A videogame is a $50 piece of software. This is a one-time purchase that does not include 15 years of maintenance support. I deal with engineering software a lot on a daily basis, the kind of software that costs thousands for a single license. Did you know that you usually have to buy "maintenance contracts" with most companies that will allow you to get support (patches, troubleshooting, updated OS support) past the first year of ownership. Also, this is kind of software that has physical dongles, license servers and serials. We even have to dump pieces of equipment worth several thousands because the company that did them has folder and there are no support for modern OS and that there is no way to realistically use them with modern hardware.

Software support will always have limit, due to the ever evolving nature of the software industry

You paid $50 for a piece of software using copy protection that worked at the time of purchase with the current operating systems available. It does not entitles you to extended support 15 years down the line.

You will have to resort to work arounds, cracks, vm images, and such. Expecting companies to support legacy software forever for free is naive.

Software protection is there to slow down the average joe, not the hardware scene or the low end torrent leecher.

Also, people claiming that some software protection model is "useless" and "trivially beaten" is silly, you only had to copy paste a cracked executable into the directory of the game to make it to work. you had nothing else to you, so yes, it was trivial for you. But for the sceners behind the crack, it was lots of time dedicated to cracking this specific version of the protection. Some of those people have lifelong experience of dealing with reverse engineering of copy protections. So it wasn't 'trivial' or 'easy. The guys making those cracks are pros.

 

[Sinneslöschen]

He doesn't seem to understand the argument against DRM. Who has ever made the argument that no DRM would result in no piracy?

 

[Deleted member 2254]

DRMs may not be perfect but if it becomes a big enough hassle to get around for some people that they'd not keep on messing around or wait more, and their only chance to play it easily is buying it... the system has to stay. In the past when I couldn't afford many games I pirated myself, but then some games weren't cracked, or were cracked late, or later patches weren't fixed for the cracked version or the online didn't work. The only chance then was buying the game, and it worked because I bought the games I truly cared about. Wouldn't have done so if DRM was 100% perfect and fail-safe.

 

[Breeze]

People will pirate videogames anyway, his point is dumb. If anything he is disrespecting the people who actually bought the game by wanting to impose DRM like Denuvo on them.

 

[Durante]

Software support will always have limit, due to the ever evolving nature of the software industry

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There is a huge difference between no longer actively maintaining software and putting stuff in your software which makes it more prone to failure for your paying customers.

One is completely acceptable and expected, the other sucks.

 

[Deleted member 14649]

Didn't this leak because someone at Steam uploaded unencrypted files to the pre-load by mistake? If so I would be consulting my lawyers if I were Bethesda.

 

[gozu]

Piracy has always been part of humanity and it has not killed the SNES, the PlayStation, the PlayStation2, The 360 or the Wii on the console side. All these giant successes were widely pirated. (Ironically, the PS3, which was largely uncracked thanks to mandatory firmware updates, did poorly...)

The Super Nintendo has fake carts manufactured in Asia and sold across the world in underground markets. It had floppy disk based addons that allowed you to store games on 3.5" disks , load them into memory, then play the games on the super nintendo itself (blew my mind when I saw it).

The PSX was piratable by swapping disks and keeping the lid-detector fooled with a matchstick or something.

The PS2 was piratable by soldering a modchip on its motherboard. a $100 one-time expense.

The 360 was piratable by flashing the DVD drive (online gaming would earn a ban though, so only offline game were truly piratable)

The Wii was piratable by breathing on it (ok you had to use a usb stick) and online was also wide open.

Finally, the PC (and commodore 64 / amiga 500 / etc before it) was widely piratable from day one.

Yet the videogame industry (and indeed the software industry as a whole) has thrived in the past 40 years.

The focus should be solely on how to de-incentivize piracy and make money (in a an ethical way, aka no loot box gambling and other shady monetization schemes. )

How did the music industry do it? They couldn't use loot boxes, thankfully, so they turned to more consumer-friendly methods like suing fans:

1. Subscription services.

We have digital games. Why is there no $50/month game subscription service? Those $50 can be split between the authors of all the games you play that month (according to some "complicated yet fair" formula.

2. Merchandising.

The videogame industry has taken this lesson to heart, thank god, and are releasing swag, limited edition figurines, posters, and so forth. Nintendo does offer some minor perks to fans with nintendo points. More can be done in this vein to bring creators and consumers closer together. I'm sure you guys can think of a few.

What else can be attempted?

1. Let's take one step back and consider that the goal is not to get pirates to buy games legally. The goal is to get money in the pockets of developers and any other (ethical) method goes.

What about allowing software devs to have tip jars where people who loved their games can give them $10 or $20 to say thanks. If you've ever bought a game for $20 and thought it was worth $100, you could tip an extra $10 and help make sure that studio has money to make their next game better. If the friction is small enough. If it's a one-click-donate button that takes 1 second, then it could generate a decent amount of money.

2. Not sure what the best way to capitalize on pirates guilt, but there might some clever way to do it.

How would you fix/mitigate piracy?

 

[AdropOFvenom]

Honestly, I think publishers are just going to go back to delayed PC releases like Destiny 2. They'll try and encourage people to buy the game on consoles first instead, cite delays or extra optimization on the PC version, etc. It sucks, but piracy and their inability to find a DRM that works is going to ruin things for people.

 

[Durante]

Honestly, I think publishers are just going to go back to delayed PC releases like Destiny 2. They'll try and encourage people to buy the game on consoles first instead, cite delays or extra optimization on the PC version, etc. It sucks, but piracy and their inability to find a DRM that works is going to ruin things for people.

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For the vast majority of games, that will just cause them to make less money overall. In the general case (outside of "phenomenon"-status products like GTA5) late ports sell less, and do so at a lower ASP.

So I highly doubt that this will happen.

 

[Chessguy1]

what metric is he using when he says they made a successful game?

 

[Neo0mj]

Delaying Destiny 2 on PC only resulted in me not buying it at all.

No Denuvo was never there. Bethesda decided to skip it for TEW2 and Wolf 2.

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For Evil Within 2 it was that they accidentally provided customers a version without Denuvo and since it was already out in the wild felt that there was no point in putting it back.

 

[ninecubed]

DRM is obtrusive and annoying as hell but if people keep outright pirating I can't see why it would be expected to leave. Plus Wolf 2 is amazing

 

[low-G]

It's a confusing tweet because like others have said the DRM would be quickly cracked and it'd still be pirated. I don't think it's sarcastic either.

Does an initial day of DRM improve sales?

A little concerned about overall Wolf 2 sales when you look at that Wario64 picture. AC & Mario are just much bigger names.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Pirates are going to pirate regardless, in the end who is left with DRM? People who paid for it.

It sucks people not paying for your hard work, but cheer the people buying your stuff, stop chasing people who don't, it is useless.

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Could not be more true. DRM never stopped piracy nor it ever will. Devs have to start accepting this, it's been like this since what, the beginning of computer video games? Putting DRM might actually make things worst, as there's a cracked option without DRM available. I'm pretty sure the game will be a success, most peoples are now too lazy to hunt down pirate games when a simple click on the store of Steam and a good download speed later, you jump right in.

 

[elyetis]

The fact that a game is pirated doesn't make the lack of DRM a bad idea....
Your game is 3 in the top steam seller here, and actually has Mixed (967) review because from what I gather from those review : "crash freeze bug bug resolution and fps problem need patch".

Honestly, I think publishers are just going to go back to delayed PC releases like Destiny 2. They'll try and encourage people to buy the game on consoles first instead, cite delays or extra optimization on the PC version, etc. It sucks, but piracy and their inability to find a DRM that works is going to ruin things for people.

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They didn't stop doing that because they wanted to be nice even if it costed them money.. They did because it simply sell better that way, and at full price.

 

[medyej]

I've never had an issue with Denuvo, it's been the most 'invisible' of all the DRMs I've experienced in the past. It's a compromise I'd be willing to make to keep getting good PC ports if that's the tradeoff. However I'm not sure about the limitations it puts on things like modding etc due to locking down the executable, if it's too strict in that sense then it would be bad for PC gaming going forward.

 

[Deleted member 2840]

But why would they?

A videogame is a $50 piece of software. This is a one-time purchase that does not include 15 years of maintenance support. I deal with engineering software a lot on a daily basis, the kind of software that costs thousands for a single license. Did you know that you usually have to buy "maintenance contracts" with most companies that will allow you to get support (patches, troubleshooting, updated OS support) past the first year of ownership. Also, this is kind of software that has physical dongles, license servers and serials. We even have to dump pieces of equipment worth several thousands because the company that did them has folder and there are no support for modern OS and that there is no way to realistically use them with modern hardware.

Software support will always have limit, due to the ever evolving nature of the software industry

You paid $50 for a piece of software using copy protection that worked at the time of purchase with the current operating systems available. It does not entitles you to extended support 15 years down the line.

You will have to resort to work arounds, cracks, vm images, and such. Expecting companies to support legacy software forever for free is naive.

Software protection is there to slow down the average joe, not the hardware scene or the low end torrent leecher.

Also, people claiming that some software protection model is "useless" and "trivially beaten" is silly, you only had to copy paste a cracked executable into the directory of the game to make it to work. you had nothing else to you, so yes, it was trivial for you. But for the sceners behind the crack, it was lots of time dedicated to cracking this specific version of the protection. Some of those people have lifelong experience of dealing with reverse engineering of copy protections. So it wasn't 'trivial' or 'easy. The guys making those cracks are pros.

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What are you talking about? This isn't about "supporting" a product for 15 years or whatever. It's about putting a lock on your product that makes it stop working if your company dies, or if your client has no internet access or for any number of reasons. What an incredibly obtuse comparison. We're "entitled" because we're getting an objectively worse product than a pirate? Give me a break.


By the way, I have a machine running W98 right now, and while it's true that Microsoft doesn't support it anymore, they don't stop me from using it.

 

[wbloop]

Tbh, I only bought some games because I pirated them before and I know that I'm not the only one.

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I did the same thing with anime. I saw A Silent Voice this year in a fansub version before I went to the cinema screenings that were here in Germany in September because that film was so freaking good that I still wanted to pay at least some money for it. Also, there have been some studies that say that people who pirate music tend to support their bands through merch and concert tickets, which arguably makes more money for the band than a sold CD.

I personally don't pirate games anymore. I had a few pirated PC games around 2008 when I was 13 and those had viruses, so I stayed the hell away from stuff like this since then, especially since the advent of Steam and key stores and sales in console storefronts. There is no incentive for me to pirate anymore, tbh. If I'm not sure if a game will be great, I will wait until the price drops to a degree where potentially "losing" money on a bad game wouldn't hurt that much anymore.

 

[prudis]

That's completely fair, for preservation purposes this should most certainly be in place! It's depressing enough to think about all of the history we've lost in games that are primarily online only as-is, like MMO's.. losing something we could otherwise hold on to because of anti-piracy measures is just salt in the wound.

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Obligatory ... RIP Darkspore post :-(

 

[StrikeFirst117]

Is there any evidence that having drm on a brand new pc release is actually benefitting the sales of the title.
Because this kind of looks to me like how when Ubisoft were claiming their always online drm was very successful until they suddenly did a U-turn on that attitude.
There is no correlation to the pc sales being impacted enough when there is no drm installed to the product, at least not that I know of.
I'd love to know if I'm wrong at all about this.

 

[Briarios]

DRM isn't hard to understand, it's like any deterrent -- you stop some people, which is the best they can do. A padlock on your shed is terrible protection, too -- but it keeps most people from breaking in. But, if you really wanted to, you can easily break in.

If it makes them more money than it costs, they'll keep doing it -- and, I trust they have better data on it than we do.

 

[sdornan]

The bigger news for me is that it sounds like Wolfenstein 2 has been successful sales wise. That's super good news. Haven't played 2 yet, but excited that Machine Games will likely get the opportunity to close out their planned trilogy.

 

[CarlosX360]

People will pirate videogames anyway, his point is dumb. If anything he is disrespecting the people who actually bought the game by wanting to impose DRM like Denuvo on them.

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No, quite the opposite. He's insulting the piraters. People will pirate Wolf2, and they lose money.

 

[Deleted member 2840]

DRM isn't hard to understand, it's like any deterrent -- you stop some people, which is the best they can do. A padlock on your shed is terrible protection, too -- but it keeps most people from breaking in. But, if you really wanted to, you can easily break in.

If it makes them more money than it costs, they'll keep doing it -- and, I trust they have better data on it than we do.

Click to shrink...

I sincerely doubt that. Not all decision in the corporate world is backed up by real world data, you'd be surprised how many decisions are made based on stupid, outdated notions and just trying to calm down shareholders. The decision to keep using stronger DRM on their games has nothing to do with related data. It's more likely that they look at how many times a torrent is downloaded and use that number as "proof" that they're losing sales and DRM would help.

 

[test_account]

Denuvo costs at least $15,000 for publishers to implement on even the smallest game, so I imagine that they get a rise out of making publishers waste money.

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Are there any confirmed sources on this?

 

[Alexandros]

DRM isn't hard to understand, it's like any deterrent -- you stop some people, which is the best they can do. A padlock on your shed is terrible protection, too -- but it keeps most people from breaking in. But, if you really wanted to, you can easily break in.

If it makes them more money than it costs, they'll keep doing it -- and, I trust they have better data on it than we do.

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Personally, I don't trust publishers or their data. I'm sure Ubisoft had lots of data when they decided to implement always-on DRM in their games. This was the result:

However, Ubisoft provides a test-case. We are almost two years into its aggressive attack on PC piracy. Recently, Ubisoft called its "always-on" DRM a success , claiming "a clear reduction in piracy."

In terms of actual sales, however, the results seem decidedly mixed. Michael Pachter told Eurogamer that Ubisoft's "PC game sales are down 90% without a corresponding lift in console sales."

Pachter framed the problem in terms of piracy, as I'm sure Ubisoft frames the problem, but a 90% decline in PC sales is a catastrophic number. If piracy were the problem, then their "successful" DRM policy should have prevented such a free-fall.

Instead, PC gamers have stopped buying Ubisoft games. In fact, the decline of sales even calls into question the decline in piracy rates. All we know for sure is that Ubisoft have stopped people from playing their games. Full stop.

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http://www.pcgamer.com/opinion-ubisoft-piracy-and-the-death-of-reason/

In my opinion, that's all that needs to be said.

 

[Deleted member 43]

I sincerely doubt that. Not all decision in the corporate world is backed up by real world data, you'd be surprised how many decisions are made based on stupid, outdated notions and just trying to calm down shareholders. The decision to keep using stronger DRM on their games has nothing to do with related data. It's more likely that they look at how many times a torrent is downloaded and use that number as "proof" that they're losing sales and DRM would help.

Click to shrink...

You are making a lot of assumptions in a post deriding others for making assumptions.

Corporations are made up of people, and people often make decisions based off gut feelings rather than hard data. On the other hand, there have been studies about the positive effects various DRM mechanisms have had on media sales. This is a complicated situation.

 

[smuguire]

Speaking personally, I used to pirate almost everything back in the mid-late 90's. I used to rent PC games from the local mom and pop shop and make copies of the discs. Rarely though did I end up spending much time with the games I pirated. I downloaded them just to check them out or add them to a collection of burned discs in a binder, but I almost never played them. The games I did play were invariably the ones I bought. Half-Life. Duke 3D. Starcraft. UT. Full Throttle. etc. I still don't know if I only bought games that were more worth my time than others, or if I was spending more time with those games specifically because I spent money on them. Nowadays I have over 1100 games on Steam and I won't even pirate the OS on my PC. I also have terabytes of downloaded music and a vinyl collection into the thousands. Being able to access this stuff for free helped me get engrossed into those hobbies which ultimately led me to spend money in them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I understand why people pirate games, and as long as games are coming out someone is going to find a way to pirate them - (Dreamcast games being split into multiple CD-R's with specific instructions on which save points to save and reload with a new disc in so you could continue come to mind) - and certainly there is some kind of measurable loss there for pubs and developers but the attitude that every pirated copy is a lost sale is silly. I think most people pirate games simply because they're out there to be pirated and it's easy to do so. Which again I understand from a business point of view is a bummer... I just don't think it's a fight you can win. CDProjektRed is one of the most anti-DRM companies out there and they are beloved by their fans for it (recent revelations non-withstanding) which shows because they sold a ton of copies of that game.

 

[Deleted member 2840]

You are making a lot of assumptions in a post deriding others for making assumptions.

Corporations are made up of people, and people often make decisions based off gut feelings rather than hard data. On the other hand, there have been studies about the positive effects various DRM mechanisms have had on media sales. This is a complicated situation.

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And again I sincerely doubt that works with games.

 

[Discharger]

IMHO we can classify Pirates into Five Types :

1- ) Ones that has the money and method to buy the game but opted to pirate it
2- ) Ones that has the method to buy it but currently don't have the funds to buy it
3- ) Ones that has the money but don't have the method to buy it ( No Credit Cards or CC Not Working for whatever restricting reasons and No retail Stores near them , and even if there is a store then not all their favorite games are available )
4- ) Ones that has both the money and method , But they serve it as a Demo for the game as the Company didn't release the demo for the game
5- ) Ones that don't have either the money or the method to buy it

Type 1 is the one that should get the vast majority of the blame
Most of Type 2 problems were solved by the PC's and Steams decent discounts even if they didn't buy it at launch
Type 3 Could be solved by increasing the Steam Wallet presence like PSN/XBL Cards
Type 4 is the least worrying ones as long as they really will buy the game and they serve the Pirated copy as a Demo
Type 5 is a lost case sadly and I guess IMO they aren't a small number of pirates around the world

Click to shrink...

I think you've got this covered. As for my own experience, I used to pirate PC games back when I was a kid. Mostly because I couldn't purchase them myself, and didn't often get games from my parents, except on special occasions. I kept this up until:

1. Lack of funds was no longer a barrier to legally acquiring a game
2. I realized that if I wanted to support the developers that made the games I loved, there was no way to justify piracy

Once I realized I could no longer justify piracy, I completely stopped. If I can't stand to wait until a sale price, or want to go out of my way to support a developer for a release, I'll buy it on launch day at full price. However, if I can't justify it in my budget at full price, or don't feel compelled to play it right away, I'll put it on a wishlist and pick it up while it goes on sale.

For me, it was just a part of growing up, and making a more informed decisions about what I was doing, and hopefully, as others mature, they will make similar decisions in regards to piracy.

As for DRM, I support it as a concept, unless it crosses the line by compromising the gameplay experience, as Denuvo does. If there is a way for DRM to exist without affecting the game, I am 100% for it. Developers should be rewarded for their efforts, providing it doesn't hurt legitimate customers.

 

[Deleted member 43]

And again I sincerely doubt that works with games.

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Well, modeling is hard, because there isn't an alternate universe we can look at to test our results, but there certainly is data that suggest the longer you can hold off easy pirating for a game, the better in terms of sales.

How much better is a matter of debate.

 

[Deleted member 19721]

can someone explain to me why denuvo/drm makes them not want to support purchasing the game? i dont really understand.

 

[Dr. Caroll]

People seem to forget that at one point Ubisoft tried not putting any DRM on their games. This was around HAWX and one or two other games. It didn't work out. But I think folks should keep in mind that Ubisoft aren't stupid. Ghost Recon Wildlands might use Denuvo, but you can play the entire singleplayer offline. Ubisoft might eventually jump back on the always-online bandwagon for SP, but they haven't so far.

 

[We_care_a_lot]

I've never felt harmed by denuvo. People have a lot of false beliefs about it too. For examole, it doesn't affect peformance. Maybe it did at one time but it sure doesn't now. For another, I'm not worried about that hypothetical 20 years down the road when a game is no longer available. Anything worth playing will either have the DRM removed or be cracked anyway.

And while I'm usually online, I've never encountered a scenario where i couldn't play a denuvo game offline. As far as people boycotting it I bet the lost sales from people pirating non protected games are much worse than lost sales from people who refuse to but DRM protected games.

Besides, isn't like every steam game protected by drm? Do you denuvo haters boycott steam too?

 

[ZeroNoir_]

You take the CDPROJEKTRED route. Make a product that people wants to pay. Invest in those markets that pirate with low priced keys and you are golden.

You rather have a 15 usd sale in a development country than a pirated download

Dammit

 

[We_care_a_lot]

Yes because pirates give up as soon as they hit some DRM

The logic is the other way around. Pirates will strive through every hoop to play the game for free.

Paying customers will be put off and possibly refuse to jump through the intrusive DRM hoops.

Click to shrink...

Denuvo is usually pretty effective at keeping the game pirate free for the launch window , which is what counts

 

[ZeroNoir_]

Denuvo is usually pretty effective at keeping the game pirate free for the launch window , which is what counts

Click to shrink...

Wolfenstein was pirated two day before the launch day

 

[Discharger]

can someone explain to me why denuvo/drm makes them not want to support purchasing the game? i dont really understand.

Click to shrink...

I've never felt harmed by denuvo. People have a lot of false beliefs about it too. For examole, it doesn't affect peformance. Maybe it did at one time but it sure doesn't now. For another, I'm not worried about that hypothetical 20 years down the road when a game is no longer available. Anything worth playing will either have the DRM removed or be cracked anyway.

And while I'm usually online, I've never encountered a scenario where i couldn't play a denuvo game offline. As far as people boycotting it I bet the lost sales from people pirating non protected games are much worse than lost sales from people who refuse to but DRM protected games.

Besides, isn't like every steam game protected by drm? Do you denuvo haters boycott steam too?

Click to shrink...

I don't know how common this is, but as soon as Doom 2016 patched out Denuvo, I saw a decent jump in FPS (~15-20fps if I recall correctly). That's a big deal, and if I hear about similar situations in other Denuvo titles, I won't buy them until its been removed.

 

[We_care_a_lot]

Wolfenstein was pirated two day before the launch day

Click to shrink...

That's not even close to the norm though. Most games are good for a week or 2, especially high profile ones. If denuvo didn't have some level of effectiveness it wouldn't be the number one anti piracy tool

 

[We_care_a_lot]

I don't know that the presence of DRM would make anyone want to buy a game, but provided it's not obtrusive, I think many people (myself included), would have no qualms about buying a game that has it.



I don't know how common this is, but as soon as Doom 2016 patched out Denuvo, I saw a decent jump in FPS (~15-20fps if I recall correctly). That's a big deal, and if I hear about similar situations in other Denuvo titles, I won't buy them until its been removed.

Click to shrink...

I honestly doubt your frame rate issues were because of denuvo. There were probably just compatibility fixes in the patch. I think it's been a long time since denuvo had any negative impact on performance. People like to say it does, but it's pretty easy to prove otherwise