Despite controversy, Denuvo has effectively protected a lot of PC games from being pirated/cracked

DSOGaming writes: "A lot has been said about Denuvo. A number of gamers claimed that their SSDs broke down due to this anti-tamper tech, and that some games suffered from performance issues due to it. However - and since we've tested a lot of games that are powered by Denuvo - we can safely say that those rumours were not legit at all."

[CoNn3r_B]

Hopefully with the mitigated risk of piracy, developers won't be afraid to go all out on PC more and prevent bad ports from happening.

[ninsigma]

That would be great! No more batman catastrophes (I haven't even played the game because I got a steam refund after finding out about the mess).

[The 10th Rider]

Doubt it. Most people who are going to pirate games aren't going to buy them full-price anyways. Witcher 3 can be had completely DRM free, it sold perfectly well. Piracy is just an excuse to get more from genuine, paying consumers. If publishers cared about PC games in the first place they wouldn't allow bad ports.

[garrettbobbyferguson]

"Prevent bad ports"

90% of the ports PC gets are the definitive editions of games. There are one or two fringe cases lately like GTAIV or Batman.

[The 10th Rider]

@garrettbobbyferguson,

Eh, I'm a PC gamer (just built a new rig for NVIDIAs new cards!) but a lot of PC games of poorly optimized and I've tried out games that still have the controls from the Xbox versions of the game in the tutorial. Although you can get far superior visual, and usually at a better price, but a lot of publishers don't care outside of scraping the last bit of revenue from a few extra consumers.

[Ashlen]

All DRM does is keep people from playing games for free. No game that has used Denuvo has shown any definable increase in sales and Witcher 3 sold extremely well on PC with no DRM. Make a good game and it will sell regardless of DRM.

I mean at this point it's basically... Does a developer want to pay a lot of extra money to keep people from being able to play the game for free? There so far is little reason to expect the cost to license Denuvo to repay itself in extra sales.

[sdcard4gb]

Absolute truth.
Games sell on quality alone.
I mean I could've just pirated The Evil Within and played it for free... And so I did, but not past Chapter 3, I think... After that I deleted my pirated version and ventured forth to buy it with a season pass. I did so mostly because I had SEVERE Resident Evil and Silent Hill flashbacks all of a sudden. And the game didn't disappoint.

[Pullmywaffle]

You played that terrible game to chapter 3 and THEN bought it? Yikes

[Volkama]

Eh? How do you suppose anyone measures the difference in sales of a game with or without DRM?

You can't, but despite that you see fit to use the success of The Witcher 3 as your barometer. As if arguably the best game of the last 3 years wouldn't have sold well if it had DRM?

Plenty of publishers are using Denuvo, and you can be damn sure that they care more about the sales than about spiting you.

[The 10th Rider]

Ask just about anyone who pirates if they're going to pay full price for a game at launch. Most won't, unless it's a game they really care about. In which case most people will pay the price regardless. It's quite simple really. The Witcher 3 is just an excellent example of that playing out.

[Ashlen]

You can measure it. Exposure/expected sales of genre vs actual sales. And it's especially easy in the case of games that are part of a series how it sells in comparison to other games in the series.

Just cause sold less Fifa 15 and 16 didn't sell more than prior games Batman and Mad Max both failed to meet expectations with Arkham Knight selling far less than the prior games. (though admittedly it had other issues) Anno to the best of my knowledge didn't sell as well as previous titles Tomb Raider definitely didn't sell well. In fact of that list of games none of them can really make any kind of claim that they sold really well except Battlefront and that sold well because it had the backing of the years most popular movie in Star Wars.

[sullynathan]

eh Witcher 3 sold because it had lots of hype. Lets be serious here, TW3 does have DRM if you buy it from STEAM & Origin, it only had no DRM, when bought from GOG. Of course CDPR can profit by selling their own game on their with their own terms through their own distribution services.

[Ashlen]

What's your point exactly?

Witcher 3 sold well because it was a good game, lack of DRM didn't hurt it. It sold better than most of the games with Denuvo. EA has their own distribution as well.

[sullynathan]

@Ashlen you skipped my point completely then. TW3 sold well because of hype and advertisement, not because it was actually good. Did you think after both the first and second game sold 1 - 2 million each, that the third game would just sell 10 million because people just automatically found out the games were good? please.

[Ashlen]

Uh... ok. Well regardless of agree/disagree clicks I'm going to have to say I think most people would say TW3 sold well because it was a good game. I mean, it was the most critically acclaimed game of 2015 and won more awards by far than any other game... I haven't really ever heard anyone before you say it sold well because of hype.

[The 10th Rider]

Don't pay attention to sullynathan. He said Witcher 3 won tons of awards because of blind fanboyism from journalists. Here's a little fun fact, it beat out The Last of Us for the winning the most game of the year awards of any game, even though less awards were given out last year than in 2013.

[sdcard4gb]

Not for long. Denuvo is a system, systems get cracked. Pirates like me pirate games to understand if they deserve my money and how well they perform on my PC.
Example: I bought MGSV like a good MGS fan I am, but I sure should've waited for it to get cracked and understood how pathetic the story is and how choreful the game is overall with it's "helicopter-in,make-X-amo unt-of-Y-disappear, helicopter-out" repetition. Shitty MGS, the worst one to date, even Portable Ops feels like a much more fulfiling story experience then this.
On the other hand I have DOOM, which I bought because it's DOOM and I love me some old-school machismo slaughter. The game is great, I bought it, but I didn't quite expected how badly my computer is going to run it. It would've been much better if I had an ability to test-run it first.
Piracy is great and it will never die, Denuvo is just a momentary inconvenience for us.

[2pacalypsenow]

"Pirates like me pirate games to understand if they deserve my money and how well they perform on my PC. "

Thieves like me like to steal food to see if im gonna like it.
Thieves like me like to steal a car first to see if its worth my money

[jessionpc]

Bullshit. You can steal food, you can steal cars and those you stold from ~cant~ get it back. They can't trade it, they can't use it again, they have LOST something.

Digitally downloading a video game online through your own payed ISP, while is most certainly grey area, is ABSOLUTELY NOT stealing.

People can change the definition all they want, and move goalposts. But people downloading games cannot be likened that to a street thug who walks into a store and shoplifts.

More like... Walking into a bakery to smell all the fresh pie, smelling and realizing all the secret ingredients, taking that home, downloa- buying some spices, and baking your own identical pie.

Edit: OH OH BUT THEY HAD TO BUY THOSE SPICES, PIRATE'S DO- They pay for their internet, do they not?

Braaaaaainwashin, marketing gonna take plebs through the ni HIIIIIGHT.

[sdcard4gb]

What jessionpc said.
Learn your shit, boi.

[2pacalypsenow]

lol

[Psychotica]

@jessionpc - It actually is stealing because when you pay you are granted a software license to use it. Without paying you have no legal right to it at all, just like you have no right to drive a car or go fishing without first purchasing a license.

[Kleptic]

This is a lot of 'I think this is how the legal boundaries of software should work', and then arguing with zero understanding of what the sale of a game even grants you...

First, Jessie...'paying' your ISP does not grant you all of the internet's contents for 'free'...your argument makes so little sense, i'm not quite sure yet why I am even replying...

A game is an intellectual property created by 'someone'...and then also distributed by 'someone'...both of these take money, time, technical skills, and effort...and therefor gives them a claim on what's created...the only grey area is that it's somewhat intangible...

walking into a bakery and 'smelling the pies', then realizing what is in the pie...doesn't make the pies just materialize for you for free simply because you got a summer bus pass to get to the bakery...and that is exactly what you're saying...If you want the same pie without buying it, you then have to properly acquire the ingredients to do so...the funny part is, you're allowed the exact same freedom with a video game...if you don't want to buy it, you don't have to, and you're free to make your own (good luck with that)...

and like it or not...digital theft IS just like shoplifting, or more specifically...theft of service...as game sales are likened more as access to services through their licensing policies...either way, criminally, that is how it is approached when discovered...

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Problem is that it hammers performance and you can't prove a pirated game is a loss sale. So all you do is Piss off legitimate buyers.

[2pacalypsenow]

Blame the pirates, if it wasn't for them games wouldn't need copy protection to prevent people from stealing them.

[kraenk12]

What is there to blame?! Piracy doesn't mean sales are lost. It only means more people get the chance to play the game.

[2pacalypsenow]

Someone played the game without buying it = lost sale, game developers don't make games just for people to play them they also make them to make money. No matter how you spin pirating a game is stealing, if you cant afford it or you don't think it's worth the money, wait for a sale or find another hobby. But dont act like Piracy doesn't affect game developers.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Your logic is off, you can't prove the person who pirates would have otherwise purchased the game.

[2pacalypsenow]

yeah which makes them thieves , devs work hard on these games and should be compensated for their work, and these pirate assholes steal the games

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

I'm not arguing whether pirates are thieves or not. I'm arguing that legitimate consumers are the only ones bothered by this shit. Which is often ignored.

[TheDreamCorridor]

If the seller does not offer the content to you at charge, that means that you're stealing it.

Plain and simple.

Enough of these PC pirates trying to twist arguments and try and actually debate what constitutes as theft and what does not.

If PC piracy wasn't such a big deal, then developers and publishers wouldn't bother discussing it.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

No one is arguing if its theft or not. Read what people are saying. You can't assume someone who pirates would have otherwise purchased the game. It's far more likely they won't buy your game at all. Hell I've opted to not buy some games on pc because of performance hampering drm before. So if anything it probably dissuaded people from buying x game. Gray market keys are far bigger a problem imo.