Denuvo anti-piracy 4.8 has been defeated again

[Bit_Guardian]

1 minute ago, Doobeedoo said:

It's not all black and white. Some games that didn't have DRM were pirated but many that did also bought it later on. And if game is great and proven within some time, many will praise it and recommend to buy it. They want to rely on initial launch interval for sales, therefore DRM so, they want to ensure certain quota of sales that way. But if certain games actually worked properly on launch and not require huge updates of fixes and DLC slicing from overall planned game before release even, then maybe many would be ready to pay for that game. Or you know, actually pre-prder with joy knowing they will get quality for their money. They definitely study the market, they also ignore stuff. 

It's really lame and terrible having DLC already like done months before vanilla game launches, it's such a joke.

And again some games releasing unoptimized for a while after release and/or even buggy as well. Shortly, rushed. Those that are smart don't want to support such practice. Because it's an insult. Therefore many will pirate to see if game is good and some will buy, maybe larger portion won't cause they don't want to support that way of business.

On the other hand, certain game series reputation is also to take into account and many sheep that would buy it without question. Huge sales = success business wise, doesn't say game is great quality as well automatically. 

 

If for a game there's a need for microtransactions and loot boxes it's either a f2p game or a game where it's targeted as like main thing for keeping players to come back to it. If you need such things in a game to keep making players back, then game it self is usually bad. And yes game quality does speak for it self, if you look on it as consumer side that doesn't want to be scammed and not from corporate greed side. 
There are many games, for like Dark Souls many see it as very hard and are turned off by that. The Witcher is amazing series. 

Game being popular doesn't make it a good game. Depends if you talk about f2p or not. Like top f2p games LoL and HS they're both meh. One of like top buyed games being CoD doesn't make it amazing game. It's still really much same thing every release.

 

Some amazing games may not get a ton of attention cause of not very known company, not huge advertisement, or it's new and not continuation in series. Showing microtransactions and lootboxes in every game is terrible and it certain games can dilute quality in certain ways. Also remember there are many sheeps that just play cause of freaking skins and gameplay is second to them.

No one has provided any evidence that this happens in a statistically significant volume.

 

Lots of maybes, no evidence to support any of them. Joe consumers are greedy idiots at the end of the day. If they can find it for cheaper (free), a good number of them will get it for cheaper. That is the basics of market economics.

 

No it isn't. Developers coming up with side stories while the main game is being worked on and polished, and putting time into that on the side while working on the main game during the day, is a hallmark of passion. That it got done so early is not a testament of greed. I work on side projects to benefit my team outside work hours because they deserve it and we're buried six feet under as it is with more projects pouring in. My boss is actually having to tell me to stop. You WANT those kinds of developers, writers, etc..

 

The marketing teams set the deadlines. You can't blame the dev teams for that. Certain times of year are prime for release. Being late means more cost and way lower sales. It's the nature of the beast.

 

That's still theft. Game companies have every right to defend themselves against this with DRM, and it's proving to make them more money to use it.

 

See the COD franchise and any competitive shooter game. Games, just like people, can be famous just for being famous. You can't fix stupidity.

 

Emphasis on Usually. There are many exceptions to this rule in the Steam Store that aren't played en masse.

 

No, but you don't get popular (at the start of a series) without being high quality. After that it's purely a matter of marketing. We've seen this in the COD, Modern Warfare, and Battlefield series.

 

I'm sorry but you don't have a good counterargument yet. Businesses which are successful aren't stupid. DRM stays until someone proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it actually costs more than it makes. That's all there is to it.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

I mean for offline it says you can download up to 3333 songs per device on max of 3 devices. That's with premium which is $10 it says. I mean it's not even available for my country, would need to use VPN too. Also, I really don't need it. Keeping everything locally where ever I want it so.

That’s wierd. Maybe it’s different for each country. Well if you can get the same thing for free then I don’t see why not haha

[Doobeedoo]

1 hour ago, Bit_Guardian said:

No one has provided any evidence that this happens in a statistically significant volume.

 

Lots of maybes, no evidence to support any of them. Joe consumers are greedy idiots at the end of the day. If they can find it for cheaper (free), a good number of them will get it for cheaper. That is the basics of market economics.

 

No it isn't. Developers coming up with side stories while the main game is being worked on and polished, and putting time into that on the side while working on the main game during the day, is a hallmark of passion. That it got done so early is not a testament of greed. I work on side projects to benefit my team outside work hours because they deserve it and we're buried six feet under as it is with more projects pouring in. My boss is actually having to tell me to stop. You WANT those kinds of developers, writers, etc..

 

The marketing teams set the deadlines. You can't blame the dev teams for that. Certain times of year are prime for release. Being late means more cost and way lower sales. It's the nature of the beast.

 

That's still theft. Game companies have every right to defend themselves against this with DRM, and it's proving to make them more money to use it.

 

See the COD franchise and any competitive shooter game. Games, just like people, can be famous just for being famous. You can't fix stupidity.

 

Emphasis on Usually. There are many exceptions to this rule in the Steam Store that aren't played en masse.

 

No, but you don't get popular (at the start of a series) without being high quality. After that it's purely a matter of marketing. We've seen this in the COD, Modern Warfare, and Battlefield series.

 

I'm sorry but you don't have a good counterargument yet. Businesses which are successful aren't stupid. DRM stays until someone proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it actually costs more than it makes. That's all there is to it.

For certain game companies, the evidence is there, for like The Witcher no DRM and it was selling well for a long time so CDPR did well no. It speaks for it self. It's a popular series. Certain new IP needs to gain traction and popularity so newer releases can follow to it and be successful. 

 

Yes it's terrible how they do that and no it's not exactly how you say so. They can plan for some side story, but don't tell me that while most of the game is not done yet they are working on some post end game DLC before it. It's not how it works for them. Many "ready on launch" DLCs could've been  the main part of the game, they may adapted it differently so it fits for DLC more but no reason it shouldn't be in main game release. It's not passion how you put it, sure for artists yeah, but at the end how company operates, no. It's ways of earning cash plain and simple. Make a complete game, put everything you can and have idea and release it. Work on DLCs and other story later on. Not having DLCs on disk day one to unlock it later with extra pay. Many DLCs are barely worth it. 

It's definitely not how your situation is maybe, it's not comparable to big game company at all. 

 

I know there are set deadlines. But it's a BS justification that doesn't hold the water. What about many games before shitshow that started to happen years now, they worked perfectly on release. Optimization wise and bug free. Lately, for a while, every other game haves issues. It's either lazy or bad programmers and the 'Consolization' issues along. Depends how devs also choose how they work etc. it's not like they're all completely tied and can't release it when it's more polished. 

 

Of course high quality is mandatory to get noticed and have success down the line. With BF and specially CoD they release games often as smartphones, fragmentation for no reason and people buy same thing.

 

There are many things that speak for them selves, some proven on it's own for some you read between the lines. You're just talking pure corporate. Not consumer side and how it affects it. Not to mention many people propose various things to companies for better and they do ignore it. And who said that DRM cost more than they can make while it's active. It's not even about that. You ignored ton of things that people actually want and not get scammed and expect for charged money quality wise too. 

There are so many excuses you give for companies which there's little to no justification what so ever.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

COD? 

Are you implying that COD players are sane?

 

[leadeater]

55 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Are you implying that COD players are sane?

 

You mean insane? As someone who has played a fairly large amount of COD, yes that is exactly what I'm saying 

 

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

8 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Devs waste resources with it, to prevent launch piracy, eventually it gets cracked anyway, it just screws actual buyers. It was proven that it's better to go without DRM anyway. They just need to realize that and put effort into game more and not worry so much about piracy. Quality of the game and people voting with their wallets will show.

The problem is try to explain that to the money people who would rather kill their own mother than lose one dollar.

 

[Bit_Guardian]

19 minutes ago, NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle said:

The problem is try to explain that to the money people who would rather kill their own mother than lose one dollar.

 

I've worked with finance people. They're not that bad honestly. As soon as you're talking $100,000+, then they care.

[Bit_Guardian]

2 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

For certain game companies, the evidence is there, for like The Witcher no DRM and it was selling well for a long time so CDPR did well no. It speaks for it self. It's a popular series. Certain new IP needs to gain traction and popularity so newer releases can follow to it and be successful. 

 

Yes it's terrible how they do that and no it's not exactly how you say so. They can plan for some side story, but don't tell me that while most of the game is not done yet they are working on some post end game DLC before it. It's not how it works for them. Many "ready on launch" DLCs could've been  the main part of the game, they may adapted it differently so it fits for DLC more but no reason it shouldn't be in main game release. It's not passion how you put it, sure for artists yeah, but at the end how company operates, no. It's ways of earning cash plain and simple. Make a complete game, put everything you can and have idea and release it. Work on DLCs and other story later on. Not having DLCs on disk day one to unlock it later with extra pay. Many DLCs are barely worth it. 

It's definitely not how your situation is maybe, it's not comparable to big game company at all. 

 

I know there are set deadlines. But it's a BS justification that doesn't hold the water. What about many games before shitshow that started to happen years now, they worked perfectly on release. Optimization wise and bug free. Lately, for a while, every other game haves issues. It's either lazy or bad programmers and the 'Consolization' issues along. Depends how devs also choose how they work etc. it's not like they're all completely tied and can't release it when it's more polished. 

 

Of course high quality is mandatory to get noticed and have success down the line. With BF and specially CoD they release games often as smartphones, fragmentation for no reason and people buy same thing.

 

There are many things that speak for them selves, some proven on it's own for some you read between the lines. You're just talking pure corporate. Not consumer side and how it affects it. Not to mention many people propose various things to companies for better and they do ignore it. And who said that DRM cost more than they can make while it's active. It's not even about that. You ignored ton of things that people actually want and not get scammed and expect for charged money quality wise too. 

There are so many excuses you give for companies which there's little to no justification what so ever.

OMG you and the walls of text...

 

NO! The evidence is not there! All we have is the raw sales, and the Witcher series is not God!

 

It's exactly as I say so. I've worked on Unreal Engine. I've talked to Mike Acton about this kind of thing. You're completely delusional and ignorant of how these decisions are made.

 

Yes, post-game DLC starts about 6 months prior to release very regularly. The Dragon Age games are in fact examples of this.

 

They could've been part of the game if you gave it to the writers 12 months prior to launch and let them properly integrate all of the consequences and experience into the story Arc. I'm sorry but you're living in a dream world.

 

It does hold the water, to the tune of 30 million dollars or more.

 

Games these days have 10x the code vs. what you're comparing them to, because they are that much more advanced.

[alphaproject]

I also believe the game runs better with no anti-piracy things running in the backgrounds.

 

If a game does get cracked even a year later it just means people that play it were never going to buy it anyways... "usually".

[Jito463]

6 hours ago, ApolloX75 said:

I remember when "DRM" consisted of a hunt through the manual for page 53 word 5 on line 7. If you didn't have the manual you had a useless stack of floppy disks.

I remember those days.  A lot of them even printed the text in red, so that photocopiers (at the time) couldn't be used to make a duplicate.

[Oshino Shinobu]

I feel like quite a few people are missing the point of Denuvo. The purpose of it isn't really to make games un-crackable (though that may be something they're aiming towards), the purpose is to stop games being cracked right away to make sales as good as they can be for the initial release, which is where most of the sales come from. 

 

People seem to be saying developers are wasting their money with it, but its achieving its purpose by taking 3 months to crack. The main thing is to not have the game cracked during the initial release when demand is at its highest to prevent people from just pirating the game instead of buying it. Sure, those who really don't intend on buying the game will just wait, but those that really want it and would just prefer not to buy it may end up purchasing it legitimately if they can't pirate it right away. 

 

In that sense, I feel like it doesn't matter if it gets cracked, so long as they can make changes to ensure new releases aren't cracked right away. There's a load of reports of crackers having issues with Denuvo but eventually getting round it. That seems pretty reliable to me as its achieving one of the most important purposes of it. It's not making game un-crackable, but delaying the cracks can make a big difference in sales figures during the first few weeks or months of release. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I feel like quite a few people are missing the point of Denuvo. The purpose of it isn't really to make games un-crackable (though that may be something they're aiming towards), the purpose is to stop games being cracked right away to make sales as good as they can be for the initial release, which is where most of the sales come from. 

And if the game has multiplayer to protect the launch experience from trolls and bots filling the servers ruining the experience for everyone else. Denuvo also helps delay the cheating not just pirating of the game.

[EG!]

It's all nice that it blocks hackers/trolls in online games but for singleplayer games I don't see the need for it. The combo of Denuvo + VMP is what tackles even the best CPU's and I have issues playing for instance AC: Origins wheremy GPU is not working hard but my CPU is maxed all the time it stutters and laggs. The big companies forget that even torrenting is free marketing, I know people that got the witcher 3 via torrents and loved it so they talked about it all the time and eventually bought it, I was interested enough to buy it to so more to gain for CDPR. 

 

They do not lose money, it's the same with the music- and film industry, the most torrented movie is Avatar which still is the highest grossing movie and I don't think that pirates where going to see it anyway, so if they talk about it there you go free marketing again.

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, Bit_Guardian said:

And plenty of people would pirate a quality game when it costs $70 to buy. Sorry but DRM is a necessary evil because a few (tens of thousands) bad apples spoil the bunch. These companies know for a fact that the DRM investments they make pay for themselves. Successful companies are not run by fools. They don't waste time on increasing costs if they don't have to.

 

thank-YOU!

Sorry but no, even without DRM they made a pretty healthy profit AFAIK so there is 0 reason to torture your paying costumers with DRM. It wont solve anything, just makes more problems. BTW even more will pirate a shitty 70$ game after it gets cracked and the money sucking yanked out from it...

[asus killer]

3 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I feel like quite a few people are missing the point of Denuvo. The purpose of it isn't really to make games un-crackable (though that may be something they're aiming towards), the purpose is to stop games being cracked right away to make sales as good as they can be for the initial release, which is where most of the sales come from. 

 

People seem to be saying developers are wasting their money with it, but its achieving its purpose by taking 3 months to crack. The main thing is to not have the game cracked during the initial release when demand is at its highest to prevent people from just pirating the game instead of buying it. Sure, those who really don't intend on buying the game will just wait, but those that really want it and would just prefer not to buy it may end up purchasing it legitimately if they can't pirate it right away. 

 

In that sense, I feel like it doesn't matter if it gets cracked, so long as they can make changes to ensure new releases aren't cracked right away. There's a load of reports of crackers having issues with Denuvo but eventually getting round it. That seems pretty reliable to me as its achieving one of the most important purposes of it. It's not making game un-crackable, but delaying the cracks can make a big difference in sales figures during the first few weeks or months of release. 

look at AC:O, you got on the one hand the amount of people who bought it because there was no crack vs the amount of people who didn't buy it/returned it because of DRM issues. What do you think the actual balance is? you pissed off your actual consumers to get a few pirates that are not loyal, that could not care less about supporting games and just bought this time and next time if the game gets cracked sooner will not buy it.

Is this a good practice?

 

And i bet you when the game gets cracked you still get an insane amount of downloads. Look at Just Cause 3 a game that took something like 1 and a 1/2 years to crack and it's still one of the most downloaded game on any tracker. 

The majority of pirates do not buy a game just because it's uncrackable. 

[EG!]

3 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I feel like quite a few people are missing the point of Denuvo. The purpose of it isn't really to make games un-crackable (though that may be something they're aiming towards), the purpose is to stop games being cracked right away to make sales as good as they can be for the initial release, which is where most of the sales come from. 

 

People seem to be saying developers are wasting their money with it, but its achieving its purpose by taking 3 months to crack. The main thing is to not have the game cracked during the initial release when demand is at its highest to prevent people from just pirating the game instead of buying it. Sure, those who really don't intend on buying the game will just wait, but those that really want it and would just prefer not to buy it may end up purchasing it legitimately if they can't pirate it right away. 

 

In that sense, I feel like it doesn't matter if it gets cracked, so long as they can make changes to ensure new releases aren't cracked right away. There's a load of reports of crackers having issues with Denuvo but eventually getting round it. That seems pretty reliable to me as its achieving one of the most important purposes of it. It's not making game un-crackable, but delaying the cracks can make a big difference in sales figures during the first few weeks or months of release. 

It's not developers that want Denuvo it's publishers that want it, if it doesn't have any side effect I wouldn't care but if publisher keep releasing games like AC:Origins, which is a great game but is partially ruined by Denuvo + VMP then there is a problem, I can't recommend Ac:Origins for that reason to pc gamers with not high end CPU's, so I give bad reviews for a game I really like, people refunded it for the problems it caused. The witcher 3 (GoG) is then the exact opposite the people who torrented the game if they like it they recommend it, might even buy it or the next in a series, if they didn't they would have refunded it anyway, so free marketing there.

 

There is another negative side effect of DRM, if their servers (Denovo but also Steam, ...) go down everyone that bought a DRM game can't play his game so basically your game is a rental, if Denuvo for instance goes bankrupt all the games that used it would be unplayable unless cracked.  I have enough friends that don't buy any DRM game and only play one if it gets cracked.

 

So there is a loss in customers with things like Denuvo, if it's CPU tasking you exclude potential customers and screw over your real customers, the pirates won't care and "the commonity" will hate on the companies that keep Denuvo, look at the perception of EA and Ubisoft, you miss out on free marketing so I still think it better to have your game torrented then screwing your normal customers over.

[mrthuvi]

14 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Many?  I doubt that.  Some yes, but not "many".  I'd wager there's very few devs (or more accurately, publishers) who do so.

The following games's denuvo has been removed since cracked.

 

Bethesda/id Software: Doom

Square Enix: Hitman (IO Interactive), Life Is Strange (Deck Nine)

EA: Mass Effect: Andromeda (BioWare)

Gearbox: Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (People can fly)

 

And other indie games such as: Inside, 2Dark, Syberia 3, Microïds, RiME, Adrift, Agents of Mayhem.

 

It's not the norm but not that uncommon.

[DeScruff]

20 hours ago, CommandMan7 said:

The best way to stop piracy is increase access and ease of use to consumers. Just look at what Spotify has done to music piracy; of course, it will never go away completely, but the average person no longer wants to go through the hassle of downloading mp3's of questionable quality from some unknown site and then having to manually sync them to all their devices. It's far easier to just get spotify and access all of the music you want for ad supported free or with an ad free subscription across all your devices.

If you want to go earlier, look at iTunes.

I'm pretty sure Ive read somewhere that music piracy declined with the rise of iTunes.
Also think about it. It came out right around the height of P2P file sharing services, and yet people turned to it because it offered a similar (if not better) service to piracy. - And the prices were fair, specially when all you cared about was 1 song on the album.

[Bit_Guardian]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Sorry but no, even without DRM they made a pretty healthy profit AFAIK so there is 0 reason to torture your paying costumers with DRM. It wont solve anything, just makes more problems. BTW even more will pirate a shitty 70$ game after it gets cracked and the money sucking yanked out from it...

A pretty healthy profit in your opinion. Businesses are not charities and shareholders are right to push for maximum growth.

 

Sorry but after a game's been out a few months and the review videos have come out, they're not even going to pirate it if it sucks.

 

You still have no good counterargument.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

16 hours ago, Bit_Guardian said:

But GoG only deals in end-of-life games anyway. It's not a platform for new releases.

GoG started as an abandonware site, but it currently is a platform for new releases as well.

 

7 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I feel like quite a few people are missing the point of Denuvo. The purpose of it isn't really to make games un-crackable (though that may be something they're aiming towards), the purpose is to stop games being cracked right away to make sales as good as they can be for the initial release, which is where most of the sales come from. 

 

People seem to be saying developers are wasting their money with it, but its achieving its purpose by taking 3 months to crack. The main thing is to not have the game cracked during the initial release when demand is at its highest to prevent people from just pirating the game instead of buying it. Sure, those who really don't intend on buying the game will just wait, but those that really want it and would just prefer not to buy it may end up purchasing it legitimately if they can't pirate it right away. 

What is missing is any evidence that the number of players who would pirate it at day one and can't do so choose to buy it as second best (as opposed to waiting) leads to a significant increase in profits.

We have people in this thread arguing that some DRM-free games made a lot of money, but they don't have evidence against the profits being even higher with DRM. We also have people claiming that DRm is fundamental for the business and that's why firms do it, yet again providing no evidence than an alternative DRM-free strategy would have resulted in much lower profits.

All we have are references to how sales evolve over time, which doesn't tell us anything about the counterfactual scenario. Basically the critical experiment and/or clever identification strategy is missing, so both extremes are arguing purely on the basis of conjectures.

[Hiya!]

I think devs need to follow the example of CDPROJECT RED

[Bit_Guardian]

33 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

GoG started as an abandonware site, but it currently is a platform for new releases as well.

 

What is missing is any evidence that the number of players who would pirate it at day one and can't do so choose to buy it as second best (as opposed to waiting) leads to a significant increase in profits.

We have people in this thread arguing that some DRM-free games made a lot of money, but they don't have evidence against the profits being even higher with DRM. We also have people claiming that DRm is fundamental for the business and that's why firms do it, yet again providing no evidence than an alternative DRM-free strategy would have resulted in much lower profits.

All we have are references to how sales evolve over time, which doesn't tell us anything about the counterfactual scenario. Basically the critical experiment and/or clever identification strategy is missing, so both extremes are arguing purely on the basis of conjectures.

The evidence in my case is that they've continued to do it for five years now and obviously see it as still worthwhile. I'm pretty sure Pirate Bay and others still list torrents by popularity and download count, so the research is freely available.

[Bit_Guardian]

31 minutes ago, Hiya! said:

I think devs need to follow the example of CDPROJECT RED

An exception that proves the rule, nothing more nor less. They're not a company with shareholders they have to answer to for losing millions in sales to piracy 

[asus killer]

AC:O has 3 Drm layers: steam\origin, vmprotect and denuvo.

 

Cd project red puts ZERO layers of DRM. You can literally download the game and share with no extra work.

 

Now look at success in sales and happiness of customers and take your own conclusions.

[ItsMitch]

13 minutes ago, asus killer said:

AC:O has 3 Drm layers: steam\origin, vmprotect and denuvo.

 

Cd project red puts ZERO layers of DRM. You can literally download the game and share with no extra work.

 

Now look at success in sales and happiness of customers and take your own conclusions.

VMProtect will be defeated soon according to CW.