[Updated with Benchmark*] AC:O gets cracked 3 days after it's update containing Denuvo 4.9

[Master Disaster]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That and a study under the current environment tells you nothing about what would happen if all forms of DRM and copy protection was removed. Piracy can be fine and dandy now but if it was removed would it stay that way? You'd have to have some impressively sized balls to say nothing will go wrong and the situation won't get worse.

 

I have about as much faith in the general gaming community to not screw it up as people not abusing no free refills at a fast food place, they put those machines in view of staff for a reason and people still get away with it.

I know it's anecdotal but I don't believe it would be much worse if everything was removed than it is now tbh.

 

Removing all forms of DRM wouldn't turn everyone into a pirate, those that are intent on stealing would carry on doing so regardless and those that buy would carry on buying.

 

What it does is allows users to try a product before they commit to buying it and it's almost impossible to say what impact that would have. I can see it helping some people to make the decision to buy while helping other decide it's not a product for them.

 

Of course this could be mitigated by simply releasing demos again thus allowing users to try a sample before committing to buy the full product.

 

The other side to the discussion is does the amount of money saved by adding the DRM justify the cost of implementing the DRM into the product. I don't know how much a Denuvo license is but I'm guessing it's many 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands, then there's the cost of the extra development time to implement it on top of that.

 

Does Denuvo save them that many lost sales? Don't they think the people who are intent on pirating it will just wait until they can or not play it at all? DoesDenuvo force users to buy a product who otherwise wouldn't have?

 

I'm not sure the answer to any of those questions is yes.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Removing all forms of DRM wouldn't turn everyone into a pirate, those that are intent on stealing would carry on doing so regardless and those that buy would carry on buying.

 

What it does is allows users to try a product before they commit to buying it and it's almost impossible to say what impact that would have. I can see it helping some people to make the decision to buy while helping other decide it's not a product for them.

I do believe there would be an increase in the amount of people pirating games, how much don't know. I also believe the number of people who would pay for a game after acquiring it for free would also not be that large. This is something outside of what the studies focused on, human behavior and that doesn't show much favor to the I'll pay for it later if it's good proposition.

 

It does depend on the game though, if there is an actual benefit from paying for the game in terms of game play then yea most people would then later pay for it after trying it, though I see that spelling doom for single player games. Just bring back game demos, but make them from the real game and with do it via play time or progression. I'd see game progression working rather well of multiplayer games, get people hooked and invested then shake them down for some money if they wish to keep playing, NOT MICRO-TRANSACTIONS!

 

A distribution platform alone seems about the right level of DRM to me, like Steam. It generally has no negative effect for any party and adds convenience to the consumer and little impediment to the person who was never going to pay for it anyway. 

 

14 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

The other side to the discussion is does the amount of money saved by adding the DRM justify the cost of implementing the DRM into the product. I don't know how much a Denuvo license is but I'm guessing it's many 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands, then there's the cost of the extra development time to implement it on top of that.

 

Does Denuvo save them that many lost sales? Don't they think the people who are intent on pirating it will just wait until they can or not play it at all? DoesDenuvo force users to buy a product who otherwise wouldn't have?

 

I'm not sure the answer to any of those questions is yes.

It's my view that the money spent on things like Denuvo and VMProtect is a huge waste of money, so much is spent on that and developer time if they just off set the purchase price I'm sure the increase in sales would more than cover it.

 

It's the same for the music and movie industry, buying physical copies of those is so bloody expensive is it not obvious why people pirate those. I know I'd own a significant amount more movies if they were cheaper, currently I just hire them for $4 overnight. Surely me actually buying it is better than me hiring it.

[vanished]

It's no secret people already hate DRM, but this new kind that has a significant and unavoidable impact on performance is going to take both that hate - and the backlash against it - to a whole new level.  You want to create more pirates?  This is exactly how you do it.  Who in their right mind would willingly pay to have an inferior experience?  There's already more than enough reasons for someone to not want to pay (they don't like the developer, they are just cheap, they can't access the game easily due to poor distribution, or the existing DRM is already causing too many problems as it is, etc.), and now you're going to throw another huge one on the pile?  Even if none of the things I mentioned above applied and you were someone who otherwise would have bought the game, what are you going to be thinking to yourself now, knowing people who pirate it get a better experience?  When are these companies going to wake up and see how stupid they are being? 

[mr moose]

@Master Disaster @leadeater

 

I think the reality is there are too many unqualified variables in the debate to truly be sure of anything.  With the exception of one thing:  Seeing well off people with disposable incomes and good access to software and new content defend piracy mercilessly does nothing for the argument against DRM.

[Master Disaster]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I do believe there would be an increase in the amount of people pirating games, how much don't know. I also believe the number of people who would pay for a game after acquiring it for free would also not be that large. This is something outside of what the studies focused on, human behavior and that doesn't show much favor to the I'll pay for it later if it's good proposition.

 

It does depend on the game though, if there is an actual benefit from paying for the game in terms of game play then yea most people would then later pay for it after trying it, though I see that spelling doom for single player games. Just bring back game demos, but make them from the real game and with do it via play time or progression. I'd see game progression working rather well of multiplayer games, get people hooked and invested then shake them down for some money if they wish to keep playing, NOT MICRO-TRANSACTIONS!

 

A distribution platform alone seems about the right level of DRM to me, like Steam. It generally has no negative effect for any party and adds convenience to the consumer and little impediment to the person who was never going to pay for it anyway. 

 

It's my view that the money spent on things like Denuvo and VMProtect is a huge waste of money, so much is spent on that and developer time if they just off set the purchase price I'm sure the increase in sales would more than cover it.

 

It's the same for the music and movie industry, buying physical copies of those is so bloody expensive is it not obvious why people pirate those. I know I'd own a significant amount more movies if they were cheaper, currently I just hire them for $4 overnight. Surely me actually buying it is better than me hiring it.

I often joke that the only way we can be 100% sure would be to create an alternate universe and release the same product into both simultaneously, one with DRM and one without.

 

Unfortunately that's never going to happen.

 

I do agree that human behaviour studies are very interesting and that human behaviour is almost impossible to predict.

 

I found the whole CDPR Witcher 3 thing to be fascinating though, seeing the game sell as well as it did based solely on its merits made me feel that maybe DRM is a total waste of time and money.

 

7 minutes ago, mr moose said:

@Master Disaster @leadeater

 

I think the reality is there are too many unqualified variables in the debate to truly be sure of anything.  With the exception of one thing:  Seeing well off people with disposable incomes and good access to software and new content defend piracy mercilessly does nothing for the argument against DRM.

The irony there is rich people are usually given privileged access and don't need to pay for thing anyway but yeah, I agree with the sentiment 100%.

[apm]

i honestly believe that piracy doesnt have that much of an impact on sales as people want to believe.

you can find the most random early access game cracked, they still somehow sell and will eventually fully release (or get abandoned).

2-3 years ago i downloaded every new version of rimworld the same day it got released, before it was on steam and had no DRM.

now its gonna release soon, so people do buy good games. it recently even hit 1 million sales on steam.

 

in a time when you can actually refund games on steam, piracy isnt that much of a deal anymore. key sellers might be worse.

 

we live in a world where you can download the latest movie, tv show or whatever as soon as it released (or even earlier) and people still make more of it.

[Ryujin2003]

21 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

Snip.. Something about salt.. Snip

So, with that huge grain of salt, I ran Medium on both my gaming laptop (MSI GS73VR Stealth 6RF) and my Ryzen desktop, and my scores were higher than their GTX 1080 scores at medium, so I'm a little sketchy on what their exact "Medium" settings were. Even my desktop scored adequately well with RX 480s compared to their "cracked" version.

 

 

I also noticed the Session Timestamp is different. Is this a regional thing? I'm assuming it/s Feb 3rd, not March 2nd for their tests.

 

Again, my screenshots are with the Default medium testing to keep inline with what they have. My CPU isn't overclocked at this time, so this is stock 1700x (my H100i just came back from RMA)

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I often joke that the only way we can be 100% sure would be to create an alternate universe and release the same product into both simultaneously, one with DRM and one without.

 

Unfortunately that's never going to happen.

 

Maybe we can ask Mirror Universe Spock? See what happened in their alternate universe past? Maybe they didn't have DRM and that made them the way they are?

 

[ItsMitch]

23 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

I also noticed the Session Timestamp is different. Is this a regional thing? I'm assuming it/s Feb 3rd, not March 2nd for their tests.

 

Correct. 

[Ryujin2003]

@SC2Mitch, it looks like the "grain of salt" and me comparing the results with my two devices has been validated:

https://segmentnext.com/2018/02/05/assassins-creed-origins-denuvo/

 

Quote

Assassin’s Creed Origins Denuvo And VMProtect Cracked, Pirated Playing The Game Without Any Performance Gains

 

Assassin’s Creed Origins has had a double layer of protection and it seemed that the dual layers were the reason why the there was a huge overhead on CPU loads and that the CPU was being maxed out almost all of the time. Now that Assassin’s Creed Origins has been cracked you expect that the game will run better without Denuvo and VMProtect.

While that is what we thought, it seems that there is no impact on Assassin’s Creed Origins whether you play the original or the cracked version. This might have something to do with how crackers have bypassed Denuvo and VMProtect but from what we are hearing from gamers that have pirated Assassin’s Creed Origins, there is no difference.

We will be testing the difference between the two for ourselves and talk with some people in order to find out why there is no performance boost as anticipated. Stay tuned for more information regarding that in the upcoming day or two.

That's pretty funny if it has ZERO impact. I mean, even without Denuvo on console, it's still a very demanding game.

 

However, I don't think any testing of this "cracked" version will result in anything different since it appears to only bypass without actually eliminating Denuvo. So, maybe the hype-train on this died ages ago?

[ItsMitch]

25 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

That's pretty funny if it has ZERO impact. I mean, even without Denuvo on console, it's still a very demanding game.

 

With all due respect, I'd rather see some actual graphs from other parties instead of writing. 

e: 

There has been a video that's done to test the performence, it does seem like a very minor improvement. But the problem is that Denuvo and VM are still in the game which does make benchmarks very misleading. 

[lightningterror]

The impact would be higher on lower end systems I presume.

[TVwazhere]

On 2/3/2018 at 11:44 AM, Tech_Dreamer said:

Back when these movies were actually good. :'( 

[lefthandsword]

I download the game to see it for myself, I never get more than 30fps in the benchmark even on 720p (1440p @ 50% render scale) Very Low and the CPU is maxed 100% of the time. Is it just me or this game needs 8 threads to be playable?

[ItsMitch]

Just now, lefthandsword said:

I download the game to see it for myself, I never get more than 30fps in the benchmark even on 720p (1440p @ 50% render scale) Very Low and the CPU is maxed 100% of the time. Is it just me or this game needs 8 threads to be playable?

Not even my 8 thread i7 2600k (old) could even run it at low across the board, Game is horribly optimized for i5s. Ubi doesn't seem to care about even attempting to optimize it seems. 

[ARikozuM]

The only DRM we should have is Steam, Uplay, and... GoG. Nothing else as good management of a library is much better than adding more on top of it unless it’s anti-cheating devices.

 

Also, @Ryujin2003’s bench is what I’m seeing online. Minimal gains on all hardware types. The game is demanding and you aren’t getting past it. Though I wonder if there’s a setting that reduces the civilians or AI count.

[ItsMitch]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Though I wonder if there’s a setting that reduces the civilians or AI

In the .ini settings there might be. 

[Bcat00]

On 2018-02-03 at 11:51 AM, ExplosiveSloths said:

I feel bad for the people that had to spend money on that crap.

It's proving more and more useless.

It did its job, most sales happen in the first month anyways. Anything afterwards are usually intangible.

[Cheezdoodlez]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

Though I wonder if there’s a setting that reduces the civilians or AI count.

 

1 hour ago, SC2Mitch said:

In the .ini settings there might be. 

Looking through the .ini-file i found this setting "crowdDensity=0". I don't have time to fiddle around with it at the moment.

 

But in my mind it would be wierd if changing the number to something higher actually would reduce the number of NPCs. And Ive played the game at ultra settings at 1080p resolution so I doubt that I've turned it down in game. (Big patch so cant start the game atm)

[Roushik]

If we want to calculate the performance loss due to denuvo then Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is a good option. Steam version of the game has denuvo while GoG version is DRM free. If someone owns this game on steam then please do this test.

[ARikozuM]

52 minutes ago, Roushik said:

If we want to calculate the performance loss due to denuvo then Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is a good option. Steam version of the game has denuvo while GoG version is DRM free. If someone owns this game on steam then please do this test.

GOG.com does not carry its own GOG DRM, but does carry Denuvo in titles that ship with it. What GOG lets you do is trade games with someone unlike Steam, but Denuvo is still present in games shipping with Denuvo. 

[ARikozuM]

12 hours ago, Cheezdoodlez said:

 

Looking through the .ini-file i found this setting "crowdDensity=0". I don't have time to fiddle around with it at the moment.

You might be able to set it to a negative value.

 

Unfortunately, I swore off AC after the sh#tfests that were titled "3" (3 "Steps Back") and "Black Flag" (Should Have Been Flagged for sh#t AC gameplay unless you count your rowboat as a member of the Assassin Order).

[Roushik]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

GOG.com does not carry its own GOG DRM, but does carry Denuvo in titles that ship with it. What GOG lets you do is trade games with someone unlike Steam, but Denuvo is still present in games shipping with Denuvo. 

Based on the info from /r/CrackWatch Denuvo is not present in GoG version. Here's the source.

GoG page also states this on the game's page : "DRM-FREE. No activation or online connection required to play."

[Cheezdoodlez]

3 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

You might be able to set it to a negative value.

 

Unfortunately, I swore off AC after the sh#tfests that were titled "3" (3 "Steps Back") and "Black Flag" (Should Have Been Flagged for sh#t AC gameplay unless you count your rowboat as a member of the Assassin Order).

I tried changing the value to a negative value and increasing it. But the result is the same. The game changes it back to 0 on launch. So looks like it's not possible. Which isn't that surprising since it would be altering the gameplay experience.

 

I also ran the benchmark on the legit copy and the cracked one and the differences are nothing to get excited about. We're talking about a couple of extra fps, which imo fits inside the margin of error.

[Ryujin2003]

8 hours ago, Roushik said:

If we want to calculate the performance loss due to denuvo then Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is a good option. Steam version of the game has denuvo while GoG version is DRM free. If someone owns this game on steam then please do this test.

Maybe something LTT could do to cover DRM, what it is, and impacts if any?

[Roushik]

14 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Maybe something LTT could do to cover DRM, what it is, and impacts if any?

I would love that but I guess a lot of people need to request that. IDK how request works here.