Denuvo DRM and Sales

[antipunt]

This is just something that I've been curious about lately. Denuvo-DRM has been toted as being uncrackable by the pirate community, or at least, for now (and the past few months). There was an old argument back in the day when some argued that piracy didn't affect sales that much because most people who pirated weren't going to buy the game anyway.

Since Denuvo has been so effective (I think Tomb Raider, Just Cause3, Doom, and some other games have it), I was wondering if anyone had been following sales statistics. Some of these are pretty hyped-up games, so wouldn't it theoretically be a good metric to see if piracy really does affect sales?

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm not sure if sales statistics would be a good indicator. A spike in sales could be caused by dozens of factors, and while effective DRM that discourages piracy could, in the minds of businesses, be one of those factors, it isn't the only one. So you would have to show that there are enough people to affect sales that wouldn't have bought the game if they could have pirated it. Even if there were a significant number of people in that situation, you're unlikely to get many of them to admit it.

Ultimately, it's one of those situations that boils down to a lot of "You can't prove it works" followed by "You can't prove it doesn't work." What we do know is that DRM has often harmed the legitimate consumers, and I would say that that's a good enough reason to still be concerned about it, if not against it.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

If you make a good game you don't have to worry about piracy. Look at The Witcher 3 and GTA V as examples. The Witcher 3 doesn't even have DRM and GTA V has something similar to Denuvo (anti-tamper tech) that makes it almost impossible to crack. Both games sold like hotcakes on PC. Both were pirated a lot as well but regardless of that they surpassed the sales expectation. I think PC version of GTA V sold more than 4 million copies. So it's not the DRM or anti-tamper, it's the quality of the game that matters the most and the respect that gamers have for the franchise and their creators.

You'll never be able to convince all pirates to buy games because most of them are kids and teenagers without credit cards. And paying for expensive type of protection to protect your games from kids that wouldn't buy it anyway is just a waste of money IMO.

Piracy really is a thing of the past when it comes to its potential impact on sales. Steam took care of that because gamers want to feel like they're a part of something. They want to engage in Steam discussions, share their profiles, achievements, screenshots etc. Steam provides people with enough of an incentive to buy the game rather than pirate it. Unless you're 12 or something.

At least Denuvo doesn't actually impact performance severely like some anti-tamper methods of the past. At least I think it doesn't. Although every Denuvo protected game other than Metal Gear Solid V (that I have played) had long ass load times. Impossible to prove that it's due to anti-tamper, especially since MGS V doesn't have that problem.

Fact is, most AAA publishers don't provide enough content that would justify the asking price. Just compare the usual AAA game to above mentioned The Witcher 3 and GTA V. Both can be played for hundreds of hours. But most AAA publishers nowadays cut their games into pieces to sell it for $150 basically. And then they wonder why PC gamers don't want to buy them. There's more games on PC than on consoles. That's why. If we don't like one AAA game we can find other games to play for $10 (or even free) and wait for a sale of that AAA with a shitton of DLC. That's what's impacting the sales the most because people are tired of that shit.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

All I know about the effect of Denuvo is that any game that uses it is a no buy for me.

 

[The Lunatic]

Denuvo is definitely putting me off buying games that feature it.

I trust steam. I know that if I go to sleep, chances are my entire steam library won't lock me out when I wake up.

Likewise, I have faith that CD-keys won't magically stop working, or that Origin won't disappear overnight.

Denuvo though? I have no reason to trust them, they popped up over night and suddenly I'm expected to believe they're here for the long haul and I'm to trust them with gating my access to my own games.

I think trust is to be earned, a random copy protection that popped up does not have my trust, and given I don't trust it to keep me able to access my own games, I'm just not going to buy games that feature it.

 

[Jandau]

First of all, Denuovo isn't uncrackable. It's just hard to crack and takes a while. I am 100% sure it's not uncrackable because I have personally witnessed a pirated copy of Lords of the Fallen (a Denuvo-protected game) running just fine and dandy a while back.

As for the impact on sales, there is likely none. If there was, we'd have heard about it, as publishers would be touting the numbers to vindicate all the crap they've been putting legitimate customers through in the name of "fighting teh eeeevil piratezzz!". The lack of such gloating is alone enough for me to conclude that there probably isn't much difference.

And you know why? Because people don't like stealing. Oh sure, some people do, but you won't get them to pony up the cash anyway. Then you have a bunch of people who can't really afford to pay for all their games. They literally don't have money to give. Finally, you get the the small demographic of people who have money, but are just reluctant enough to spend it for this to maybe sway them one way or another. And that demographic is tiny.

So who exactly is there to be "converted" by "uncrackable" DRM? Almost nobody. But then again, DRM has never been about pirates and customers, it's always been about publishers putting on a show for the shareholders and such. And that theater is still playing...

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I have read that people with SSDs have reported that the DRM may in fact damage the drive.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

How exactly are you supposed to measure the effectiveness of this DRM if you have nothing to compare it to? Are you just supposed to compare it to other games and make a guess on how much it less money it would make without the DRM?

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Don't games with Denuvo have dire performance problems?
I heard it about Far Cry Primal and newer Tomb Raider, I think.
So they might actually have lower sales because of that.

It's often been suspected, but it hasn't ever been proven one way or another. It may be pure coincidence that many of the games that used Denuvo run poorly, some that use it run fine (Mad Max, for instance), but given that Denuvo apparently has to be woven into the game code during development (which sounds complicated) it may be that it's not easy to use and results in worse performance in some circumstances (speculation on my part).

 

[Zhukov]

Even if we have precise sales figures, what are we supposed to compare them to?

We can only know how many copies a game with Denuvo sold. How many copies it would have sold without Denuvo is pure speculation.

 

[The Lunatic]

Don't games with Denuvo have dire performance problems?
I heard it about Far Cry Primal and newer Tomb Raider, I think.
So they might actually have lower sales because of that.

There was an alledged issue with SSDs. But, I believe it was unfounded. It was a while ago, I forgot exactly.


In regards to game performance... Well... It's been that a lot of the games that run with Denuvo happen to have pretty poor performance. There's a few exceptions, but, these weren't exactly particularly graphically impressive games to begin with.

Total War Warhammer is the latest one, and it also runs... Apparently quite poorly.

However, given Total War games as of recent years have generally ran a bit crap and had a bunch of issues at launch, it's uncertain as to what the cause of that is.

 

[Bombiz]

Eh. I already have the drm knowen as steam. Having another one on top of that doesn't really affect me that much. It seems to be one of the least intrusive DRMs out there. Ml

 

[DoPo]

I have read that people with SSDs have reported that the DRM may in fact damage the drive.

Yes that is exactly correct. However, it wasn't "people" it was "one person". Also, it was "reported" on some random Russian website and NONE of the websites that copy/pasted also reported on this did any sort of fact checking, either.

In essence, it was completely unfounded bogus news that, for some reason, spread like wildfire as if it had any bearing on reality. It didn't.

 

[shrekfan246]

All I know is that I haven't personally purchased any games with Denuvo.

I might break for Total War: Warhammer, DOOM, and Mirror's Edge, though. And Mass Effect. Ugh. Fuck off, EA. And if Deus Ex: Mankind Divided uses it (nothing's been said that I can find so far, but considering Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Just Cause 3...), then I'm just going to be incredibly sad, because that means three of the biggest games I was looking forward to use a shitty DRM system that I don't want to support.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Even if we have precise sales figures, what are we supposed to compare them to?

We can only know how many copies a game with Denuvo sold. How many copies it would have sold without Denuvo is pure speculation.

That's why terms such as "educated guess" exist. People often forget that it's a thing that exists and has a valid use.

However, given Total War games as of recent years have generally ran a bit crap and had a bunch of issues at launch, it's uncertain as to what the cause of that is.

It will be interesting to see if the impact on performance is real once hackers manage to completely remove the protection. As far as I understand, the only problem is that hackers don't have a 64bit debugger at their disposal. So it's pretty much a matter of when.

All I know is that I haven't personally purchased any games with Denuvo.

I might break for Total War: Warhammer, DOOM, and Mirror's Edge, though. And Mass Effect. Ugh. Fuck off, EA. And if Deus Ex: Mankind Divided uses it (nothing's been said that I can find so far, but considering Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Just Cause 3...), then I'm just going to be incredibly sad, because that means three of the biggest games I was looking forward to use a shitty DRM system that I don't want to support.

I don't really care about Denuvo. It may or may not decrease performance. But it's the business model of these companies that I don't approve of. Especially EA, Ubisoft and Square-Enix. I don't want to support THEM and their greedy business practices. And I'm hardly the only one. So they can keep using whatever anti-piracy measure they want. And then they can stand together bewildered when they discover that their games didn't sell any better despite their anti-piracy measures.

 

[shrekfan246]

I don't really care about Denuvo. It may or may not decrease performance. But it's the business model of these companies that I don't approve of. Especially EA, Ubisoft and Square-Enix. I don't want to support THEM and their greedy business practices. And I'm hardly the only one. So they can keep using whatever anti-piracy measure they want. And then they can stand together bewildered when they discover that their games didn't sell any better despite their anti-piracy measures.

It's as much principle as it is the DRM itself, for me. I've already got so much bloody DRM on my systems as it is (and fuck, the version of Uplay downloaded with Assassin's Creed II from Steam doesn't even work, because what is making sure your games actually bloody run without forcing the customer to tinker around with everything years after they've been released?), I really don't care to be forced to allow more in. Also, I don't know what in the actual blue blazes Denuvo does, and as far as I'm aware there still isn't much hard information on that front (though I could be wrong).

Denuvo isn't openly intrusive, so it's at least got that going for it, but I'm still uncomfortable because I can't figure that it's just doing nothing.