Wednesday, November 1st 2017
CPUs Bear Brunt of Ubisoft Deploying VMProtect Above Denuvo for AC:O
It's been extensively reported that Denuvo has failed as an effective DRM solution for games, as some of the newer releases such as "Assassin's Creed: Origins," were cracked by pirates less than 48 hours into the market release. For those who bought the game, Denuvo adds its own CPU and memory footprint. In an effort to stem further piracy of "Assassin's Creed: Origins" (because hey, there are limited stocks of pirated copies on the Internet), Ubisoft added an additional DRM layer on top of Denuvo, made by VMProtect. The implementation is so shoddy, that paying customers who didn't spend a fortune on their PC builds (most PC gamers) complain of abnormally high CPU usage, which is in some cases, even reducing performance to unplayable levels.
Ubisoft deployed VMProtect as a concentric DRM layer to Denuvo. Genuine user authentication has to now be performed by two separate pieces of software with their own PIDs, CPU-, and memory-footprints, not to mention user data falling into more hands. Gamers such as this one took to Steam Forums to complain about abnormally high CPU usage, which is traced back to VMProtect. Gamers complain that the game now hits 100% CPU usage, resulting in frame-drops, stuttering, and even unplayable frame-rates. As gaming prophet Gabe Newell once said, the only way to beat piracy is to offer a better service than the pirates. Right now the pirates offer better frame-rates, at an introductory price of $0, while stocks last.
Source:
TorrentFreak
Ubisoft deployed VMProtect as a concentric DRM layer to Denuvo. Genuine user authentication has to now be performed by two separate pieces of software with their own PIDs, CPU-, and memory-footprints, not to mention user data falling into more hands. Gamers such as this one took to Steam Forums to complain about abnormally high CPU usage, which is traced back to VMProtect. Gamers complain that the game now hits 100% CPU usage, resulting in frame-drops, stuttering, and even unplayable frame-rates. As gaming prophet Gabe Newell once said, the only way to beat piracy is to offer a better service than the pirates. Right now the pirates offer better frame-rates, at an introductory price of $0, while stocks last.
82 Comments on CPUs Bear Brunt of Ubisoft Deploying VMProtect Above Denuvo for AC:O
AC is kind of already dead in terms of it being an interesting franchise anymore in my opinion.
And AC just got more uninteresting by putting Assassins all over the globe btw. The Crusades thing was the best thing about it.
I can't believe it's already a decade old though.
One thing I'd buy is Beyond Good & Evil 2..which apparently is in the works. That franchise wasn't nearly milked enough.
There is no real proof yet of how much overhead the DRM adds. It could just be a resource intensive game or poorly optimised for any other reason. The only people providing "proof" are those who are biased against DRM; and their proof isn't even real proof of anything other than proof that the DRM exists. They provide no evidence that the DRM creates a 1% increase in CPU load or a 40% increase in CPU load. Sure, they make claims, but their claims are not based on any measurement. They will need to crack the DRM first before they can make a real comparison; or otherwise find a way to measure the load of the DRM versus the load of the game.
DRM is still nasty either way, in my opinion. I am not defending DRM. I just want to encourage objectivity. So far, this is just more bogus. This is "Bungie is banning players with overlays" level of bogus. In other words, it may or may not be true that they are accidentally creating issues. But, what flamebait it is when it is published so soon and based on all of the worst rumors and assumptions.
Ubi has also issued a firm statement as well.
www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/ubisoft-addresses-assassins-creed-origins-drm-issues-w510790
On Arstechnica Ubi outright states that the game is designed to utilize maximum CPU cycles on multiple cores.
arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/ubisoft-denies-pc-drm-is-slowing-down-assassins-creed-origins/
"The game generally ran smoothly for me outside of cutscenes, which were full of hitching and stuttering," Jarred said. "It should be noted that I played on a machine with a 7700K CPU and GTX 1080 Ti GPU, so it is possible that the hardware was able to overcome any additional stress from the game protection, if it has any meaningful effect on performance."
so 0 proof that it isn't causing issues eitherWTF is the game doing that needs this much CPU? This is oddly high amounts of CPU to not be the DRM.
No statements on what is using the obscene about of CPU either so i am calling bullshit its not the DRM at face value because no response on what game mechanic or graphics require this much CPU.
torrentfreak.com/assassins-creed-origin-drm-hammers-gamers-cpus-171030/
This article has some good info and has a youtube playtest. No way in hell this game requires that much CPU. I find this highly BS.
Either they designed a horrible game or the DRM jacked this up....either way i am never buying it lol.
If its the truth that it makes your CPU run at 100% and bottleneck your system, well the solution for me is either to upgrade or buy a new system.
Or buy a console( did I really say that???) and be happy.
If you dont like how it works, well nobody forces you to buy to the game anyway, its your money.
By the way, I have AC: Origins and I have no problem at all playing the game.
i5 2550K 3.4GHz
AC Origins FPS unlocked - 100% CPU - 44fps
AC Origins FPS Locked 30 - 90% CPU
AC Syndicate FPS Unlocked (Cracked) - 100% CPU - 60fps
Witcher 3 Wild Hunt FPS Unlocked Novigrad - 100% CPU non-stop - 60fps
Witcher 3 Wild Hunt FPS Unlocked Forest/Bog - 80% CPU
Evil Within 2 - 50-70% CPU
Dishonored 2 - 70-90% CPU
Also in Witcher and AC cpu usage goes up as soon as some enemies and crowd AI and animations kicks in. Simple Igni cast can make a peak to 90% cpu usage in the forest. In city AC have easily several times more npcs than Witcher3, and a lot more details and draw distance. Yet Witcher3 uses 100% of cpu.
CPU usage is highly dependent on animations run at the time, objects count and LODs in the scene, how much time spent batching and traversing HUGE octrees to check visibility frustum, how modular an anvironment is, resulting in a lot of draw calls and cpu usage (Novigrad & AC villages and cities) and a lot of other things. Game can utilize all the cpu just by making more checks per frame like raycasts or smaller physics iteration timeframe. It is too early to judge or blame it on Ubisoft. because there is no convincing evidence.
@Ebo you say you have no problems running it. But if I may ask, can you check CPU utilization?
There are games that just don't hit 60 all the time with a simple quad core.
www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-says-assassins-creed-origins-high-cpu-usage-is-not-due-to-drm/
See, for example @56 seconds:
And as far as AI is concerned, multiple attackers don't seem to do a good job coordinating among themselves.
The game looks good though, if a tad cartoonish for me.
Still, there is no proof that DRM is responsible.