Vayra86Another impossible to measure trend... Especially since gaming is a growth market YoY.

But just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Of the game projects i've worked on (and there have been some AAA) the best selling ones have been the ones with no protection. Anecdotal I know, but in my experience, protection on games causes more problems for the end user and the developer.

nvidiaenjoyerthe solution is simple - make better games
if the lack of talent prevents that, the solution is simple too - get rid of diversity hires and hire people based on their skillset

Not simple.

Better indie games? Sure and they come out all the time. Better AAA titles? Hell no! The sheer cost to make them means they have to sell the most copies which means they have to be dumbed down garbage.

Graphics killed gameplay as much as special effects ruined movies. Everyone who has gushed over graphics is to blame for bad games! Do you like fancy graphics, then YOU are at fault more than the companies who make them.

RGAFLBut just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Of the game projects i've worked on (and there have been some AAA) the best selling ones have been the ones with no protection. Anecdotal I know, but in my experience, protection on games causes more problems for the end user and the developer.

People here are not representative at all of the PC gaming community at large. 10% of meaningless is meaningless.

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog (personnally, I'm a tibetan monk).

These two facts should be obvious to anyone using internet for some time.

They make your testimony quite suspect (as in an argument from authority).

I don't really care. It makes the game laggier and worse for me - a paying customer.

RGAFLBut just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Not directed at anyone here but my observation is that what people say on the web and what they actually do can be two very different things. The last time I paid any attention to the vocal minority was the crusade to boycott Origin when it opened because EA wanted to make some of their games exclusive to Origin and not put them on Steam (just like Valve did with Steam) and about a month later EA boasted that there were over 40 million accounts on Origin. I wonder how many of those crusaders really boycotted Origin or did they not want to miss out on some EA games but wanted others to boycott for them?

If any of that is being taken as a defense of Denuvo, it's not. I don't like Denuvo or any DRM. If it is possible I always buy from GOG first.

it's not just DRM that affects piracy and game sales, it's ideology being forced upon us, atrocious microtransactions, poor performance for barely anything different, region locks, bad translations, over censorship, bad scenarios almost like cheap nut shot, bad characters, stupid AI all wrapped up in high price tag with added statement from the developer if you don't like game don't buy it.

64KIf any of that is being taken as a defense of Denuvo, it's not. I don't like Denuvo or any DRM. If it is possible I always buy from GOG first.

That's what I've been trying to tell my online friends for years, Valve Steam is not our savior, they're just less evil.

Steam now says the ‘game’ you’re buying is really just a license

That's some good news to catch your pirate readers xD

By the way, fuck devs/publishers who throw money on Denuvo instead of selling their products at a fair price.

RGAFLBut just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Without reliable statistics it's very, very difficult to factor it in executive level decisions. The reason is simple: there are a million reasons for a customer not to buy any given product.

I suggested a realiable way to gather such statistics in a prior post (here) but it requires (a) a major retailer to collect and publish the aggregated data and (b) for the community to actually go around specifing that they ignore the game because it has Denuvo/DRM.

AFAIC the gaming industry as whole would improve if Steam's Ignore button expanded like this:



This would allow developers/publishers to measure the damage certain "features" are doing to their sales.

Also, imagine what SteamDB's list of top 10 most hated publishers would look like. :D

Unfortunately, things are yet to become even worse for us. My crystal ball tells me that AI generated games priced similarly to human generated games are yet to come.

RGAFLBut just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Of the game projects i've worked on (and there have been some AAA) the best selling ones have been the ones with no protection. Anecdotal I know, but in my experience, protection on games causes more problems for the end user and the developer.

Sure, some way, but how influential it really is, is just as much guesswork as saying Denuvo magically recovers 20% of revenue even though you can't possibly measure that either on a per game basis.

64KNot directed at anyone here but my observation is that what people say on the web and what they actually do can be two very different things. The last time I paid any attention to the vocal minority was the crusade to boycott Origin when it opened because EA wanted to make some of their games exclusive to Origin and not put them on Steam (just like Valve did with Steam) and about a month later EA boasted that there were over 40 million accounts on Origin. I wonder how many of those crusaders really boycotted Origin or did they not want to miss out on some EA games but wanted others to boycott for them?

If any of that is being taken as a defense of Denuvo, it's not. I don't like Denuvo or any DRM. If it is possible I always buy from GOG first.

This is another internet truth. The vast majority you read is lies or twisted truth. The numbers don't lie though - gamer outrage can and has definitely turned into reality for numerous titles lately. When an argument really sticks, you'll know it: pay to win for example really did hurt sales. Ubisoft leaving Steam, really did hurt sales (another example of extremely poor corporate judgment, something extremely common to Ubisoft apparently). And when Denuvo did damage performance, it really did hurt sales too. Its also probably true, going by sales numbers of Denuvo itself, that the solution does not pay off for a vast majority of games, or is not assumed to pay off, because of the high cost of entry, which is interesting. The cost of piracy is probably not much more costly than $ 200k even for mid-sized releases. Denuvo has to be cheaper than the cost of piracy, after all, or it won't be selling at all. So every implementation of it, is a guessing game based on projected sales and projected attempts of piracy.

But there is another angle to 'truths' as well. When it comes to company performance and 'success of policy' you barely if ever hear the truth if the company can keep it hidden. A lot of bad policy is simply changed over time and forgotten about, but you can rest assured that ANYTIME you see radical changes in approach (for example, when games switched to Season Pass-driven content) its clear the industry figured out a new way to extract money, that was clearly better than the old one, or is at least potentially better. When that, then, changes again shortly after (a sequel or two later), you know they were simply wrong, the numbers didn't pan out well, and a few millions were lost along the way.

Let's look at Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise and how it got revamped and then rebooted again. Its the perfect example of how a company juggles the recipes it already knows and still can't figure it out proper. And alongside the constant 'radical' (aherm) changes to the franchise they also keep pushing different monetary tactics in their games, up to and including 'single player pay to win', or put differently, paid cheats by being able to buy boosts in a shop alongside DLC content, MTX cosmetics and season passes. They basically tried all of it, so now they're just throwing everything at the wall seeing what sticks.

Meanwhile

A question came to my mind...

if like "Persona Strikers", the first build out day1 has errornously not the D protection applied (dev forgot) then the game updates just after to fix the problem, and D is as of now not removed, then, if somebody that buys the game day1 (or later, tho), is he in his right to download the first build that had not D inside !?

UBISoft looks really seriously involved ;)

Star Wars Outlaws - August 30, 2024
Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Barcelona, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Stockholm, Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft RedLynx, Lucasfilm Games Ubisoft

DAPUNISHERI am on team - If purchasing isn't ownership, then piracy isn't theft. The gaming industry is broken, with big corpos buying up everything in sight. When a studio knocks it out of the park like Tango Gameworks did, and still gets shit canned, the last reason to be against piracy is gone for me. That reason was wanting to reward game studios for their efforts and encourage them to keep making great games.

Purchasing only gives you the right to play that game, in what ever form they eventually choose to offer it in, Piracy is still theft. By not paying for the game you are stealing a company's I.P. and money from those that develop those games.

AGlezBAFAIC the gaming industry as whole would improve if Steam's Ignore button expanded like this:

After the damage gamers have done with that idiocy they call review bombing, I doubt any decision maker in the industry would give these statistics any weight.

No. As far as they are concerned, it's the cash flow that matters (which is why, among other reasons, I say studies based on supplier-side finances are better indicator of the efficacy of DRM than consumer-side ones). Even the most deluded, nonsense-peddling Ubisoft exec knows there is a large segment of players who dislike/hate DRM and being required to jump through hoops to play a game, but they also know it's a matter of priorities. To many, this dislike is secondary to wanting to play "Assassin's Creed" or "Far Cry" after all the grooming with ads and press coverage showing all those cool graphics!
The median consumer is a moron. And they're surely not a revolutionary or an activist. Welcome to mass market!

Caring1Purchasing only gives you the right to play that game, in what ever form they eventually choose to offer it in, Piracy is still theft. By not paying for the game you are stealing a company's I.P. and money from those that develop those games.

Nobody loses anything from copied software. Its a copy. You're not stealing IP either, you're not re-using it for your own gain or anything like that, ownership of the IP never changes either. That's exactly the big issue with piracy on data. Quantify it. You just can't.

Also, if a purchase does not give you ownership, how could a pirated copy be theft? You still don't own a thing.
The only thing stolen is the license to play, a piece of paper saying 'you can do this now'. No money is stolen, no money is given.

ShihabAfter the damage gamers have done with that idiocy they call review bombing, I doubt any decision maker in the industry would give these statistics any weight.

No. As far as they are concerned, it's the cash flow that matters (which is why, among other reasons, I say studies based on supplier-side finances are better indicator of the efficacy of DRM than consumer-side ones). Even the most deluded, nonsense-peddling Ubisoft exec knows there is a large segment of players who dislike/hate DRM and being required to jump through hoops to play a game, but they also know it's a matter of priorities. To many, this dislike is secondary to wanting to play "Assassin's Creed" or "Far Cry" after all the grooming with ads and press coverage showing all those cool graphics!
The median consumer is a moron. And they're surely not a revolutionary or an activist. Welcome to mass market!

That's exactly how it works, its a balancing act, trying not to overstep gamer's bounds while making them suffer to the max to get what they want. In corporate views that's 'a great deal' and 'everybody wins'. Forget customer is king, das war einmal.

Klemcif like "Persona Strikers", the first build out day1 has errornously not the D protection applied (dev forgot) then the game updates just after to fix the problem, and D is as of now not removed, then, if somebody that buys the game day1 (or later, tho), is he in his right to download the first build that had not D inside !?

We have a live example of that in Helldivers 2 and PSN account requirements:

www.ign.com/articles/playstation-reverses-course-on-helldivers-2-psn-account-requirement