Wednesday, October 23rd 2024
Denuvo Blames Gamer Toxicity for DRM Protection Hate, Dismisses Performance Concerns
Denuvo has taken its fair share of flak over the years for a variety of warranted and unwarranted reasons, but it looks like the company has finally decided to put its foot down, or at least try to. Recently, Denuvo started a Discord server, seemingly in an effort to address the gaming community's complaints about a variety of topics. These include alleged performance impacts and hardware degradation caused by its anti-piracy and DRM software commonly used in modern games. Needless to say the Denuvo Discord server was met with about as much enthusiasm as one might expect, and the Discord sever was shut down just two days after it opened. Although the server has since been resuscitated, the company has muted unapproved community members. Today, however, Rock Paper Shotgun published an interview with Denuvo's product manager, Andreas Ullmann, and in it, Ullmann goes on to defend Denuvo's existence and outright dismiss gamers' concerns about the anti-cheat and anti-piracy software.
Addressing a question about "toxicity" and oft-genuine concerns from gamers over the use of Denuvo anti-tamper and anti-cheat software, Ullmann seemingly implied that gamers are just upset because the software works, robbing gamers of the ability to simply play a game for free instead of paying full retail price. When asked directly about why Denuvo doesn't address the claims of performance hits to games that implement it, Ullmann placed the onus on game developers to perform those comparative tests, again calling the gaming and piracy community toxic in the response. He dismissed the idea of Denuvo or a third party performing comparative analysis of the impact of anti-tamper and anti-cheat software, citing intellectual property concerns and community mistrust for a lack of first-party testing. At the same time, Ullmann admits that Denuvo has had performance impacts on games in the past but remarks that it's "interesting" that there aren't more incidents of reduced gaming performance. These comments were also made in spite of Denuvo's own marketing materials claiming that the software has "No impact on in-game performance."
Throughout the interview Ullmann neglected to directly address many of the complaints often levelled at the anti-tamper and anti-piracy software, and he and the company seem to forget that companies like Good Old Games largely publish on a DRM-free model. Some other reported cases of Denuvo's impact on gaming include dramatically increased game load times and much larger game install sizes. That doesn't even touch on how services like Denuvo can impact game longevity and game archiving. If a game has an always-online DRM requirement, it effectively becomes unplayable when the developer decides to stop supporting that service. That can sometimes be patched out by modders, but anti-tamper services, like Denuvo, make that impossible.
Here are the referenced quotes from the Rock Paper Shotgun interview:
Source:
Rock Paper Shotgun
Addressing a question about "toxicity" and oft-genuine concerns from gamers over the use of Denuvo anti-tamper and anti-cheat software, Ullmann seemingly implied that gamers are just upset because the software works, robbing gamers of the ability to simply play a game for free instead of paying full retail price. When asked directly about why Denuvo doesn't address the claims of performance hits to games that implement it, Ullmann placed the onus on game developers to perform those comparative tests, again calling the gaming and piracy community toxic in the response. He dismissed the idea of Denuvo or a third party performing comparative analysis of the impact of anti-tamper and anti-cheat software, citing intellectual property concerns and community mistrust for a lack of first-party testing. At the same time, Ullmann admits that Denuvo has had performance impacts on games in the past but remarks that it's "interesting" that there aren't more incidents of reduced gaming performance. These comments were also made in spite of Denuvo's own marketing materials claiming that the software has "No impact on in-game performance."
Here are the referenced quotes from the Rock Paper Shotgun interview:
First, our solution simply works. Pirates cannot play games which are using our solution over quite long time periods, usually until the publisher decides to patch out our solution. So there is a huge community, a lot of people on this planet who are not able to play their favorite video games, because they are not willing to pay for them, and therefore they have a lot of time to spend in communities and share their view and try to blame Denuvo for a lot of things...-Andreas Ullmann of Denuvo via Rock Paper Shotgun
So basically, I think the one question was: why don't the developers do these comparisons and post them publicly? That's something we cannot force them to do. There seems to be reasons why they are not doing it. And also, on the other hand, probably considering the toxicity of - especially the pirate community - they would probably not accept that anyway, because it could be rigged....-Andreas Ullmann of Denuvo via Rock Paper Shotgun
I think it's important to understand how our solution works. And it's also worth considering, because when these performance claims come up, it's mostly this Tekken case that is referred to. But considering that we are protecting 60 to 70 games every year, it's quite interesting to see that there is only - if even - a handful of games where there was an effective performance impact cost. That's really just a minority.-Andreas Ullmann of Denuvo via Rock Paper Shotgun
66 Comments on Denuvo Blames Gamer Toxicity for DRM Protection Hate, Dismisses Performance Concerns
Denouvo is where it is not because people want it in their games but stupid publishers dont care and pay them for the service anyway even though most Denouvo games are cracked within one or two weeks of a new game releasing.
meanwhile If Denouvo's authentication servers have a brain fart and go down like when W1zzard sunk the USS TPU. Who is it that suffers?? Definitely not the pirates. There is also such thing as buying a copy of a game and then cracking it but we dont talk about that here because everyone is a pirate.
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/cheaters-online.327901/
Does even Denuvo anti-Cheat not works well enough against cheaters ? If so then there is now hope that any anti-cheat is better, right ?.. if D is as good as his DRM in the domain btw of course idk.
So don't buy/play anything with Denuvo in it ever again was the bottom line??
It's been a while since the DRM on a game was so offensive that I downloaded the cracked version after already paying for the game. (Thanks, GFWL!)
With their talent, all together there is chance they open an enterprise that works well.
So he is suggesting that all gamers are thieves? I think this comment went over and beyond what is reasonable. No wonder the product is terrible that does little to stop piracy, but burden paying customers.
That wasted vacation time is the driver for many disapprovals.
also, this has nothing to do with "woke" either way. You can be a douche on either side of the isle.
If denuvo, as a company, ceased to exist tomorrow gamers would rejoice and consumers would be singing.That's because, at their core, most industries would love to strip you of all your rights and treat you worse then convicted felons for daring to not consoom product and get excited for next product. They absolutely detest the common peasant that demands things like "fair treatment" or "consumer protections".
Piracy is not a price problem, proof of this is how successfull steam is in places like Russia. The man said it best: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work, it's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.”I guess that's a very glass half full way of looking at it :D
Problem is not that many games have Denuvo removed even after the game is cracked and the release cycle is over
Umm sounds very familiar..
The mouth piece they have talking for the company needs a serious attitude check as it/s no way to solve the issue's.
Without the company as well should all so help to keep the cost of a game down too.
The problem at this point is that there have been dozens of examples of people testing the launch, level loading, and performance characteristics of cracked and uncraked games and they still haven't responded to a single one of those with official data and they continue to refuse to do so as evidenced above.
Of course people are going to have second thoughts about any data provided by Denuvo, they have done nothing to rebutt any of the claims about them made over the years.This is actually a good suggestion but again they pretty much instantly dismiss the option. To be frank, the time to comission a third party to rebutt claims was a decade ago. That they still haven't to me speaks volumes about how much they actually believe their claims.
Frankly this interview only makes me dislike Denuvo even more. They didn't clear anything up and they seem to be dismissing my and other's concerns while trying to gaslight people. If they were shooting for the sleezy politician angle, they sure nailed it.
Get wrecked, Denuvo