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
80.lv/articles/denuvo-drm-has-been-removed-from-doom-eternal/
Yes when united we can kick Denuvo out, and Denuvo is scared of that
when I was younger I would "pirate" games and that was on dsl connection that maxed out at 5mbits, now I have 1gbit connection almost every game I get on PC i buy off Steam or GoG would be alot easier to download them now and pirate them but I dont. Denuvo PR department must working over time try and ignore the performance issue it causes. Which dont effect people that "pirated" the game any only the people the actual bought the game are effected.
At least I dont have worry about DA: The Veilguard on pc being infected by denuvo cause that reason why I never bought it on pc so I will actual buy that on, Thankfull I dont have go threw EA app of crap either
If has denuvo in I dont buy it on pc simple as that.
After an hour of troubleshooting, I finally took to the high seas and it ran perfectly. All forms of DRM are anti-consumer.
Golly I wonder what reasons they could have.
I've also heard about issues from Steam Deck users, where switching between Proton versions will use up the five daily activations that Denuvo allows for.
Meanwhile, "patched" copies of these games simply don't have these issues. Imagine that...
I've said this before, and I'll say it again; with how Denuvo works, I'd be more surprised if there wasn't a performance impact. From my layman's perspective, Denuvo works by scrambling bits of code throughout the executable. It will then contact a server for keys to unscramble those bits of code in real-time before executing them. Add thousands upon thousands of these checks (hence the multi-hundred MB file size), and there's bound to be some performance impact.
So his statement about how only pirates are complaining is truly distasteful, because as you mentioned, It basically assumes everyone is a thief.
More popcorn needed!
On the other hand, the publishers who should care about gamers, because we are the customers don't care at all about us.We are no longer in middle ages.:)
Pirated game now is different, not like when on CD/DVD that were one or two patchs with game's version like 1.1, 1.2... now games update dayly and as pirate version is in general the day1 release version, it's all buggy, so any store is already a better service, except when day1 has no Denuvo like Persona Striker btw ;)
Ass Creed Origins, Metag Gear 5, Far Cry Primal, are the three i know Denuvo persist on.Deus Ex: Mankind Divided had Denuvo and has again it on Steam but not on GOG, lol.
Looks like it's a good way to sell twice the same game.No way, now AI is a thing no chance, also if you give me this baby-sitter job my answer would be no, i won't live behind a PC to check if users cheat, no way, cheaters are shit yes but don't deserve a human to be behind them full time.
I mean sure, I'd rather it not be there at all, but this way their early sales are protected ( maybe... Hard to say with certainty if denuvo makes more people buy because there's no alternative or turns more people away that hate denuvo with every bone in their body)... But anyway those such people can pick up the game 6 months after release.
Btw people, ea is releasing the new dragon age game without any DRM. Let's show them how rewarding that can be for their sales and maybe future games won't have denuvo either. Poor sales could mean the return of denuvo. Perhaps this is a test...
I do wonder the reason though. Perhaps the developers pushed hard for it? Or perhaps ea has realized it has a pr problem and denuvo isn't helping. IDK.