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
The NFO file where they write stuff, it's just some expressions about what they think of the world it became crazy because of users overreactions, the same persons that download their Denuvo cracked game btw, it's all on Reddit.
STORY:So it's about "her" being transsexual, well, if she's what's the problem, imagine people not donwloading cracked Denuvo games bc of this, NO, they will hate and use the crack !!
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[SIZE=7]Silent Hill 2 Remake (Free of Denuvo) Sells 1 Million Within a Week! Goes to Show Denuvo Really Harms Rather than Benefit Developers[/SIZE]
Though I take issue with the idea that downloading a torrent is somehow equivalent to working with someone, you don't have to know anything about the person who cracked a game to download a torrent, and probably, most people don't. Working with somehow however, thats a bit different.
I do fully admit empress may be a group.... Though, I lean towards thinking thats not the case.
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So check this out.... apparently there was a patch for jedi survivor which majorly improves performance. BUT it also just so happens to remove denuvo.... hmmmm....
This is what I've been saying to Ubisoft ever since The Division open beta was doing a lot of stuff client side.
And then they released and their online service game turned to a cheatinfested POS. Effectively killing the Dark Zone, its extraction PVP mode, which made it shine most.
And that's why you're going belly up. Good job ignoring your player base.
Seems like they getting desperate now almost every month there is a Denuvo story and how they justify this crap.
I mean how many times have people compared Denuvo on vs off and almost everytime without Denuvo is always a better experience.
Well I do not buy games because of STEAM, EPIC GAMES, EA Launcher, Ubisoft launcher, DRM, Windows only, limited time license for a game = game is removed = game server is shutdown ...
Only a few of my windows 11 pro "single player" games do not crash without internet connection. (The premium storage space and the windows license is not cheap. You get several parts of your computer with that wasted money. I'm talking aobut a legal w11 pro license and not a grey keyshop license)
I did buy games when there was a nice box, Book, physical media. I also do not buy music anymore (there is no physical media).
I got this crap game as an add on bonus with my hardware purchase. It always crashed over XMAS 2023.
Poor graphics, poor performance, many crashes, boring game design, raytracing which was hardly making a difference for myself.
www.pcgamer.com/games/action/star-wars-jedi-survivor-finally-force-pushes-denuvo-out-the-airlock-in-patch-focused-on-performance-improvements/
Next free game which run poorly with lots of waste heat was AVATAR.
Which seems to also have denuvo.
steamcommunity.com/app/2840770/discussions/0/4335358030548728130/?ctp=2
interesting claims just for informaton: steamcommunity.com/app/2840770/discussions/0/4516631714059408351/
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There are so many free games. They need to make something good so I'm willing to pay something for it.
Also how a dev could badly implement D ,.. since they payd for the sevice !?
I think I can not give proof. Why should extra code be faster than less code for the same software functionality?
I have to pay for the extra bigger download, for the disk space, for the performance penalty
There are only two metrics. The software is faster or slower. The software uses more or less disk space. Equal basically does not exists. My choice is faster code with less disk space.
Please add additional information or correct me.
That Discord server seems to be to warm their image a little to attract more Indie devs, as he himself said some are afraid to contact them because of backlash from users. But in case of large publishers and AAA games that backlash doesnt mean much. So far it backfired but who knows.
*1 million of sells and you denuvo dont receive any money of this
:)