Three pages...and the gist seems to be both sides offering opinions as facts and not digging into the article itself. Here's my take:
1) This guy started with the assumption that cracking denuvo specifically has an influence on sales.
2) When you start with that assumption, and not on the assumption that anti-piracy software exists on a spectrum you confer bias to a study.
3) The bias of this author seems to be that Denuvo would significantly increase the profitability of a game...up to 12 weeks....only that's true for at most 20% based on some very generous assumptions.
4) The impact, if any at all was felt, is depressed from the assumed sales. If you have enough data you assume profitability...whereas in this day and age you can have situations like Hell Divers and the like where outside influences drive sales, and they can go off of a cliff with or without DRM.
So...the conclusion in its barest form is that if someone cracks the DRM on day one you can predict that 20% of sales disappears...based on peer and non-peer games in a variety of markets... For those old enough, it's like benchmarking an office against a smelting plant. The two aren't entirely opposite...but they're so far away from similar that the act of benchmarking them is silly...despite the fact that you can do it. Oh...but I can now "promise" that the few weeks of protection Denuvo might offer is quantifiable. If I assume 1 million in sales and $70 a pop that's $70 million down the drain, which might be $7 million in profits to the developer and publisher...so it's easy to recommend a $100k fee paid to Denuvo for their anti-piracy software...and because they don't really update it on old stuff it's fine...it is only effective for about 12 weeks before the difference is statistically negligible and you've "gotten your value" out of it, with sales flagging so hard.
Listen...I know that this may sound paranoid. Do you remember how fat was replaced with margarine, then margarine was replaced with tropical oils, then tropical oils were replaced with fats? It was a trend in food that was "based on" science, and it was supported by research that was beyond impeachment... All of that research commissioned by interest groups who had agendas, who simply asked their question to lead to the "right" answer that would benefit them. I ask because when a North Carolina researcher cites a bunch of papers that are 20+ years old, utilizing assistance from a California university...as a footnote that presumably they hoped nobody would read given this was only an "affiliation," and still coming to the conclusion that piracy is basically not detectable for a majority of the life of these things is silly.
Let me offer you an alternative that is obviously not considered. Steam libraries are DRM...period. You have the same for Uplay, MS, Epic, and most other things. Cool. What do people hate the most? It's got to be single player games on Uplay...which requires an online connection. They pull the plug, and your game is dead. In 2002 who exactly was thinking about that? In 2002 the biggest piracy was music because it could be shared across the primitive internet, it could be copied infinitely, and securom on CDs was so heinous that it brought a lawsuit when the rootkit installing DRM borked people's computers. A number 1 job on that "management." Steam, when it started, was rough. I remember hating that I had to install any third party software...but it eventually demonstrated that it was low weight and no BS...along with the offline lay modes. As the cited sources for this paper seem to want, it was "the right amount of DRM." Along came Denuvo that is promising that it cannot be cracked...until it is. Again, and again, and again. Now a "researcher" has come to the conclusion that (up to) 20% of a game's sales can be lost if the Denuvo is cracked day one...and I'm scratching my head as to why their predictions only focus on base game sales when right now the most profitable games are given away, and make their money back on microtransactions.
Halo - Microtransaction store
CoD - Microtransaction store
Fortnight - Microtransaction store
Any sports game period - Microtransaction store and Loot Boxes
Diablo - Microtransaction store
I can tell you flat out that the models of revenue used on this research are a decade old or more because if you can release a game that costs nothing the whales will come. They will make having DRM look silly....because 10 million dollars over 2 years is more profit than selling 5 million copies of a game and then just letting it be. Why is this even an argument in the age of the always connected skinner-box loot store, where Baldur's Gate 3 is a run-away success and Bethesda cannot figure out why people are pissed that their Creation Club has a $30 DLC that they sold as being comparable to Far Harbor but most people are calling cut content from a base game that should be priced at a third of what it is given its length and quality?
Let me close with a simple question. One that I have to tackle as I find that I want to spend less and less money every year because the amount of compelling games decreases...and a humble bundle subscription will buy me all of the hottest games with about a 6-12 month delay at about $1-2 a piece. With the AAA industry trying to squeeze everything out of us (profitability wise), and being surprised that their turn to always online microtransactions has produced negative results now that the average full price game comes laden with a shop meant to have you constantly kicking back something to them for minimal work, is the old model of piracy as a loss even viable? I think it is for games like Baldur's Gate...but they didn't release with DRM and still sold like crazy because they released a good game and supported it. As a comparison Elder Scrolls' next entry is something I'm skipping. That's after pre-ordering Skyrim and Fallout 4. That's watching Fallout 76...fail. That's seeing Fallout Shelter be the same level of loot box garbage that we assumed would be worst case. That's then watching them wheel out Starfield...and just crying on the inside when I heard that we'd have a universe to explore and knowing deep down that they couldn't make 12 settlements feel unique in Fallout 4...let alone thousands of worlds, after being bombarded with arrow to the knee NPC jokes. After all of this, why do I even want to spend a penny on a game that the developers thought needed protection from thieves when the real thievery has been the industry over the last two decades?
