Denuvo Setting Up Benchmarking System, Attempting to Disprove Performance Shortfalls

[T0@st]

Irdeto is the current owner of Denuvo Software Solutions—the Austrian development team behind the infamous anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system. According to Ars Technica neither of these organizations have made great efforts (in the past) to engage in discussion about the controversial anti-piracy and anti-cheat suites—but Steeve Huin, Irdeto's Chief Operating Officer of Video Games—agreed to grant the publication an exclusive interview. The article is titled "Denuvo wants to convince you its DRM isn't evil," which sums up a lot of the public perception regarding Denuvo technologies—having received plenty of flak for high CPU usage and causing excessive activity within storage components. Some users propose that the latter scenario has resulted in shorter lifespans for their solid-state drives. Ars Technica has a long history of Denuvo-related coverage, so a company representative has been sent in for some damage control.

Off the bat, Huin acknowledges that he and his colleagues are aware of Denuvo's reputation: "In the pirating/cracking community, we're seen as evil because we're helping DRM exist and we're ensuring people make money out of games." He considers the technology to be a positive force: "Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher's] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game...But people typically don't think enough of that...Whether people want to believe it or not, we are all gamers, we love gaming, we love being part of it. We develop technologies with the intent to make the industry better and stronger."



Huin informs Ars Technica that his company (Irdeto) is working on a testing program—two nearly identical versions of a game will be presented to "trusted" media outlets. One variant with Denuvo protection and one without—they hope to have this comparison program released within the next couple of months. Huin & Co. are hopeful that future press coverage will include independently produced benchmarks: "(so you can) see for yourself that the performance is comparable, identical... and that would provide something that would hopefully be trusted by the community."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[bug]

1. You're not seen as evil in the pirate community, the games pirates play are DRM-free. You're known as evil to those that spend $$$ for their games and are unable to play them after that because of Denuvo.
2. Setting up a test that you control fully and presenting the results to "trusted" media will go a long way to change the way people think about Denuvo. Not.

 

[Kohl Baas]

They can't do it. Will be as authentic like any other manufacturer made diagrams.

And the problem is never the ones that runs good but the ones that are not. And in many cases, it is Denuvo that causes it.

 

[sethmatrix7]

Trust me bro! The "trusted" media sources will show it has no impact!

 

[bug]

Trust me bro! The "trusted" media sources will show it has no impact!

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr Huin is actually the Chief Marketing Officer. I'd be surprised if the "trusted" sources won't discover Denuvo also doubles as DLSS3 and increases your fps.

Joking aside, I hope by "trusted" he meant "well established" not "cherry picked".

 

[Chrispy_]

DRM hurts/interferes with paying customers who support the developer.

The pirate versions always seem to exist whether DRM is included or not. It clearly doesn't work for very long, if it works at all...

 

[qlum]

If that is indeed the case I hope they choose some good independant outlets that can actually properly test.
As there is more to it than does A perform the same as B:
1 is denuvo truely enabled on the sample
2 is denuvo or any other drm truely not present on the other sample
3 are both equal to the final game.

And im terms of performance frametimes and frequency of major hitches are also important.

If that's the case then and only then can you confidently say the version of denuvo used on version x of game y has no impact.

 

[R0H1T]

Anything "DRM" will cause a performance penalty, just think of them akin to Spectre/Meltdown/security mitigations. The only question is how much?

 

[natr0n]

It's not an optimal experience.

They will def use overpowered system prob overclocked too. and say see nothing to worry about.

 

[chrcoluk]

Problem is pirated games with it removed is strong evidence in my view.

 

[R-T-B]

If that is indeed the case I hope they choose some good independant outlets that can actually properly test.

It looks like Ars Technica was chosen exclusively.

It could be a valid study if Ars reporting is good. I'm not up to speed with their rep today.

Also, keep in mind most cracked games STILL run denuvo, they just use an internal keygen, so... this could actually be interesting.

It's not an optimal experience.

They will def use overpowered system prob overclocked too. and say see nothing to worry about.

I'd hope they'd call out such a configuration (they being ars technica)

 

[bug]

Anything "DRM" will cause a performance penalty, just think of them akin to Spectre/Meltdown/security mitigations. The only question is how much?

Not anything. Remember, in the old days DRM meant just checking the CD is in the drive. One check at startup, no other performance penalty. But that wasn't intrusive enough.

 

[R-T-B]

Not anything. Remember, in the old days DRM meant just checking the CD is in the drive. One check at startup, no other performance penalty. But that wasn't intrusive enough.

Steam drm (when used) likewise is pretty much penalty free.

 

[AusWolf]

Off the bat, Huin acknowledges that he and his colleagues are aware of Denuvo's reputation: "In the pirating/cracking community, we're seen as evil because we're helping DRM exist and we're ensuring people make money out of games."

The audacity!

1. People don't hate Denuvo because it makes sure developers earn money. People hate it because it has excessive hardware needs!
2. I don't think two versions of one game supplied to media by Irdeto will change any opinion.

 

[R0H1T]

Not anything. Remember, in the old days DRM meant just checking the CD is in the drive. One check at startup, no other performance penalty. But that wasn't intrusive enough.

I don't, back in the day we didn't have the concept of DRM at our place although it's also true PC gaming wasn't much popular in these parts. Still isn't, it's mostly mobile games these days just like in large parts of Asia! I grew up gaming mostly on PS1 at a kiosk or something, a little bit of PS2 & lots of SEGA at home.

Steam drm (when used) likewise is pretty much penalty free.

Pretty much isn't zero though even if it might well be negligible wrt denuvo.

 

[R-T-B]

Pretty much isn't zero though even if it might well be negligible wrt denuvo.

I mean I guess it technically uses a few validation cycles during launch, but I mean, there has to be a compromise somewhere I think. The fact that it's not runtime resident is huge.

 

[R0H1T]

One random site that showed on top of Google ~

Testing Reveals Games with Denuvo Launch Up to Four Times Slower

The DRM doesn't only reduce the frame rate but also influences games' boot time.

80.lv

 

[Tahagomizer]

I'm certain that first-party testing using non-transparent methodology, conducted only by people the company trusts will be fully objective and will prove whatever they want to prove, as promised by the Chief Marketing Officer who, by definition, is the best person to talk about trust. Marketing people would never, under any circumstances, say anything which is not true.
If a developer chooses to assume every player is a thief and punish them "just in case", well, fine. Since I'm not a thief, I'm not buying said developer's game.
"Steam Curator: Denuvo games" is an important resource.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Are these people taking the piss.


They're going to create a test case!?

Where they adjust the game to use and not use Denuvo.

And are then going to present this to "trusted" media.

This is why they fail.

Enable a "trusted" site or three to test your claims in a clear and transparent way or gtfo.

 

[JustJohnny]

"As you can clearly see on our dual test bench 13900KS with 128GB of RAM systems, Denuvo does not decrease game performance. IN FACT, system operating Denuvo sees an INCREASE in game performance."

Probably.

 

[Deleted member 177333]

Ya the only game I know of on the high seas where a cracking group successfully removed the Denuvo cancer from the exe completely was Assassin's Creed Origins. (link below) In other cases Denuvo is usually still left intact, but the cracker will bypass its checks.

Assassin's Creed: Origins - Denuvo vs Denuvo-free benchmarks - Significantly less stuttering, faster loading

Framerate wise, we did not experience any differences between these two versions. However, the pirated version had faster loading times and less stutters.

www.dsogaming.com

I'm ok absorbing a light performance hit as long as ownership of the game isn't impacted, but with Denuvo, you are effectively renting the game and have no ability to play it down the road if Denuvo's servers are unreachable, etc. And this is the bigger issue.

 

[evernessince]

Huin informs Ars Technica that his company (Irdeto) is working on a testing program—two nearly identical versions of a game will be presented to "trusted" media outlets.

That they only provide it to trusted media outlets signals a lack of confidence or an intent to hide something.

"In the pirating/cracking community, we're seen as evil because we're helping DRM exist and we're ensuring people make money out of games." He considers the technology to be a positive force: "Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher's] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game...But people typically don't think enough of that..."

People don't dislike Denuvo because it's DRM, they dislike it because it's extremely intrusive DRM. If you remove Denuvo from the planet nothing is lost. You still have other DRM that allows game devs to make money. As steam have demonstrated, you beat piracy by offering a better service / product than the pirates.

At the end of the day this is just a ploy to improve their image and a very obvious and shallow one at that. If they wanted to actually help gamers they'd take concrete steps in reducing the performance impact their DRM has on systems, as have been demonstrated when comparing cracked exes vs denuvo protected exes.

Also, keep in mind most cracked games STILL run denuvo, they just use an internal keygen, so... this could actually be interesting.

There are some former denuvo games on GOG that have the DRM completely removed. I remember watching a video on the performance difference between the various cracks / Denuvo / gog versions awhile back. At the end of the day cracked / gog version has the same performance. Denuvo version has a massive exe size, longer loading times, and more framerate excursions.

It looks like Ars Technica was chosen exclusively.

It could be a valid study if Ars reporting is good. I'm not up to speed with their rep today.

Regardless of their rep today, any news outlet should reject doing an exclusive report such as this. Aside from the fact that being given exclusive access to something is likely to stint your opinion (after all they are earning money from clicks), there's a matter of principle in that a news / review outlet should not accept content where they are not only being dictated to by their review subject. Nvidia pulls this BS all the time where they put stipulations on exclusive early access like they just recently did with the 4060 wherein they give a reviewer pre-embargo content permission if they follow Nvidia's terms. At the end of the day the result is that your content becomes free advertising and looses any objectivity. When that happens the reviewer is a fish on a hook, you are relying on this company for the content and they tell you exactly what that content will be. This is why many reviewers started stating when they've been approached by Nvidia and the terms Nvidia gave them, there have been multiple occasions in the past where Nvidia has pulled shenanigans.

Plus one source is never enough no matter how trustworthy. The value of any data produced from such content is precisely zero until the above concerns are remedied.

 

[Broudka]

Players should boycott Denuvo games, that's all.

 

[mechtech]

If the testing is open and transparent and supervised by 3rd parties and if they fix any issues found then it’s a step in the right direction……

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's simple. Denuvo is Online DRM. I REFUSe to pay full price for anything with online DRM. The most I will pay for such a product is $10, the old cost of renting a game for the weekend.

So far, this has worked out, since by the time those games get that cheap denuvo has been removed. Win Win!