Quick Denuvo DRM Cracks Cost Game Publishers 20% in Revenue, According to Study

[Klemc]

2013 - 1 (FIFA)
2014 - 3
2015 - 9
2016 - 32
2017 - 27
2018 - 29
2019 - 20
2020 - 19
2021 - 20
2022 - 25
2023 - 37
2024 - 30

2025 begins =
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Sega February 28, 2025
Monster Hunter Wilds Capcom February 28, 2025
Atomfall Rebellion March 1, 2025
Two Point Museum SEGA March 4, 2025

It's wiki list, i'm not too much if at all impacted by their choices, i hate most of the games they are proecting. The list doesn't list removed Denuvo's games, just the actual protected.

Denuvo's synonym's Ubisoft's

 

[RGAFL]

Another impossible to measure trend... Especially since gaming is a growth market YoY.

But just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Of the game projects i've worked on (and there have been some AAA) the best selling ones have been the ones with no protection. Anecdotal I know, but in my experience, protection on games causes more problems for the end user and the developer.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

the solution is simple - make better games
if the lack of talent prevents that, the solution is simple too - get rid of diversity hires and hire people based on their skillset

Not simple.

Better indie games? Sure and they come out all the time. Better AAA titles? Hell no! The sheer cost to make them means they have to sell the most copies which means they have to be dumbed down garbage.

Graphics killed gameplay as much as special effects ruined movies. Everyone who has gushed over graphics is to blame for bad games! Do you like fancy graphics, then YOU are at fault more than the companies who make them.

 

[MacZ]

But just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Of the game projects i've worked on (and there have been some AAA) the best selling ones have been the ones with no protection. Anecdotal I know, but in my experience, protection on games causes more problems for the end user and the developer.

People here are not representative at all of the PC gaming community at large. 10% of meaningless is meaningless.

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog (personnally, I'm a tibetan monk).

These two facts should be obvious to anyone using internet for some time.

They make your testimony quite suspect (as in an argument from authority).

 

[JohH]

I don't really care. It makes the game laggier and worse for me - a paying customer.

 

[64K]

But just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Not directed at anyone here but my observation is that what people say on the web and what they actually do can be two very different things. The last time I paid any attention to the vocal minority was the crusade to boycott Origin when it opened because EA wanted to make some of their games exclusive to Origin and not put them on Steam (just like Valve did with Steam) and about a month later EA boasted that there were over 40 million accounts on Origin. I wonder how many of those crusaders really boycotted Origin or did they not want to miss out on some EA games but wanted others to boycott for them?

If any of that is being taken as a defense of Denuvo, it's not. I don't like Denuvo or any DRM. If it is possible I always buy from GOG first.

 

[1d10t]

it's not just DRM that affects piracy and game sales, it's ideology being forced upon us, atrocious microtransactions, poor performance for barely anything different, region locks, bad translations, over censorship, bad scenarios almost like cheap nut shot, bad characters, stupid AI all wrapped up in high price tag with added statement from the developer if you don't like game don't buy it.

If any of that is being taken as a defense of Denuvo, it's not. I don't like Denuvo or any DRM. If it is possible I always buy from GOG first.

That's what I've been trying to tell my online friends for years, Valve Steam is not our savior, they're just less evil.

Steam now says the ‘game’ you’re buying is really just a license

 

[c2DDragon]

That's some good news to catch your pirate readers xD

By the way, fuck devs/publishers who throw money on Denuvo instead of selling their products at a fair price.

 

[AGlezB]

But just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Without reliable statistics it's very, very difficult to factor it in executive level decisions. The reason is simple: there are a million reasons for a customer not to buy any given product.

I suggested a realiable way to gather such statistics in a prior post (here) but it requires (a) a major retailer to collect and publish the aggregated data and (b) for the community to actually go around specifing that they ignore the game because it has Denuvo/DRM.

AFAIC the gaming industry as whole would improve if Steam's Ignore button expanded like this:

This would allow developers/publishers to measure the damage certain "features" are doing to their sales.

Also, imagine what SteamDB's list of top 10 most hated publishers would look like.

 

[LittleBro]

Unfortunately, things are yet to become even worse for us. My crystal ball tells me that AI generated games priced similarly to human generated games are yet to come.

 

[Vayra86]

But just reading through this thread I would say above 10% of people are saying they would not buy with Denuvo protection incorporated. Surely that must be factored in to any calculation. It must count in some way.

Of the game projects i've worked on (and there have been some AAA) the best selling ones have been the ones with no protection. Anecdotal I know, but in my experience, protection on games causes more problems for the end user and the developer.

Sure, some way, but how influential it really is, is just as much guesswork as saying Denuvo magically recovers 20% of revenue even though you can't possibly measure that either on a per game basis.

Not directed at anyone here but my observation is that what people say on the web and what they actually do can be two very different things. The last time I paid any attention to the vocal minority was the crusade to boycott Origin when it opened because EA wanted to make some of their games exclusive to Origin and not put them on Steam (just like Valve did with Steam) and about a month later EA boasted that there were over 40 million accounts on Origin. I wonder how many of those crusaders really boycotted Origin or did they not want to miss out on some EA games but wanted others to boycott for them?

If any of that is being taken as a defense of Denuvo, it's not. I don't like Denuvo or any DRM. If it is possible I always buy from GOG first.

This is another internet truth. The vast majority you read is lies or twisted truth. The numbers don't lie though - gamer outrage can and has definitely turned into reality for numerous titles lately. When an argument really sticks, you'll know it: pay to win for example really did hurt sales. Ubisoft leaving Steam, really did hurt sales (another example of extremely poor corporate judgment, something extremely common to Ubisoft apparently). And when Denuvo did damage performance, it really did hurt sales too. Its also probably true, going by sales numbers of Denuvo itself, that the solution does not pay off for a vast majority of games, or is not assumed to pay off, because of the high cost of entry, which is interesting. The cost of piracy is probably not much more costly than $ 200k even for mid-sized releases. Denuvo has to be cheaper than the cost of piracy, after all, or it won't be selling at all. So every implementation of it, is a guessing game based on projected sales and projected attempts of piracy.

But there is another angle to 'truths' as well. When it comes to company performance and 'success of policy' you barely if ever hear the truth if the company can keep it hidden. A lot of bad policy is simply changed over time and forgotten about, but you can rest assured that ANYTIME you see radical changes in approach (for example, when games switched to Season Pass-driven content) its clear the industry figured out a new way to extract money, that was clearly better than the old one, or is at least potentially better. When that, then, changes again shortly after (a sequel or two later), you know they were simply wrong, the numbers didn't pan out well, and a few millions were lost along the way.

Let's look at Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise and how it got revamped and then rebooted again. Its the perfect example of how a company juggles the recipes it already knows and still can't figure it out proper. And alongside the constant 'radical' (aherm) changes to the franchise they also keep pushing different monetary tactics in their games, up to and including 'single player pay to win', or put differently, paid cheats by being able to buy boosts in a shop alongside DLC content, MTX cosmetics and season passes. They basically tried all of it, so now they're just throwing everything at the wall seeing what sticks.

Meanwhile

 

[Klemc]

A question came to my mind...

if like "Persona Strikers", the first build out day1 has errornously not the D protection applied (dev forgot) then the game updates just after to fix the problem, and D is as of now not removed, then, if somebody that buys the game day1 (or later, tho), is he in his right to download the first build that had not D inside !?

UBISoft looks really seriously involved

Star Wars Outlaws - August 30, 2024
Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Barcelona, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Stockholm, Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft RedLynx, Lucasfilm Games Ubisoft

 

[Caring1]

I am on team - If purchasing isn't ownership, then piracy isn't theft. The gaming industry is broken, with big corpos buying up everything in sight. When a studio knocks it out of the park like Tango Gameworks did, and still gets shit canned, the last reason to be against piracy is gone for me. That reason was wanting to reward game studios for their efforts and encourage them to keep making great games.

Purchasing only gives you the right to play that game, in what ever form they eventually choose to offer it in, Piracy is still theft. By not paying for the game you are stealing a company's I.P. and money from those that develop those games.

 

[Shihab]

AFAIC the gaming industry as whole would improve if Steam's Ignore button expanded like this:

After the damage gamers have done with that idiocy they call review bombing, I doubt any decision maker in the industry would give these statistics any weight.

No. As far as they are concerned, it's the cash flow that matters (which is why, among other reasons, I say studies based on supplier-side finances are better indicator of the efficacy of DRM than consumer-side ones). Even the most deluded, nonsense-peddling Ubisoft exec knows there is a large segment of players who dislike/hate DRM and being required to jump through hoops to play a game, but they also know it's a matter of priorities. To many, this dislike is secondary to wanting to play "Assassin's Creed" or "Far Cry" after all the grooming with ads and press coverage showing all those cool graphics!
The median consumer is a moron. And they're surely not a revolutionary or an activist. Welcome to mass market!

 

[Vayra86]

Purchasing only gives you the right to play that game, in what ever form they eventually choose to offer it in, Piracy is still theft. By not paying for the game you are stealing a company's I.P. and money from those that develop those games.

Nobody loses anything from copied software. Its a copy. You're not stealing IP either, you're not re-using it for your own gain or anything like that, ownership of the IP never changes either. That's exactly the big issue with piracy on data. Quantify it. You just can't.

Also, if a purchase does not give you ownership, how could a pirated copy be theft? You still don't own a thing.
The only thing stolen is the license to play, a piece of paper saying 'you can do this now'. No money is stolen, no money is given.

After the damage gamers have done with that idiocy they call review bombing, I doubt any decision maker in the industry would give these statistics any weight.

No. As far as they are concerned, it's the cash flow that matters (which is why, among other reasons, I say studies based on supplier-side finances are better indicator of the efficacy of DRM than consumer-side ones). Even the most deluded, nonsense-peddling Ubisoft exec knows there is a large segment of players who dislike/hate DRM and being required to jump through hoops to play a game, but they also know it's a matter of priorities. To many, this dislike is secondary to wanting to play "Assassin's Creed" or "Far Cry" after all the grooming with ads and press coverage showing all those cool graphics!
The median consumer is a moron. And they're surely not a revolutionary or an activist. Welcome to mass market!

That's exactly how it works, its a balancing act, trying not to overstep gamer's bounds while making them suffer to the max to get what they want. In corporate views that's 'a great deal' and 'everybody wins'. Forget customer is king, das war einmal.

if like "Persona Strikers", the first build out day1 has errornously not the D protection applied (dev forgot) then the game updates just after to fix the problem, and D is as of now not removed, then, if somebody that buys the game day1 (or later, tho), is he in his right to download the first build that had not D inside !?

We have a live example of that in Helldivers 2 and PSN account requirements:

PlayStation Reverses Course on Helldivers 2 PSN Account Requirement - IGN

PlayStation has walked back the PSN account requirement for Helldivers 2, telling fans "we've heard your feedback" and saying "we're still learning what's best for PC players."

www.ign.com

 

[londiste]

Helldivers 2 is a weird example of clusterfuck. PSN Account requirement is not a DRM. And while on principle it is a nice hill to die on it is a bit strange one for an online game. However, the cuter and more DRM part of this is that while initially you were able to buy the game in a country PSN does not support, now you cannot (if you did buy it before, it stays in your library)

 

[nvidiaenjoyer]

Not simple.

Better indie games? Sure and they come out all the time. Better AAA titles? Hell no! The sheer cost to make them means they have to sell the most copies which means they have to be dumbed down garbage.

i disagree, the cost to make a game has little to do with games being dumbed down (if that was the case no mechanically-intricate indie game would have a chance of becoming a hit); games being dumbed down is due to suits wanting to play it safe since they have more or less worked out a formula which gets them plenty of money with little risk, nothing to do with cost - someone would first need to convince them that making games more complex would get them just as much money before they agree to making games less dumbed down

if starting today all companies decided they would make mechanically-deep, interesting, fun games - they would sell well and they would become the status quo, as the market is huge, and nobody would have a choice - they would need to adapt to games being more complex, and with how popular games are as a pastime they would have no choice whatsoever, because if they chose to continue to play old, dumbed-down games eventually their friends would move on to new releases that aren't dumbed down - so they'd have to adapt and play what everyone else is playing

Graphics killed gameplay as much as special effects ruined movies. Everyone who has gushed over graphics is to blame for bad games! Do you like fancy graphics, then YOU are at fault more than the companies who make them.

this is such a stupid thing to say, i wonder whether people said the same thing when pixel shader 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 just rolled out, and the first 4-5 generations of PS supporting graphics cards sucked ass at pixel shaders just as the new cards currently suck ass at raytracing (though not as much anymore) - probably not, as while most people back then understood that PS is the next step in graphics, most people now don't understand that raytracing is the next step in graphics today, because rasterization is sort-of decent enough at faking all the effects devs wish they could do with RT

i mean, SSAO is an approximation of GI at a very low scale, and modern AO solutions are good enough on their own, who would wish for a much more accurate, higher quality AO solution using RT, right?
RT is the next step and it is inevitable, just like how pixel shaders were the inevitable next step back in the early 2000s

 

[AGlezB]

After the damage gamers have done with that idiocy they call review bombing, I doubt any decision maker in the industry would give these statistics any weight.

IMO, review bombing doesn't cause damage, it just brings damage already caused to the attention of those responsible for it. As for the rest, I'll make an educated guess and say marketing is not something you're familiar with. Let me explain.

Reviews only provide information about users buying the game, bombing or not. Without ignore reasons the only thing you can do is buy the game, write a negative review and refund it, incurring in payment processing costs for the platform, provided your refund isn't denied for whatever reason. Without detailed enough, multi-select, ignore reasons the platform/publisher/developer has to go to forums, social media, etc. to find data that isn't easy to aggregate. AIs might help here but you can't really trust their output quite yet.

I'll say this very clearly: data about the users not buying your product is far more valuable than data about users buying because buyer data you can collect yourself as a seller, usually in the form of reviews, but data outside that scope is usually bought at a very high price from outside sources. That data not only gives you insight about you product and how to improve it but also opens the door to increasing your market reach, provided you know what to do and can act on it.

TL;DR if I was a game studio/publisher I'd be dying to get tabular data directly from the platform, particularly free data. Deviations from malicious users and strange biases can be accounted for in the analysis.

 

[qlum]

IMO, review bombing doesn't cause damage, it just brings damage already caused to the attention of those responsible for it. As for the rest, I'll make an educated guess and say marketing is not something you're familiar with. Let me explain.

Reviews only provide information about users buying the game, bombing or not. Without ignore reasons the only thing you can do is buy the game, write a negative review and refund it, incurring in payment processing costs for the platform, provided your refund isn't denied for whatever reason. Without detailed enough, multi-select, ignore reasons the platform/publisher/developer has to go to forums, social media, etc. to find data that isn't easy to aggregate. AIs might help here but you can't really trust their output quite yet.

I'll say this very clearly: data about the users not buying your product is far more valuable than data about users buying because buyer data you can collect yourself as a seller, usually in the form of reviews, but data outside that scope is usually bought at a very high price from outside sources. That data not only gives you insight about you product and how to improve it but also opens the door to increasing your market reach, provided you know what to do and can act on it.

TL;DR if I was a game studio/publisher I'd be dying to get tabular data directly from the platform, particularly free data. Deviations from malicious users and strange biases can be accounted for in the analysis.

Just to add, on steam at least review bombing does damage sales, as lower user ratings cause a major drop in visibility in steam's recommendation engine.

Granted most cases are about legitimate issues with the game itself, at which point it is completely fair.

 

[Ruru]

Denuvo is one of the worst things what PC gaming has encountered in several years.

 

[Visible Noise]

This is blatantly untrue. GOG titles have ZERO DRM and deals with very little piracy. Sure, there is some piracy(there's always going to be), but it's such a small factor it doesn't effect their bottom line.

Denuvo is lies. They fabricate numbers to push their crap product. It is shady, deceitful humbuggery at its worst. Pure garbage.

Didn’t even look at the study or who conducted it I see, lol.

 

[IMABEARLOL]

Purchasing only gives you the right to play that game, in what ever form they eventually choose to offer it in, Piracy is still theft. By not paying for the game you are stealing a company's I.P. and money from those that develop those games

Technically, downloading a cracked game is not piracy. It's an illegal download. Profiting off of someone else's intellectual property is theft. Downloading is violating a law that says you can't do that.

Are you also crying fowl when publishers shut down game studios and overwork developers, which is actually morally corrupt but not illegal? But somehow capitalism has made that okay, yet broke teens downloading fitgirl repacks valued at 10s of dollars are thieves and pirates?

If you like games, buy them, but also maybe still hold game publishers to a higher standards, like not putting DRM in games which burdens all the paying customers and makes their experience worse just to delay the few that might not buy it anyway for only a few weeks or months.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Didn’t even look at the study or who conducted it I see, lol.

Sure did. It seems you missed some important context. What do you think that was, hmm?

 

[Klemc]

Now that i thinked about it, will Denuvo become too strong, with AI (24H2.......) ?

 

[Visible Noise]

Sure did. It seems you missed some important context. What do you think that was, hmm?

I’m not the one who missed anything. You on the other hand made a very large assumption that isn’t backed by any facts.