-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
The Jimquistion: The Cowardly Crimes Of Dastardly Denuvo
- Thread starter GameZone
- Start date
"The problem with piracy is the measures employed to combat it showcase utter contempt for the paying customers. This is something Ubisoft once directly acknowledged, before tanking the performance of Assassin's Creed Odyssey with a double layer of DRM. Denuvo, meanwhile, is embraced by the game industry despite a laundry list of problems and failures. Let's look at why Denuvo is rubbish."
I like that Jim is looking at these failing anti piracy measures that seek to hurt paying customers more than they end up hurting pirates. Also, a special shout out from me to companies like Capcom and Bethesda, who remove Denuvo from their releases.
The OP here has more work put into it, so why not have this be the official one instead?
Still haven't watched the whole thing.
Good to hear that Nintendo eased off the pressure on YouTube folk using footage of their games. It was about time. How long has this been going on for again? 3 years? Feels like it's been a really long time.
Saw the whole episode now. I had completely missed that absolutely bloody stupid post about Mutant: Year Zero, and even if they have backed from it now, I kinda feel that maybe I should follow their initial advice and just stay away from their game, because I will keep complaining about Denuvo.
Great video again. (His Darksiders III impressions were painful to watch, so much "wrong opinion" in that video). His industry observations are always on point though. The ending to this video is hilarious.
Mutant: Year Zero was on my pick-up list, but it is definitely a bargain bin purchase at best now.
Mutant: Year Zero was on my pick-up list, but it is definitely a bargain bin purchase at best now.
I like Jim but I do wonder if he has one of those spinny arrow things you get with board games, with segments labelled "Anti-Piracy", "AAA dev practices", "Micro-transactions", "Review a crap Steam game". He's done a lot of these topics to death. I do admire his persistence however.
So we should be positive about DRM, just to freshen things up now?
He's doing this particular topic, Denuvo, when all other gaming writers/journalists fail to do so, so yeah, his persistence is well worth applauding this time.
I figure he'll get a different spinny arrow thing once the industry stops pulling this shit.
This is one of those occassions where Jim's negativity is 100% justified.
Except it's entirely warranted here, so why not bother watching the video instead of coming into the thread just to piss and whine?
Nah its refreshing to have someone so dedicated to the BS of the gaming industry.
He explicitly harps on about certain issues explicitly because the industry expects us to forget about them or the outrage to lose steam.
Yep. Things haven't gotten better in the industry, so why the fuck would he stop criticizing it. Doing bad shit long enough doesn't mean people should get over it.
Not defending Denuvo, but it hasn't hampered any games I've played so far, well not to the point I've noticed. I think I had a securerom issue once on Sonic Mania. Might just be lucky in that regard.
It's called the JimQUISITION, not the JimLetsSayWhatWeAreThankfulFor, lol.
If you were being sarcastic, you got me!
DRM does have a place in protecting initial sales from more casual pirates (hardcore pirates buy absolutely nothing other than an occasional multiplayer-only game), but the problem is game companies go about it all wrong. Implement it correctly to not cause any performance issue and remove the damn DRM once it has been cracked. Denuvo is currently pointless when it can be cracked in a day, it's not doing anything other than costing the publisher $ and inconveniencing customers since 95% of game companies "forget" to remove the DRM once it is ineffective.
oh dear that ending was ssssssssssensational.
I do not understand what role Denuvo plays to be honest. It feels completely redundant in a world with a bajillion digital storefronts for games. I know people like to pretend Steam is the end all be all "monopoly" of game storefronts, but I counted them. There are a bajillion. Seriously though, each and every one already does Digital Rights Management by keeping track of our keys, accounts, and access to content. Like, that is the entire point of their existence besides to sell us more stuff.
What does Denuvo actually do besides getting a slice of each pie being shoehorned middle-ware?
I do not understand what role Denuvo plays to be honest. It feels completely redundant in a world with a bajillion digital storefronts for games. I know people like to pretend Steam is the end all be all "monopoly" of game storefronts, but I counted them. There are a bajillion. Seriously though, each and every one already does Digital Rights Management by keeping track of our keys, accounts, and access to content. Like, that is the entire point of their existence besides to sell us more stuff.
What does Denuvo actually do besides getting a slice of each pie being shoehorned middle-ware?
If the DRM didn't cause problems, it wouldn't need to be removed at all. And what exactly makes someone a casual pirate or a hardcore one? Is it the willingness to wait till a game gets cracked(in one day often times...) before pirating it? That seems silly to me.
Hardcore pirates are the type who never buy a game even if it would take 5 years to crack, they only ever spend money on upgrading hardware and the occasional multiplayer only game like Overwatch. I knew a ton of people like that in college, it didn't even matter if a game was discounted under $10, they'd still pirate it since they can get it for free.
More casual pirates are the type who say they are downloading a game either before its release date or day one just to "try it out" on their pc and then of course rarely actually buy it afterwards since they have the entire game for free already. However, they still buy some games each year. It's definitely more problematic when a game is leaked before it's release date, as that is when you get people who normally would buy the game, try it early for free and never end up paying.
I imagine if denuvo wasnt removed from Doom 2016 i wouldnt have bothered with it even at its low price.
Its why im also kinda weary to triple dipping on Sonic Mania PC.
Its why im also kinda weary to triple dipping on Sonic Mania PC.
You don't want to see him positive: https://www.destructoid.com/review-sonic-the-hedgehog-4-episode-1-186106.phtml
They don't forget to remove the DRM.
1) In a large company like a publisher, who really wants to advocate that you should remove DRM? It's often not a culture that fosters such opinions.
2) It's not too far fetched to assum that Denuvo themselves gives economic incentives to customers to keep it in their system. Removal of Denuvo gives headlines they probably don't want.
3) Removing Denuvo once cracked can trigger crackers to work even harder to crack, when they're given further incentives for it.
And customers are left with the shitty useless DRM in their bought products.
There is a reason I used forget in quotation marks (ie, the companies don't accidentally forget), I agree with what you said. Instead of removing Denuvo after a crack, they could just put a blanket policy in place that the protection will be removed after say 3-6 months, which wouldn't incentivize it as much. If the protection is mostly there to protect day 1 sales and not screw over customers, a policy to automatically remove the protection should be utilized or else 10 years from now, everyone will have to use cracks to play games they legally own as I doubt the Denuvo servers will still be going ;p.
That's not Jim sterling though, the vast majority of his videos are bullshit and pretty useless. Even some of his better videos like this one are still not very good.
So much Denuvo hate here but I'm yet to see a game affected by Denuvo where performance "tanked" and wasn't patched later or removed. It doesn't matter if Denuvo nowadays takes hours to crack - every second counts during the release window of a PC game.
I'd love to see the experts here in the shoes of a publisher's CEO trying to explain to shareholders why Denuvo shouldn't be used.
By the way, Jim Sterling is obscenely tiring.
I'd love to see the experts here in the shoes of a publisher's CEO trying to explain to shareholders why Denuvo shouldn't be used.
By the way, Jim Sterling is obscenely tiring.
I'm pretty sure Rime is the only example of it actually negatively affecting performance anyway, because it was making Denuvo calls 30 times a second or something. Any other case has just been people seeing bad performance and a Denuvo game and immediately blaming Denuvo.
Thankfully the "it kills performance" myth seems to be dying out and people are focusing on what the actual issue is with Denuvo, which is what happens when a developer doesn't remove it at some point and we end up with a bunch of GFWL-esque situations where you can't play the games you bought.
Does it, though?
Do you really think that there is a significant amount of pirats that are so impatient that they can't wait 1-7 days to get the game for free and will spent 60$ instead?
Also, just because the problems got sloved later doesn't mean that they aren't problems, espically if they only removed it because it was cracked anyway.
Or how about the publishers explain to us and convince us why it actually works, and not just say "piracy is bad".
We're customers here. Our interest is that the products we buy for our money is packaged in a way that's satisfying for us, and we speak out when it isn't.
As long as Steamspy functioned, we could not see any patterns that DRM played a decisive role in a game's success, when you compared similiar games with and without Denuvo.
And as explained in the video with concrete examples, DRM for us customers only serves as a source of technical problems. There's no good reason for why we shouldn't despise it.
I'm quite sure a good chunk of them can't, depending on word of mouth about the game, Metacritic score, etc. You're underestimating people's impatience.
That would apply to the Era bubble (kind of), but do you really think the average gamer (or slightly tech--savy parents) really expect something similar? I believe most of the pirates just wait a few hours or days, if there's no crack, let's buy it, or let's forget about it.
It would be nice if you had some data to backup your bullshit claims
Are we talking about the average user suddenly? The post I replied to asked us here about our thoughts, didn't it? It said "the experts here...".
Last edited:
No data at all, that's my opinion. While we're at it, show me the data backing up the myth that Denuvo tanks performance then.
True, although in the grand scheme of things the average user is what really matters to these companies anyway since they make the vast majority of sales, right?
Well, criticism against excessive DRM has worked before, so don't exclude the avarage user.
Remember the Starforce debacle, where your own computer could experience issues because of the DRM? That's gone now, after public backlash.
Remember limited activations for your games? That's gone now, after a lot of public backlash?
Remember when 2K implemented triple layers of DRM in Bioshock and other titles on Steam? That's gone now, after they backed down and more or less apologized, after public backlash.
And has any smaller/indie dev managed to persist with Denuvo in their games yet, or have they all backed down from it after negative publicity because of it?
You see, I'm not pro-Denuvo, let me make that clear. I actually prefer to buy my games at GoG when possible. I just find it immensely irritating and childish to hate on a thing when there's no proof that Denuvo actually hinders gameplay performance. If the subject of the discussion is a game not being playable in the foreseeable future because of it, then yeah, maybe a discussion is worth it.
Frankly though, the Denuvo hate around here is pretty similar to hating Nickelback - it's "cool".
If you compare this to Nickelback opinions, then you haven't understood the arguments from a lot of users here, who posts lengthy arguments about why they're against Denuvo.
Is it worth convincing you about that, and what the arguments are, or will I just figuratively bang my head against a wall if I try? Your post there doesn't really encourage me to put too much effort in replies to you exactly.