Decline have Denuvo and steam finally cracked the skill/will of pirates?

[DalekFlay]

Denuvo is genuinely a lot more complex than a lot of previous copy protections (hence why it potentially has such an impact on performance).

"Such an impact" on performance? Got a link for that? Even the tech vids/articles I've seen that support the idea it could impact performance say it's an extremely small one.

For the record I'm against DRM and such, buy on GOG whenever I can, just like getting the facts.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I don't know if there's anything more than people on piracy-related parts of the internet saying such things. Which is slightly questionable, who buys a game and then downloads a pirated version later? Do harddrives grow on trees in some countries?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Denuvo is genuinely a lot more complex than a lot of previous copy protections (hence why it potentially has such an impact on performance).

"Such an impact" on performance? Got a link for that? Even the tech vids/articles I've seen that support the idea it could impact performance say it's an extremely small one.

For the record I'm against DRM and such, buy on GOG whenever I can, just like getting the facts.

most of the videos on the subject are "we tried this on a computer which would put nasa's to shame, and as you can see we have fps drops from 180 to 90, which keeps the game still perfectly playable, i don't understand what you're complaining about".

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It is very stupid to buy a game as soon as it is released. But it is also quite stupid to crack a game too soon. It's better to wait a few years, when the game is completely patched and with all the relevant DLCs, to crack it, re-pack it, and finally to deliver a finely crafted package.

I get your point, but by that time the price would've gone way down, and the novelty too. Way less incentive to crack and pirate.

Plus, for crackers, it used to be a race to show off skills, and not about archiving the best version.

FitGirl would like a word with you lot.

And to quote my own post from the original Denuvo thread:

The aforementioned "arms race" has been around since the dawn of man.

One day, someone comes up with a lock. The next day, someone else comes up with a method to pick it.

As long as the lock is made by Man, it can be picked open by Man.

This is not gonna change anytime soon.

 

[Ismaul]

FitGirl would like a word with you lot.

FitGirl isn't a cracker, but a repacker.

And locks won't be broken if there's no motivation to do so. It's not because you could with some effort that you will.

And since there is no crack, either that can't, or they won't. We're arguing for the second possibility here.

 

[DalekFlay]

most of the videos on the subject are "we tried this on a computer which would put nasa's to shame, and as you can see we have fps drops from 180 to 90, which keeps the game still perfectly playable, i don't understand what you're complaining about".

Send me a link to any test that gets anywhere near halving the framerate and we'll talk. The ones I've watched, it's an extremely small difference on an ancient processor and zippo on a newer one.

 

[Tacgnol]

most of the videos on the subject are "we tried this on a computer which would put nasa's to shame, and as you can see we have fps drops from 180 to 90, which keeps the game still perfectly playable, i don't understand what you're complaining about".

Send me a link to any test that gets anywhere near halving the framerate and we'll talk. The ones I've watched, it's an extremely small difference on an ancient processor and zippo on a newer one.

There was a recent one that showed it had a pretty large impact on loading times in several games. At this point it has been pretty conclusively proven that it does have an impact on performance, both framerates and loading times.

The significance depends on the game and how Denuvo was implemented.

The video below is a pretty good demonstration on several games. There are many other demonstrations as well. Also regardless of whether it's halved (it isn't), it is not acceptable for legit customers to have inferior performance to a cracked version.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Denuvo is genuinely a lot more complex than a lot of previous copy protections (hence why it potentially has such an impact on performance).

"Such an impact" on performance? Got a link for that? Even the tech vids/articles I've seen that support the idea it could impact performance say it's an extremely small one.

For the record I'm against DRM and such, buy on GOG whenever I can, just like getting the facts.

There's two things here that could cause significant performance loss:
1. Denuvo is to some degree just a rebranded VMProtect which uses a virtual machine to interpret its own custom instruction set.
Depending on what it's doing and how often, yes, it could have a very big overhead. We have no way to know what it's doing or how often it's doing it. I doubt even the people cracking it know what it's doing, if I had to guess most of their work is just trial and error to replace all calls into the denuvo VM with noops.

2. Any executable using denuvo will be using tricks to prevent reverse engineering. Some of these can have a significant performance overhead, yes. Even just having more instructions puts more pressure on the icache. For all we know, common obfuscation branching techniques might be a total wtf to cpu branch predictors which can cause serious performance issues.

Putting both of these together, and the fact that we know (some) denuvo protected executables are significantly larger, we can guess that it likely has a performance impact.

If you'd like to know more about how Denuvo works, here's a paper about virtualization obfuscation
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/woot09/tech/full_papers/rolles.pdf

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I wonder if bad performance has little impact on sales and that's why companies are willing to use it. Even if the impact on FPs isn't big the average player doesn't have a Pc that can afford the loss (or is using a console).

Yeah, there's a lot of talk about that, but then you have plenty of stories of crackers getting butthurt about this or that and threatening to never release any more cracks. If all they care about is being first then what's that about?

Well, if releasing cracks is an ego thing, then some stupid community drama is to be expected...

 

[Tacgnol]

I wonder if bad performance has little impact on sales and that's why companies are willing to use it. Even if the impact on FPs isn't big the average player doesn't have a Pc that can afford the loss (or is using a console).

Denuvo won the PR war on performance issues early on. People overreacted when it first came out with stories about it trashing SSDs and causing other issues.

The overreaction made the genuine claims that it caused actual performance issues sketchy. Even game journos have admitted that it causes performance loss now, but the damage has already been done.

 

[Mexi]

I wonder if bad performance has little impact on sales and that's why companies are willing to use it. Even if the impact on FPs isn't big the average player doesn't have a Pc that can afford the loss (or is using a console).

Denuvo won the PR war on performance issues early on. People overreacted when it first came out with stories about it trashing SSDs and causing other issues.

The overreaction made the genuine claims that it caused actual performance issues sketchy. Even game journos have admitted that it causes performance loss now, but the damage has already been done.

Gamers are some of the most limp-dick cucked consumers I've ever seen. Fuck me, just angers me. Luckily, I do minimal AAA gaming.

 

[DalekFlay]

There was a recent one that showed it had a pretty large impact on loading times in several games. At this point it has been pretty conclusively proven that it does have an impact on performance, both framerates and loading times.

Added your video to my watch later list. I watched several about Batman Arkham Knight when it came to Epic and they all agreed it made zero difference, but as you say it might depend on the title. I just want to know the truth, so I'll watch and see. Thanks.

 

[aweigh]

in the case of the new Call of Duty it's more that it's online-only than Denuvo, same reason that Need For Speed game never got cracked but its sequel did; it required server token to let you play single-player.

Dirt 2 also on the same boat, single-player isn't available in the cracked version because it requires server contact.

 

[aweigh]

I find shit like that pathetic as hell. Whatever happened to guys liking sports or professional wrestling? Seems like each generation is getting more and more pathetic.

As weird as it sounds it was actually getting into competitive fighting games (mainly Street Fighter) that finally helped me understand why people enjoy real sports. I can legitimately say I now understand and enjoy real sports better because of Street Fighter.

 

[aweigh]

Which is slightly questionable, who buys a game and then downloads a pirated version later?

I do. All the time.

1. I hate using launchers so when I buy a game it's to give the devs monetary support; I go and pirate the game then so I can play it without using a launcher.

2. I launch some games using script files to change desktop resolution or refresh rate when the game executable launches and then return those to normal when the game closes; steam and other launchers interfere with this.

If the game is single-player and is fully cracked, then I will get it on sale to give the devs support and to ensure more games like it are made and then I just play the cracked version. This is why most of my games on Steam have 0 hours played.

EDIT: Also goes without saying I prefer GOG. No launcher! No bullshit.

 

[Tacgnol]

There was a recent one that showed it had a pretty large impact on loading times in several games. At this point it has been pretty conclusively proven that it does have an impact on performance, both framerates and loading times.

Added your video to my watch later list. I watched several about Batman Arkham Knight when it came to Epic and they all agreed it made zero difference, but as you say it might depend on the title. I just want to know the truth, so I'll watch and see. Thanks.

It often seems to impact loading times much more significantly than framerates. Though in some games the difference with the latter can be noticeable.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Which is slightly questionable, who buys a game and then downloads a pirated version later?

I do. All the time.

1. I hate using launchers so when I buy a game it's to give the devs monetary support; I go and pirate the game then so I can play it without using a launcher.

2. I launch some games using script files to change desktop resolution or refresh rate when the game executable launches and then return those to normal when the game closes; steam and other launchers interfere with this.

If the game is single-player and is fully cracked, then I will get it on sale to give the devs support and to ensure more games like it are made and then I just play the cracked version. This is why most of my games on Steam have 0 hours played.

EDIT: Also goes without saying I prefer GOG. No launcher! No bullshit.

Ah, I meant to imply that the people buying it were also downloading it AND downloading the pirated version. In my head it made sense. Since people can just copy the necessary cracked and uncracked files as they see fit, rather than keeping two entire copies of the game around.

 

[Raghar]

Funnily I did a small analysis of prices of TW games when Steampunks released WH TW as a surprise, VM protected to prevent denuvo programmers to find what they did.

I found that BEFORE year working copy protection, TW games dropped in price. They didn't care about pirates, but people who were buying games on steam sale were often interested in low price games, and they already recouped costs. They didn't went in prices too low, because it was better when overly poor people rather pirated theirs game, than dropping price too much.

The area under curve was about 2x-3x smaller when I analysed the price curve during sale period. (They get rid of physical copies of too old game in stores, thus the curve isn't infinite.) Yup, it's 3x as much money you pay when pirates are not making copies available for free.

Additional problem is 50+ $ of additional electricity bill, caused by Denuvo CPU load in comparison to an unprotected game.

And of course, the thrill of running antivirus immune rootkit with privileged rights that communicates with internet. Yea.

Perhaps Denuvo should be outlawed in decent countries for privacy protection, because otherwise, it's a hidden bomb.

 

[Pentium]

Gamers are some of the most limp-dick cucked consumers I've ever seen. Fuck me, just angers me. Luckily, I do minimal AAA gaming.

More like it's some of the most limp-dick cucked consumers turned gamers as it's been some time, as we all know, that games went heavy mainstream, big companies encouraging that to maximize their gains, of course (to be fair, video games development is an extremely expensive long haul today but they would quite naturally go such a way regardless). It could be just anything that's trendy enough, casual friendly, affordable and fitting into their turning-into-a-pig-on-couch lifestyle and it currently just happens to be gaming. It's simply another attractive and, considering typical self-recycling AAA bs titles, effort free and comfortable entertainment to consume. Not that the video game industry hadn't been huge even before that and full of bs games too. But it was still somewhat of an undeground, niche subculture in itself back then. I still remeber when being a gamer used to be a stigma ffs.

Also never forget the one rule: If you don't need a new keyboard, it wasn't a good game.:D

 

[DalekFlay]

It often seems to impact loading times much more significantly than framerates. Though in some games the difference with the latter can be noticeable.

I watched that video and Prey was the only game with any significant framerate impact at all. Wonder why that one's so special. You're right that the load time difference can be pretty substantial though. Annoying.