The Denuvo DRM Thread

[ADL]

Are part 1&2 worth playing? I feel like Eternal's base game as a whole turned Doomguy into a superhero and didn't like the vibe of it at all. More of the same?

 

[HoboForEternity]

Eternal sucks. Too much platforming, too much marauders. As far as modern shooter goes, 2016 is the superior one

 

[deama]

Some older or maybe all games with denuvo might not work on newer intel CPUs...

 

[ADL]

I'm really looking forward to this because for years the Denuvo shills have used the talking point of "developers will patch it out if it ever becomes a problem! Don't worry about it!"
Coincidentally this is all being covered a week or two after Bethesda finally patched Games For Windows Live out of Fallout 3.

 

[Toffeli]

Some older or maybe all games with denuvo might not work on newer intel CPUs...

The late part of the video (06:50) saying AMD is going the same route is false. I watched this bit yesterday from Gamers Nexus addressing this.


Also mostly the same in txt:
https://hothardware.com/news/amd-zen-philosphy-win-cpu-wars

There has been speculation that AMD could also deliver a hybrid design down the line, perhaps with Zen 5, based in part on an AMD patent that appears to parallel Arm's big.LITTLE approach (Arm's brand name for its heterogeneous implementation). Only AMD knows for sure, but in the shorter term at least, the company feels it can "win" without going down that road.


"Mixed cores is one approach, the Android ecosystem took that a long time ago. But the way we plan to do it is going back to our roots, this Zen philosophy," Hallock explains. "We built a core that is physically much more smaller than what other companies were building in x86 land. When you pack that together with process leadership, packaging leadership like chiplets or 3D V-cache, when you pack that in with new firmware work we're doing, we can drive to much, much lower power profiles than we're even at today. We are the power efficiency leader today. We can keep doing that."

Hallock is clearly referencing Intel and its pending Alder Lake launch (though Lakefield is also a hybrid design), as AMD is not competing with any other company in "x86 land," as he puts it. And the message is fairly clear—the foundation of Zen with technological pillars like stacked 3D V-cache can get the job done, both today and into the future.

 

[karoliner]

Denuvo was removed from Ace Combat 7, Nier Replicant and Tomb Raider.

 

[deuxhero]

Soulcalibur 6 when?

 

[Raghar]

Denuvo was removed from Ace Combat 7, Nier Replicant and Tomb Raider.

Codex released Nier already.
Was it interesting game, better than Nier Automata?

 

[deama]

Denuvo was removed from Ace Combat 7, Nier Replicant and Tomb Raider.

What? Ace combat 7 had denuvo? I pirated that thing a long while ago and didn't have a problem... they must have had a crappy denuvo implementation.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Denuvo was removed from Ace Combat 7, Nier Replicant and Tomb Raider.

What? Ace combat 7 had denuvo? I pirated that thing a long while ago and didn't have a problem... they must have had a crappy denuvo implementation.

The updates and DLCs were never cracked, only the base game.

 

[ferratilis]

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-runs-noticeably-faster-without-denuvo/

NEWS
Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs noticeably faster without Denuvo
OCTOBER 23, 2021 JOHN PAPADOPOULOS 63 COMMENTS


A few days ago, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics removed the Denuvo anti-tamper tech from Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As such, and after some reports, we’ve decided to benchmark the game and see how it performs now that Denuvo is no longer available. And, surprisingly enough, the game now runs noticeably faster.

For these benchmarks, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz and NVIDIA’s RTX 3080. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 496.13 driver.

Now while Square Enix rolled back this latest update for the game, you can still access it via the Steam beta builds. For what it’s worth, this latest version ran without issues on our PC system.

As we all know, Denuvo may introduce some additional CPU overhead. As such, we’ve decided to benchmark scenes with settings that would introduce a possible CPU bottleneck. Therefore, we benchmarked the game at 1080p/Highest Settings (without Ray Tracing or DLSS) and 1080p/Lowest Settings.

Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics claimed that this latest update upgrades NVIDIA DLSS to the latest version, brings an improved shadow denoiser for use with ray traced shadows, updates to multiplayer infrastructure to use Epic Online Services and fixes specific compatibility issues with Intel GPU hardware. This is why we did not use DLSS or Ray Tracing. Apart from these improvements, this patch does not pack any CPU or memory improvements/optimizations (at least according to the developers themselves).

At 1080p/Highest Settings, we saw a small performance improvement in the built-in benchmark. The first and third/last benchmark levels/areas performed slightly better. On the other hand, the performance in the more GPU-bound second benchmark level/area remained the same.



Things got really interesting though when we lowered our settings to the Lowest. By doing this, we saw an 8fps improvement in our minimum framerates, and a 17fps improvement in average framerates. This is a noticeable performance boost. Not only that, but owners of older CPUs may see even higher performance increases.



When we disabled Hyper-Threading, the performance difference between the Denuvo and Denuvo-free versions got even bigger. The Denuvo version ran 30fps slower than the Denuvo-free version.



What this ultimately means is that Denuvo did affect performance in this particular game. Again, Crystal Dynamics did not mention any CPU/memory optimizations. Thus, this performance boost is most likely due to the removal of Denuvo. These performance improvements are also more noticeable on older CPUs. So, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a game that players can use as an example of a game running worse with the Denuvo anti-tamper tech!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

And, surprisingly enough, the game now runs noticeably faster.

 

[Tacgnol]

Game journos really hate acknowledging that denuvo is bad for performance, despite it being conclusively proven over and over (I include load times in performance).

Whenever mainstream sites have done articles on denuvo performance in the past, any acknowledgement of issues is always pretty grudging and filled with excuses.

Either denuvo pays them off or they just enjoy gamers suffering, maybe a combination of the two.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

These tests are actually useless, they were using the build-in benchmark where I would be surprised if Denuvo triggers at all. Without knowing what, where and when in the code Denuvo is triggered all this is just shooting in the dark.

 

[lightbane]

Every time Denuvo is demonstrated to be a piece of shit fucking up your PC, someone shows up to defend it, even in the Codex.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Every time Denuvo is demonstrated to be a piece of shit fucking up your PC, someone shows up to defend it, even in the Codex.

What are you talking about, I'm not defending Denuvo, but laughing at the author of the article above that is proving nothing and it's absolutely pathetic, if anything it makes Denuvo look good. 3 fps in 1080p with 120+ frames is a marketing slide for Denuvo to show potential clients. It probably doesn't make any calls in the build-in benchmark as in most cases it's placed when loading different area in my experience with cracked games. As I understand cracked games are actually not removing Denuvo at all, but cheating it with feeding the key that is called by it to authenticate. Same with when devs "remove" Denuvo I would speculate that they just make all calls to be "true", "positive" or whatever it's called, I doubt that they go and remove any Denuvo code.

 

[Semiurge]

Either denuvo pays them off or

Of course someone pays journos off. It's the norm of gaming journalism.

 

[Tacgnol]

Every time Denuvo is demonstrated to be a piece of shit fucking up your PC, someone shows up to defend it, even in the Codex.

What are you talking about, I'm not defending Denuvo, but laughing at the author of the article above that is proving nothing and it's absolutely pathetic, if anything it makes Denuvo look good. 3 fps in 1080p with 120+ frames is a marketing slide for Denuvo to show potential clients. It probably doesn't make any calls in the build-in benchmark as in most cases it's placed when loading different area in my experience with cracked games. As I understand cracked games are actually not removing Denuvo at all, but cheating it with feeding the key that is called by it to authenticate. Same with when devs "remove" Denuvo I would speculate that they just make all calls to be "true", "positive" or whatever it's called, I doubt that they go and remove any Denuvo code.

In Metro Exodus, Denuvo had an extremely significant impact on load times.

There is absolutely zero question that Denuvo has a detrimental impact on any game it is implemented in. Some devs are just better at mitigating that impact than others.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

In Metro Exodus, Denuvo had an extremely significant impact on load times.

Reeeeeeeeeally, interesting. I briefly fucked around with Exodus ages ago due to game pass but the ridiculous loading times annoyed me to the point where I deleted it after barely touching it (Also didn't like the open world shit and how fast mutants respawned, but I probably would've tried it longer without the load times dissuading me from starting the game up) but I've got a Steam copy now that I haven't touched, might have to check it out at some point.

 

[Semiurge]

Denuvo is a piece of shit and I genuinely hope the company goes bankrupt and the people who came up with this shit lose their jobs. It's pure evil.

Evil that exists because the modern ignorant human has no self-respect, and a strong desire to appear good. Advocates of DRM have always impressed the virtue of copy protections upon consumers, who will gladly continue their work - "There's no such thing as DRM that is too invasive, only consumers that are too dishonest and sinful to accept it as a part of their existence". That could easily be their mantra. Useful idiots are an infinite resource, in any field.

.nfo art was better in the past. Another sign of the decline of western civilization.

I remember how these used to have funky music in the Commodore/Atari days.

 

[Tacgnol]

In Metro Exodus, Denuvo had an extremely significant impact on load times.

Reeeeeeeeeally, interesting. I briefly fucked around with Exodus ages ago due to game pass but the ridiculous loading times annoyed me to the point where I deleted it after barely touching it (Also didn't like the open world shit and how fast mutants respawned, but I probably would've tried it longer without the load times dissuading me from starting the game up) but I've got a Steam copy now that I haven't touched, might have to check it out at some point.

A few people did write ups on it at the time, but I think this video was one of the most thorough examinations.



Actual framerate differences in Exodus were very slight, though the framerates were slightly more stable with Denuvo removed.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

A few people did write ups on it at the time, but I think this video was one of the most thorough examinations.

Actual framerate differences in Exodus were very slight, though the framerates were slightly more stable with Denuvo removed.

Thanks! Load times are still a little piggy but are roughly twice as fast, (Actually much faster, since my first experience was the Microsoft version which loaded even slower than Steam+Denuvo) does make me a bit more inclined to try it out again. Though on the other hand I may as well keep waiting on it since presumably video card prices will come back down one day and then I'd be able to overhaul my machine and play it with all the eyecandy. Sadly loading levels looks like it's less impacted by Denuvo than getting to the main menu, though that stands to reason. Only game where the framerate seemed particularly impacted was Prey, though the load time improvements were fairly universal.

 

[Tacgnol]

A few people did write ups on it at the time, but I think this video was one of the most thorough examinations.

Actual framerate differences in Exodus were very slight, though the framerates were slightly more stable with Denuvo removed.

Thanks! Load times are still a little piggy but are roughly twice as fast, (Actually much faster, since my first experience was the Microsoft version which loaded even slower than Steam+Denuvo) does make me a bit more inclined to try it out again. Though on the other hand I may as well keep waiting on it since presumably video card prices will come back down one day and then I'd be able to overhaul my machine and play it with all the eyecandy. Sadly loading levels looks like it's less impacted by Denuvo than getting to the main menu, though that stands to reason. Only game where the framerate seemed particularly impacted was Prey, though the load time improvements were fairly universal.

The biggest improvement to level loading times seemed to be on 2nd time/repeated loads, where with Denuvo it was still taking 30+ seconds, but without was down to less than 10.

It really does make you wonder what sort of satanic magic 4A used to implement the Denuvo triggers.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Every time Denuvo is demonstrated to be a piece of shit fucking up your PC, someone shows up to defend it, even in the Codex.

What are you talking about, I'm not defending Denuvo, but laughing at the author of the article above that is proving nothing and it's absolutely pathetic, if anything it makes Denuvo look good. 3 fps in 1080p with 120+ frames is a marketing slide for Denuvo to show potential clients. It probably doesn't make any calls in the build-in benchmark as in most cases it's placed when loading different area in my experience with cracked games. As I understand cracked games are actually not removing Denuvo at all, but cheating it with feeding the key that is called by it to authenticate. Same with when devs "remove" Denuvo I would speculate that they just make all calls to be "true", "positive" or whatever it's called, I doubt that they go and remove any Denuvo code.

In Metro Exodus, Denuvo had an extremely significant impact on load times.

There is absolutely zero question that Denuvo has a detrimental impact on any game it is implemented in. Some devs are just better at mitigating that impact than others.

Yes, and some are so retarded that they probably tie Denuvo with some very common command that the game becomes unplayable like Arkham Knight or the stutter with Deathloop.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Every time Denuvo is demonstrated to be a piece of shit fucking up your PC, someone shows up to defend it, even in the Codex.

it's starforce all over again. nothing new.