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The Denuvo DRM Thread

Modron

Arcane
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May 5, 2012
Messages
11,139
I don't like Denuvo either - breaking news, nobody does - but I'm allergic to breathless bullshit claims about anything and most of what's been said about Denuvo over the years has been exactly that. The only thing that was proven was prolonged loading screens, everything else is a pungent cocktail of sensationalism, hysteria and autism. And of course people trying to justify pirating games to feel better about it.
Pirates removed all traces of Denuvo from Asscreed Origins and there are considerable differences between performance there:
 

deuxhero

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Denuvo's agents admit Denuvo kills performance. You can verify it yourself: Just question why a years old game with a totally empty forum still has performance killing Denuvo, they'll pop right it and insist it doesn't. Then you can point out games that have had problems with it and they'll all, immediately, jump to admitting it does but insist it was the developer's fault. Very, very clearly on a script
 

cvv

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
Pirates removed all traces of Denuvo from Asscreed Origins and there are considerable differences between performance there:
Same case as the Callisto video previously. I remember Origins, was buggy af on release, first game in their new engine. This shit was getting like two patches or hotfixes a week.

Are they comparing the game on release vs. the game a with a few months worth of optimization patches?

Btw repeating this for the third time in a few hours but it's clearly not landing with ya'll.
 

Modron

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Are they comparing the game on release vs. the game a with a few months worth of optimization patches?
Considering the video was 4 years after the game was released I would assume the version they had installed through ubisoft connect was up to date.
 

Elttharion

Learned
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Jan 10, 2023
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I don't like Denuvo either - breaking news, nobody does - but I'm allergic to breathless bullshit claims about anything and most of what's been said about Denuvo over the years has been exactly that. The only thing that was proven was prolonged loading screens, everything else is a pungent cocktail of sensationalism, hysteria and autism. And of course people trying to justify pirating games to feel better about it.
Pirates removed all traces of Denuvo from Asscreed Origins and there are considerable differences between performance there:

Something weird in that video is that the denuvo version has generally much lower cpu utilization and slightly lower ram usage. Vram usage is higher in that version tho. There are times were the drm free copy goes to 80-90% of cpu usage but the Denuvo version never goes that high.
 

Sentinel

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Ommadawn
I don't like Denuvo either - breaking news, nobody does - but I'm allergic to breathless bullshit claims about anything and most of what's been said about Denuvo over the years has been exactly that. The only thing that was proven was prolonged loading screens, everything else is a pungent cocktail of sensationalism, hysteria and autism. And of course people trying to justify pirating games to feel better about it.
Pirates removed all traces of Denuvo from Asscreed Origins and there are considerable differences between performance there:

Something weird in that video is that the denuvo version has generally much lower cpu utilization and slightly lower ram usage. Vram usage is higher in that version tho. There are times were the drm free copy goes to 80-90% of cpu usage but the Denuvo version never goes that high.

CPU usage % is not a good way to know if your CPU is being well utilized at all.
 

BlackAdderBG

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The only thing that was proven was prolonged loading screens

Nothing like that has been proven. These videos compare versions that have Denuvo with checks vs versions where checks were whitelisted by some way. Nobody but Sony knows the methods used to "remove" Denuvo (some devs too but they will probably get sued to oblivion if they talk), but it's very,very unlikely that they go and remove actual code. On top of that most of the games use different versions of Denuvo so it's impossible to know which version you are testing, it's not wild to imagine the "cheap" ones could just have some sort of switch to kill the whole thing. Depending on how retarded the programmers (or the people that demand it) are Denuvo could be active only on area trasitions (Dragon Saga or some shit animu game had that) so in that case loading times will be affected, but most of the time it's tied to actual common fuctions on top of that and that shit had nothing to do with loading. Add the different engines and it's pretty much impossible to isolete it unless you are working for Sony or actually coding the game.
 

Ravielsk

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Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,746
Denuvo's agents admit Denuvo kills performance. You can verify it yourself: Just question why a years old game with a totally empty forum still has performance killing Denuvo, they'll pop right it and insist it doesn't. Then you can point out games that have had problems with it and they'll all, immediately, jump to admitting it does but insist it was the developer's fault. Very, very clearly on a script
This is a very consistent phenomena with SEGA games. Some of their games that are now over 5 years old like Shining Resonance Refrain or Valkyria Chronicles have long been cracked but still have Denuvo in them even though at this point all it does it cause compatibility issues with steam deck(especially when offline). Yet there still are constant shills showing up in discussions defending a fucking DRM of all things.
And they always use the same bullshit line of defense and always get told to fuck off in the same way and then when the discussion starts somewhere else they are immediately back up spreading the same horseshit.
 

Raghar

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Pirates removed all traces of Denuvo from Asscreed Origins and there are considerable differences between performance there:
Same case as the Callisto video previously. I remember Origins, was buggy af on release, first game in their new engine. This shit was getting like two patches or hotfixes a week.

Are they comparing the game on release vs. the game a with a few months worth of optimization patches?

Btw repeating this for the third time in a few hours but it's clearly not landing with ya'll.
Frankly all game developer companies should have exact data how Denuvo killed theirs performance. But when laws allows them to use stuff to protect theirs profit why would they care?

The big catch is that a company is forbidden to prevent copyrighted work to be released into public domain. And Denuvo and TAGES are tools to permanently prevent copyrighted work to be released into public domain. The best way how to resolve for a state is to make constitutional law that says: 1. the moment the company applied Denuvo or similar to theirs progam, the moment company gave up all copyright rights. 2. PC and console games can't be copyrighted longer than 5 years after original commercial release.
 

Hirato

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I don't like Denuvo either - breaking news, nobody does - but I'm allergic to breathless bullshit claims about anything and most of what's been said about Denuvo over the years has been exactly that. The only thing that was proven was prolonged loading screens, everything else is a pungent cocktail of sensationalism, hysteria and autism. And of course people trying to justify pirating games to feel better about it.
Pirates removed all traces of Denuvo from Asscreed Origins and there are considerable differences between performance there:

> Different time of Day
> GPU Utilisation is 100% on both sides
> Uncapped framerate

Something seems very fishy.
Denuvo is not known for running anything on the GPU, so I'd expect framerates to be consistent on both sides if the GPU is the limiting factor.
I've also written numerous posts around here about how games DO NOT SCALE LINEARLY, so even if you can say "my FPS is 25% higher", that doesn't mean denuvo's making the game 25% slower.
Games tend to be of the nature that requiring 5% extra CPU cycles can half your framerate or worse.

Something weird in that video is that the denuvo version has generally much lower cpu utilization and slightly lower ram usage. Vram usage is higher in that version tho.
Hard to say how he actually benchmarked.
But the RAM usage can probably be partly explained by windows just being a fat bloated pig, and him recording that footage after.
And VRAM somewhat by uplay's overlay being present.

CPU usage % is not a good way to know if your CPU is being well utilized at all.
Except CPU usage is the entire point, granted I much prefer the un-normalised number (i.e. I would personally see numbers ranging from 0% to 3200%).
As far as I am aware, DENUVO DOES NOT RUN ON THE GPU.
This means to benchmark it properly, you need to find a common baseline where BOTH sides push a smooth 60 FPS (or 120 or whatever), and then you compare the CPU Usage between denuvo and without.
As I have stressed repeatedly, GAMES DO NOT SCALE LINEARLY, and by turning it into a GPU benchmark, you invalidate the thing you're supposed to test.

And the results can then go in 1 of 3 ways:
1) No discernible difference
2) CPU Usage is lower - this is the expected result
3) GPU Usage is lower - completely unexpected result unless Denuvo does run on the GPU now.

and in the case of 2) or 3) we will finally have a figure for denuvo's actual impact.
 

soutaiseiriron

Educated
Joined
Aug 8, 2023
Messages
293
"2+2=4 and the earth is round"
wow wtf ITT we defend WOKE LIBTARD ACADEMIA???

the gamerbrain retards seeking validation and pretending to stick it to "the man" by not buying denuvo (but continuing to buy steam games or buying/playing live service slop) are about 100x worse than denuvo is. im forced to see their stupid fucking internet comments non-stop. i never see denuvo, because denuvo works perfectly for any legitimate customer.
 

cvv

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
I hate the Denuvo drama queens too, especially fucktards with their embarrassing justifications for piracy, but at least Steam doesn't make your loading times noticeably longer which can be whatever in some games but fucking obnoxious in others.

If they somehow make that shit just as unintrusive as Steam I stop giving an iota of shit immediately.
 

Ol' Willy

Arcane
Zionist Agent Vatnik
Joined
May 3, 2020
Messages
25,893
Location
Reichskommissariat Russland ᛋᛋ
"2+2=4 and the earth is round"
wow wtf ITT we defend WOKE LIBTARD ACADEMIA???

the gamerbrain retards seeking validation and pretending to stick it to "the man" by not buying denuvo (but continuing to buy steam games or buying/playing live service slop) are about 100x worse than denuvo is. im forced to see their stupid fucking internet comments non-stop. i never see denuvo, because denuvo works perfectly for any legitimate customer.
Buying?
 

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