Anno 1800 and Denuvo ....

[Saracen999]

I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be "no" but I'll ask anyway ....

I rather fancy playing Anno 1800. I'm interested in single player ONLY, and have zero interest in playing online. I'm quite happy to buy it but what I am very much not happy with is the Denuvo DRM. While I understand the problem it addresses, it seems to me to be a hugely heavy-handed way to deal with it and I have no inclination at all to let that garbage anywhere near my PC.

The question? It's probably obvious by now, but is there any legitimate way around the Denuvo issue, without resorting to dodgy sites and risking even dodgier downloads (assuming there actually are even any)?

If not, my fallback plan is Anno 1404, which is on GOG, and DRM-less. Cheaper, too. But if I'm missing something obvious and can get 1800 without Denuvo, now seems like a good time, while it's on sale.

[Jonj1611]

Quick answer....no.

I have the game and all the expansions as its just so addictive and is a real real time sink. I am not too bothered about the denuvo. My gaming PC is a Windows install that is just used for gaming. Everything else is on another Windows install and Linux now

[ik9000]

Wait a few years for it to arrive on gog and play the older version for now

[Saracen999]

Thanks, Jon, and yeah, ik, that's the dilemma. Or, bite the bullet, put up with Denuvo and play the one I really fancy. I'm not sure I have the patiece to wait a few yeas. Or the time.

Decisions, decisions.

Hmmm. Buy a dedicated gaming machine? I been threatenng to since, well, some were in short trousers. Maybe it's time to get off my chuff.

[Jonj1611]

If you are going to get it might as well go all in. Think even if you bought it on Steam you will need Ubisoft as well

[Saracen999]

If you are going to get it might as well go all in. Think even if you bought it on Steam you will need Ubisoft as well

It looks like it from the listing, yeah. It's cooling my enthusiasm, which was something of an impulse to begin with, rapidly.

In large part, it's 'cos I want a game to play one-handed, like mouse-only. Got a problem with left hand at the moment, due to be fixed early Jan, but right now it's rather well bandaged. I don't fancy a WASD game wearing something like a boxing glove.

But I've got just about all versions of Myst. Yeah, hardly the same as a planning game but still, I enjoyed it years ago. Maybe I'll just do that.

[Millennium]

I've been reflecting on how Frontier Elite 2 and Quake Glide CTF runes covered so many of my gaming needs back in the day. My kind of thing I think! Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends recently while often I've noticed how much better some people seem to be at their games now so good on them

The newer games seem to have prepared people really a lot for newer multiplayer competitions. Healthy progression

[Saracen999]

...

The newer games seem to have prepared people really a lot for newer multiplayer competitions. Healthy progression

I just don't have any inclination towards competitive gaming these days, and when I did, it was playing on my own LAN setup (back in NE1000/NE2000 days), witha couple of friends. I even used to do the odd Crimson Skies session, back in the days of modding on OcUK. These days, I just have zero interest in competitive gaming at all, online or otherwise. I can't think of anything that would get me playing online competitive games, and not much that'd get me gaming online, even non-competitively. I don't judge those that do, it's just doesn't float my boat. It's not my idea of a fun time.

[Jonj1611]

I very rarely ever play multiplayer. It doesn't appeal to me and if I do its usually against bots anyway. Thankfully Call of Duty still caters for that.

I prefer a more relaxed gameplay experience where I can pause the game etc.

As for Anno and Denuvo etc are you going to notice it is there? You won't. It won't take anything away from the gameplay. If you have Steam might as well just have ubisoft and all that.

[Saracen999]

I very rarely ever play multiplayer. It doesn't appeal to me and if I do its usually against bots anyway. Thankfully Call of Duty still caters for that.

I prefer a more relaxed gameplay experience where I can pause the game etc.

As for Anno and Denuvo etc are you going to notice it is there? You won't. It won't take anything away from the gameplay. If you have Steam might as well just have ubisoft and all that.

I don't want anything like Denuvo operating at that sort of level, and am very wary of letting it. After all, it is of no benefit to me.

The machine in question doesn't have Steam. Only games on it are DRM-free from GoG. That's why I bought the Steamdeck. Or largely why.

Nah, the more I think about it, if I have to swallow Denuvo and Ubisoft, I can live without Anno. Or without 1800 anyway. I may go for 14xx, whatever it was, DRM-free on GoG instead, but decided Denuvo is too big a price to pay.

[Jonj1611]

Anno 1404 looks a very nice game graphically. And from the looks of it not a million miles away from Anno 1800 anyway

[rob4001]

Louis Rossman's take would be get the pirated version Reason studios demonstrates why piracy is completely justified by disabling paid, lifetime licenses

[Jonj1611]

Yes that maybe so but I should say we do not condone pirated software.

[Apex]

To the naughty step with them

[Saracen999]

Louis Rossman's take would be get the pirated version Reason studios demonstrates why piracy is completely justified by disabling paid, lifetime licenses

Yeah, I saw that. And I don't much disagree with his rationale. If I "bought" a product, and some time later a company turned round and "disabled" it by remote, I'd be annoyed too. Very, VERY annoyed.

If we scroll back quite a few years, I refused (when Steam came out, if that helps date my reference) to buy ANYTHING that required Steam, and it was for several reasons. One of those, and I made the point overand over again at the time, was to avoid setting myself up as a hostage to fortune where I could have spent thousands of pounds on games, and to have the whole thing vanish out from under me, at Steam's whim, if they decided that, for some reason and whether I'd done what they alleged or not, they were locking my account.

I have pretty recently created a Steam account .... and bought a Steam deck. Have I changed y mind? No, not much, but the value of Steam games I have is pretty modest and is largely consisting of a couple of bucks for this or that old game. Some (and I think it's just one) is more like £15, but it's theexception not the rule. Currently, my main gaming machine is a laptop and that doesn't even have Steam installed.

I've also said in the past that I wasn't paying for music streaming or video-streaming services. Instead, I buy CDs or DVDs. I ended up with Amazon Prime (due to lockdown) and had that for probably a year before I even looked at Prime Video. I'm about to cancel Prime entirely because I'm that annoyed about the whole "adding adverts and charging £2.99 to turn them off again" thing. I have still recently bought DVD boxsets, though, the latest being within the last week.

I did eventually pay for Amazon Music Unlimited .... for a while. I got a very good discounted offer. I used it to listen to quite a lot of stuff I otherwise wouldn't have bothered with, and ended buying (on CD) the stuff I like. Then, I turned the music subscription off again.

So while I entirely get the point Rossman is making, and don't disagree with the moral side of it, my methodology has, since the days of Steam launch, pretty much been to not set myself up for getting screwed like he was, in the frst place. I buy CDs (still) and DVDs (still), digitise them and stick them on my own (not web connected) home service.

Games are a bit trickier, in that they're often just not available to buy that way .... at least until old enough to end up on GoG, etc. So my reaction there, for years, was pretty much just to not buy games. After all, I was boycottig Steam, and I gave up trying to work out, even IF I bought the boxed version, whether it still needed either Steam or some other launcher or had some garbage like Denuvo.

So I get the moral justification of it. I could, on that basis, buy a legit version and not use it, and go get a pirate version to actually run, and feel morally justified. Legally justified is a bit trickier but thee reason I won't be doing it is simpler, and two-fold :-

- it's too much faffing about finding a site and doing it, and
- for peace of mind with my download, I plain DON'T TRUST those sites, or the content on them.

I'm by no means rich but I (and the wife) are both retired, own our own home so have zero rent/mortgage costs, and live a pretty simple and inexpensive lifestyle these days, to tthe point where monthly (unless I/we make a big purchase) and yearly (probably even if we do), income > spending. Not hugely so, but enough to indlulge ourselves a bit, hence thinking about a BambuLabs X1 Carbon (plus multi-filament) or maybe a Prusa Mk4.

I don't want to faff about pirating. I'm quite happy to just pay for the damn game .... but I'm not happy to get garbage like Denuvo, or even some other company launcher platform. If I baulk at Steam, I think my reaction to Ubi, EA Origin etc, is pretty predictable. Even though I agree with Rossman about what's 'justified', I still ain't doing it.

I've had other things on my mind recently and gaming fell off my agenda, but I'll pop back to GoG and as long as it's DRM-free (sure it was) and not demanding the Ubi launcher, then the old one (1404 I think).... that'll do. Anno 1800? I'm quite happy to buy it but won't, under current conditions. Will Ubi care? Of course not. Do I care if they care? Also, no.