Denuvo DRM gets the elbow from Grey Box's RiME

[HEXUS]

Processor sapping, irritating, Denuvo anti-tampering software was cracked in five days.

Read more.

[shaithis]

I don't mind DRM if it doesn't cause issues but lately most of them have been a PITA.

Nice to see them state they will remove it but the question remains, why use it in the first place when you know damn well it's causing a performance overhead?

[Ozaron]

.. why use it in the first place when you know damn well it's causing a performance overhead?

Because no software company wants people pirating their game mere hours after it's been released?

The concept of acceptable losses and the theory of conscientious pirates hold no sway over hard financials.

DRMs like this still need to fade to a disappointing page in history though..

On a different note, is it possible that this distribution of Denuvo was so militaristic because the authors are experimenting on how to keep the DRM crackers at bay for longer? I'm not 100% on how these work. Does appear to be the kind of somewhat popular indie game that they could get away with trying it in.

[Otherhand]

I think this article and headline (the main page headline, not the one at the top of the page) make a lot of things sound concrete that really aren't. Every single game I've ever bought which has Denuvo has attracted threads claiming it causes performance issues, from people who do not own the game (Steam shows you an icon to tell you if the person is a customer) - transparently, these are prospective pirates frustrated by the DRM.

Undoubtedly, past iterations of this DRM did cause a significant performance hit but we know it's been good in its latest evolution. Maybe you lose a frame here or there, but when my games are getting well over 100fps I don't care. The assertion that it's affecting loading times in Rime is unlikely. No doubt the devs can and will improve their compression and get their loading times down, but checks from the DRM can't be causing that. Again, plenty of other games load lightning fast for me, whereas this is a graphically ambitious multi-platform title from a relatively small indie team; is anyone surprised that the game isn't in its best form on release?

I'm not saying Denuvo is 100% definitely not causing issues in Rime. Maybe it is. Maybe these programmers lack whatever knowledge or techniques other devs have used to make their games work well with it. I just think the home page headline and sub ("Processor sapping, irritating, Denuvo"), and some of the text here, makes it all seem too cut and dried.

[virtuo]

..

It depends on the implementation of the DRM/Anti-Tamper. From what I've seen, the implementation of Denuvo in RiME is incredibly heavy handed. An analysis I've seen of the triggers/calls to the Denuvo code in this title - where you may see 10-20 a minute in a typical implementation - are up in the hundreds/thousands per minute. That's valuable CPU time taken away from the game. People using the risky "denuvo removed" versions that have been floating around t'web are reporting load/save times halving without the Anti-Tamper running. That's significant.

I own a couple of Denuvo protected titles and on the whole I don't notice my CPU screaming, but I have a fairly powerful system that can cope with it. I'd be annoyed to buy RiME knowing the code is almost crippling itself where some pirate is potentially getting twice the performance for free.


Wonder how many mods/admins are watching this thread like a hawk.

[SylvanSagacious]

.. why use it in the first place when you know damn well it's causing a performance overhead?

Because no software company wants people pirating their game mere hours after it's been released?

The concept of acceptable losses and the theory of conscientious pirates hold no sway over hard financials.

DRMs like this still need to fade to a disappointing page in history though..

On a different note, is it possible that this distribution of Denuvo was so militaristic because the authors are experimenting on how to keep the DRM crackers at bay for longer? I'm not 100% on how these work. Does appear to be the kind of somewhat popular indie game that they could get away with trying it in.

To the best of my memory, no company has ever succeeded in showing damaging effects of piracy. At best they can estimate the number of times a game has been pirated and immediately equate that with lost earnings (or literal theft) instead of lost potential earnings.

Same thing happened when Molyneux cried about how GAME (the store) where making more money on second hand resales and that meant the publishers & developers where literally losing money, despite having made theirs already months before hand, but saw an opportunity to cry and try to lobby the government to force reselling stores to give the original publisher another cut of the profits.

If you make it harder for people to pirate a game thats cool, those who want to play it on release will pay for it, while those who'll wait a week or so will end up paying for it too. The rest, as in the vast bulk of piracy, will never pay for it DRM or not.

The problem in my opinion is really the pirates who profit from others work, which is the whole point of copyright.



also, I know people who still refuse to use Steam because they consider it unethical and draconian

[Mapester]

I think they should protect their product differently to how it currently done, as the devs know at some point their hard work is going to eventually be cracked and made available for free for the pirates.

I suggest that they not focus on DRM that makes the game unable to run at all, but to incorperate slight changes within the game if it detects its not 100% genuine. For exapmle you could have your game cracked and available for the pirates shortly after release and see numerous twitch streams complaining how the 2nd boss is impossible to kill, which would be due to an unfair mechannic being introduced as the protection itself. It could bring higher sales as more people would have had a demo of the final game via the pirated version that does not work properly and sway them to buy the offical version of the game.

[aniilv]

I think they should protect their product differently to how it currently done, as the devs know at some point their hard work is going to eventually be cracked and made available for free for the pirates.

I suggest that they not focus on DRM that makes the game unable to run at all, but to incorperate slight changes within the game if it detects its not 100% genuine. For exapmle you could have your game cracked and available for the pirates shortly after release and see numerous twitch streams complaining how the 2nd boss is impossible to kill, which would be due to an unfair mechannic being introduced as the protection itself. It could bring higher sales as more people would have had a demo of the final game via the pirated version that does not work properly and sway them to buy the offical version of the game.

This has been done a million of times.

Creating artificial triggers to game does not make pirates not crack them properly.

Also, in case your drm fails, you would be left with "working, but faulty" game and possibly never know it has failed.

[Sixiepoo]

and now Denuvo is getting sued

[DevDrake]

I must say, i despite DRM attempts.
Back in the day i sow that the pirates has turned the marked for games, of course they taken a share from that...

I lately noticed that playable game demo almost cased to exist.
Now somehow they allows people to try the game before purchase when game marketing lies to you about game features (hi no man sky, hi EA, hi Ubi ... )

To be frank, i don't pirate games. My library counts ~1000 significant titles from which i ever played 1/20.

Anyway, my personal policy is I never buy a game featuring Denuvo. Not even if is taken down by the patch later on. I just refuse to contribute to a tool that in future can block art from people.
Yes i missed few titles i really wanted to play, but well, it is how it is.

[lon3wolf2002]

I must say, i despite DRM attempts.
Back in the day i sow that the pirates has turned the marked for games, of course they taken a share from that...

I lately noticed that playable game demo almost cased to exist.
Now somehow they allows people to try the game before purchase when game marketing lies to you about game features (hi no man sky, hi EA, hi Ubi ... )

To be frank, i don't pirate games. My library counts ~1000 significant titles from which i ever played 1/20.

Anyway, my personal policy is I never buy a game featuring Denuvo. Not even if is taken down by the patch later on. I just refuse to contribute to a tool that in future can block art from people.
Yes i missed few titles i really wanted to play, but well, it is how it is.

To be honest I doubt Denuvo will be around for much longer anyway, it was fine when first implemented but now it's just Starforce/Securom V2.

[HollyDOL]

DRM indeed can be major PITA. I remember either with Morrowind or Oblivion the DRM being a cause for very frequent game crashes.