You know these are valid concerns, and I have two thoughts about this. The first is that I don’t understand how this doesn’t also apply to Steam or Epic Games or any other basic storefront (except GOG of course). I see a lot of headlines about Denuvo but none about Steam. People seem to selectively apply their hate in this matter.
The second thought that I have is that I agree that this is a problem, but I don’t see any other way around it. This is just the trade off of getting AAA games. These are big, complex pieces of IP that require millions to hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that the company making them has to recoup. To ensure that you actually get paid, you have to have DRM. Companies wouldn’t shell out the millions of dollars on DRM unless it was proven to actually work. As I see it, if you like AAA games you just gotta weigh the cost on a game by game basis.
Most GOG games ship entirely free of protection, it’s kind of their thing. As for steam, getting around the online checks is trivial.
The issue is ownership of the goods you bought. If the barrier to ownership is slight, I don’t have a big issue with it. Denuvo is a serious barrier and has serious impacts on performance.
I see a lot of headlines about Denuvo but none about Steam.
Steam is a platform used to sell games and DRM is optional. Denuvo itself is a specific type of DRM that people have experienced issues with the most whether it is interruptions to offline play or 5 activation limits. It’s why the specific DRM is being focused on that has been the most draconian of the other DRM that exists, since it has been the most frequently disruptive over less overbearing DRM.
Steam has the stance that it will “release” a version where you just get valid license from the game you purchased and downloaded before they shutoff service should it belly up in the end. Epic does not really have the same thing announced anywhere, but I’d assume similar thing.(Note, Epic has more net worth than Valve, they can afford to shut EGS and still provide EOS/license check almost indefinitely even if they stopped selling games on EGS as a platform.) And it’s why steam has that 3rd party DRM tag/block on games.(I wish EGS has this tag or information as well)
Denuvo is quite different however cause:
it’s harder to patch out, and the platform do not have access to those part.
it adds additional game breaking point( say if you bought a game that has it and also “always online” you need game company, Denuvo, storefront platform and your internet up to play that
game.)
I think steam and epic would have bot that buy and patch out the game’s DRM like day 1 after release, they don’t care cause majority of their user won’t bother downloading shady program from a shady website. The publishers however care and thus we have this issue of them “trusting” Denuvo to shield them from piracy during launch window.
I still vote with wallet and generally only buy single player game after they removed Denuvo or just buy those on PSN, cause I trust platform to last longer than Denuvo.
You know these are valid concerns, and I have two thoughts about this. The first is that I don’t understand how this doesn’t also apply to Steam or Epic Games or any other basic storefront (except GOG of course). I see a lot of headlines about Denuvo but none about Steam. People seem to selectively apply their hate in this matter.
The second thought that I have is that I agree that this is a problem, but I don’t see any other way around it. This is just the trade off of getting AAA games. These are big, complex pieces of IP that require millions to hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that the company making them has to recoup. To ensure that you actually get paid, you have to have DRM. Companies wouldn’t shell out the millions of dollars on DRM unless it was proven to actually work. As I see it, if you like AAA games you just gotta weigh the cost on a game by game basis.
Most GOG games ship entirely free of protection, it’s kind of their thing. As for steam, getting around the online checks is trivial.
The issue is ownership of the goods you bought. If the barrier to ownership is slight, I don’t have a big issue with it. Denuvo is a serious barrier and has serious impacts on performance.
Steam is a platform used to sell games and DRM is optional. Denuvo itself is a specific type of DRM that people have experienced issues with the most whether it is interruptions to offline play or 5 activation limits. It’s why the specific DRM is being focused on that has been the most draconian of the other DRM that exists, since it has been the most frequently disruptive over less overbearing DRM.
Steam has the stance that it will “release” a version where you just get valid license from the game you purchased and downloaded before they shutoff service should it belly up in the end. Epic does not really have the same thing announced anywhere, but I’d assume similar thing.(Note, Epic has more net worth than Valve, they can afford to shut EGS and still provide EOS/license check almost indefinitely even if they stopped selling games on EGS as a platform.) And it’s why steam has that 3rd party DRM tag/block on games.(I wish EGS has this tag or information as well)
Denuvo is quite different however cause:
I think steam and epic would have bot that buy and patch out the game’s DRM like day 1 after release, they don’t care cause majority of their user won’t bother downloading shady program from a shady website. The publishers however care and thus we have this issue of them “trusting” Denuvo to shield them from piracy during launch window.
I still vote with wallet and generally only buy single player game after they removed Denuvo or just buy those on PSN, cause I trust platform to last longer than Denuvo.