But removing Denuvo DRM after 12 weeks ‘causes zero mean total revenue loss.’
They do not have sales data, so they use two different proxies: number of reviews, and number of active players.
I don’t see mention of how they get the number of active players. I’m assuming it’s through stats in Steam or something similar. If that’s the case, then their assumption of this number being biased towards being larger than the true number would be wrong. If you choose to both pirate and buy the game, chances are good that you’ll be playing the pirated version, and therefore would not get counted towards active players.
From the paper (proton drive file) https://drive.proton.me/urls/Z6DPGQCZ0M#GxZ6dDb2oV5W
The results suggest that Denuvo does protect legitimate sales to an estimated mean of 15 percent of total revenue and median of 20 percent, but there is little justification to employ Denuvo long-term (i.e. for more than three months), especially given that Denuvo can have negative technical side effects and is generally disliked by users.
How is that even measured when you see big budget games with DRM flop and games without DRM get crazy sales. Do consumers who pirate but are willing to pay full price for a game even that significant?
Source: their ass
Handy dandy diagram for any execs that are confused
Why anyone want to play the game they hate?
Not everybody follows that same diagram.
On one end of things, many people don’t care at all if a game has Denuvo.
On the other end, many pirates won’t buy a game they pirated even if they liked playing it.
No one want to play a game with denuvo, of course
Did this highly scientific study contemplate the possibility that this is in part the result of people feeling like they’re more justified in turning to piracy if a game is burdened with Denuvo?
Spoiler: It does not, so far as I can tell at first glance. It appears that the model is constructed entirely from DRM-crippled games that got cracked, and then then the estimate of how much revenue would be lost by going DRM-free from the start is extrapolated from that based on the assumption that it makes no difference. Maybe it’s true, but the acknowledgement that it “can and often does cause problems, and some developers have chosen to avoid Denuvo altogether because it had such a negative impact on how well their game would run” sort of suggests otherwise.
https://abs.freemyip.com:84/share/_5WuM4QF — be careful following strange links you found on lemmy, but this appears to be the pdf.
Modern denuvo games aren’t being cracked anymore. It only happens if the devs accidentally publish a just before launch release accidentally
