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[ZombiePlatypus]

So I was looking up Denuvo on Wikipedia (on mobile so I don't have a link) but it talks about how this software is detrimental to SSDs. Is this really true?

Also, why do companies bother with this when it seems to just quickly get cracked anyway? Costs money, bad publicity and gets cracked. I understand but companies will keep trying with DRM, but this one particularly sounds like a zero sum game.

 

[Dio Brando]

that never got proved, i believe.

 

[packy34]

They bother with it because it still stays uncracked for about a week to a month after a game's release, which is usually the biggest sales period.

 

[~Cross~]

Pretty sure it harms SSDs the same way it degraded games performance, IE not provable at all and probably just superstitions by people that hate the thing

 

[Garrett Hawke]

It literally says on that page

Some consumers have alleged that Denuvo Anti-Tamper shortens the lifetime of solid-state drives (SSDs) by writing an excessive amount of data to the drive.[1][23][24][25] Denuvo Software Solutions claims that "Denuvo Anti-Tamper does not constantly read or write any data to storage media,"[2] calling it a "wrong rumor", since it doesn't perform read or write operations.[26]

So sounds very fake

 

[wanders]

So I was looking up Denuvo on Wikipedia (on mobile so I don't have a link) but it talks about how this software is detrimental to SSDs. Is this really true?

Also, why do companies bother with this when it seems to just quickly get cracked anyway? Costs money, bad publicity and gets cracked. I understand but companies will keep trying with DRM, but this one particularly sounds like a zero sum game.

You can still grab the URL from your browser. Excuses!

 

[TeamLeftMatch]

They bother with it because it still stays uncracked for about a week to a month after a game's release, which is usually the biggest sales period.

Life is strange got cracked 2 days after release. Denuvo is not really useful for that when a game gets cracked within the first week. People who pirate games would probably wait till the crack comes before they will actually buy the game.

To answer your question it probably does not harm the SSD to my knowledge but its DRM.

At this point, I don't know why companies use Denuvo when it doesn't really help against piracy and people get mad when they implement it in.

 

[beeswax]

There's lots of misinformation floating around about Denuvo but the SSD thrashing one was brought up and debunked a long, long time ago. This is the best summary of the topic I've seen:

Facts:
-Denuvo hampers unofficial modding (modifying the executable is not possible)
-Denuvo requires online activation (periodically or at every hardware change)
-Denuvo is not future-proof (servers failure will make games unplayable)
-Games don't work on virtual machines anymore (Wine for Linux and MacOS unofficial support impossible) Edit: apparently that's fixed, thanks madjoki
Source: https://whyisdenuvobad.github.io/

Debunked:
-Denuvo doesn't repeatedly rewrite on your SSD
-RiME developers don't think Denuvo was the thing responsible for their performance issues (they removed it because it got cracked, which means keeping it was useless).
-Based on this old source, Denuvo doesn't take away from development resources/time since the profiling is done by Denuvo and it's a post-compilation step (for a 20€ game, costs 1~2% of total sales. Less so for pricier games.).
-According to Sega, Denuvo had nothing to do with Sonic Mania's always logged requirement

Quotes:
http://www.pcgamer.com/sonic-mania-on-steam-requires-an-internet-connection-to-play/

«[...] We’ve found the problem within the game code that was stopping people playing offline and it’s been corrected by the dev team. [...] »
«We’ve looked into the DRM complaints and can confirm this was not the cause of the problem. [...]»​

https://www.greybox.com/rime/fr/forum/topic/1575/

«The only thing that Denuvo is currently doing for us is checking to make certain that Steam’s (or Origin’s) DRM is still attached to the game. There is a small performance hit associated with this, but at this time we do not believe it is causing the problems that are currently being reported. We might be wrong. We’re monitoring the situation.
It has always been our intention to remove Denuvo in the event of a crack.[...]»​

Based on the "Integration Workflow" part of the old source, removing Denuvo from the game just means recompiling the game while NOT doing the last step to include it. More games should follow that idea and remove Denuvo once it gets cracked.
Denuvo marketing team (so obviously biaised to make it look simple):

«Integration workflow into a game:
The protection is a post-compiler step and does not need any source code modifications on your end (only three compiler / linker settings must be enabled in VS).
We have an online encryption service which is available as SaaS (hosted in the AWS).
Step 1: Provide us (access to) a (running) build with three compiler / linker settings enabled: /pdb /map /fixed:no; the Steam app ID and Steam private key
Step 2: We create and run our performance profiler and play the game collecting performance uncritical functions
Step 3: We setup the game project on the protection server and send a cmd line tool to the dev team with instructions how to embed it to the build process
Step 4: When running the protection our engine decompiles the exe, parses the collected functions from step 2, injects the security code and recompiles the executable (and creates an updated pdb for debugging)
We usually see this workflow done in 1-2 weeks but suggest to start integrating it 1 month prior goldmaster date to have enough time and focus – also for testing.»​

If this is still accurate Denuvo has a flat fee model, and a per-game-sold model. It's interesting to see how much it costs, and why Publisher still think its implementation is justified, money-wise, and ignore the obvious PR drawback of including Denuvo.

«We offer a wide range of business models to cover different scenarios intended by you as a publisher / developer. I’m also happy to discuss tailoring something reflecting your needs.
Official ordering and invoicing is done by our partner Sony, we do the technical fulfillment.
The standard pricing models:
Lump sum model:
AAA title (bigger 500k units on PC): 100.000 EUR
AA title (smaller 500k units on PC): 50.000 EUR
Indie title (less than 100k units on PC): 10.000 EUR
Or
Per unit pricing:
2.500 EUR setup fee. 0,15 EUR per unit reported monthly based on Steam,… owners.»​

I'm sorry if this post comes off as weird but those last days I did some research and have been itching to post some results in a relevant place.

 

[Nitpicker_Red]

TLR:
Tests showing that it's not Denuvo, Denuvo also explicitly denies, indication that it's exclusive to DA:I, other claims are unsourced.

----

There's lots of misinformation floating around about Denuvo but the SSD thrashing one was brought up and debunked a long, long time ago. This is the best summary of the topic I've seen:

Glad my post is getting some mileage. About the "Denuvo writing on SSD and damaging them" issue being debunked, I also did research before coming to that conclusion, but I couldn't put a "single source" link in my post because it's complicated.

1] People have done tests and they found there was no problem.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...vo_drm_does_not_destroy_or_damage_ssds_proof/
2] Denuvo always rebutted the SSD issue and still does on their official site's FAQ (biased).

DOES DENUVO ANTI-TAMPER CONSTANTLY ENCRYPT AND DECRYPT DATA ON STORAGE MEDIA?
No, Denuvo Anti-Tamper does not continuously encrypt and decrypt any data on storage media. To do so would be of no benefit in terms of security or performance.
DOES DENUVO ANTI-TAMPER AFFECT MY SSD OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF HARD DRIVES IN ANY WAY?
No. As mentioned before, Denuvo Anti-Tamper does not constantly read or write any data to storage media.

3] There's a lack of test/source that prove that Denuvo does write repeatedly on SSDs. (see lower for more details on 3 claims)
4] Just like in the previous post, the issue seems related to one particular game (Dragon Age:Inquisition), and not Denuvo itself.
But this time unlike Sonic Mania's Logged requirement and RiME's performances, it doesn't seem like the game developer/publisher made an announcement to take the blame, so it's not as easy. (Or it's buried in this 89 pages long investigation thread...)

----
Of course that's not enough for some people, because there's no formal rebuttal of the issue if you don't trust Denuvo.
I did have a look at every "proof" claim I was given when the subject was brought up on Reddit. Either one of those does prove that Denuvo hurts SSDs (job done!), or none do (must debunk one by one...).
But I couldn't find one good claim (all unsourced or without test), so that's why there's no "one single link to answer the question", but rather a list of debunked links...

----
I was directed towards three "main sources" proving Denuvo did hurt SSDs:

One LinusTech forum thread whose OP was quoting a Russian site, which now gives a 404 error, and there's no archive available of the Russian article.
Later in the thread people came up with their own tests debunking the OP: 1 2 3.
The archive to the thread though uses an image that traces back to a NeoGaf post. The user seeing the game Dragon Age Inquisition doing big amounts of writes on his hard drive immediately assumed it was Denuvo (because that's what people do ). So I believe that post might have been the origin point.

Which brings me to the second source that gets quoted, a post on the EA Forum for Dragon Age Inquisition saying that Denuvo is writing on the SSD.
Two things about that one:
1) Another user redicects towards another thread where the problem is discussed, but this time, Denuvo is not cited.

The game is currently misallocating the system resources, cpu, gpu, ram, pagefile and vram. This is due to bugs in the coding for Speed Tree, and draw distances. This is what is causing high usage spikes across all (random access and temporary) storage, and processing media, which in turn causes the stuttering, lags, crashes, etc. (Including SSDs? - VERIFIED! 12-31-14)
[...]
All of the issues that everyone is facing, regardless of platform, cannot be fixed, player-side.
(However, there are some things that can be done to reduce stuttering, and extend play time between crashes.)
IT IS A CODING ISSUE (or issues) within the game, that BioWare will have to address.

So Dragon Age Inquisition DOES write repeatedly on SSDs for some people, but apparently it's the game itself that's misbehaving. Note that so far, it seems DA:I is the only "Denuvo game" that's said to have this problem.
2) As proof that Denuvo is responsible the user quotes a post on RPGCodex forums, which quotes someone explaining the problem also being in "Lord of the Fallen" This is the third often-cited "source". The problem: the post seems to quote something, but it doesn't source back to anything. The post also appeared on several forums at the same time, but even at the time, NeoGaf couldn't find the source of the quote, just copies of the same quote posted over and over again.
More investigation would be needed on the "Lord of the Fallen" case, but I gave up here.

----
So far in my research of sources about Denuvo being bad for the SSD I either ended up with:
-People quoting other people
-A 404 page of a russian site
-A post with no source and no test
-A real issue with the game DA:I

Conclusion: so far there is no evidence that Denuvo writes on SSDs repeatedly to the point of damaging them.
I think it looks like a hoax. What's probable is that people were accusing Denuvo of being responsible for DA:I's problem, and those accusations stuck around. (Bad reputation calls for nasty rumors after all.)

Edit: One way to decide for sure would be to find documentation on how Denuvo works. Another user posted an explanation on how Denuvo would work, but I haven't delved that much in his sources.

Sorry if the post is a bit confusing, that's why I didn't include that part in my other post...

 

[Joey Ravn]

Also, why do companies bother with this when it seems to just quickly get cracked anyway? Costs money, bad publicity and gets cracked. I understand but companies will keep trying with DRM, but this one particularly sounds like a zero sum game.

Most publishers are publicly traded companies who answer to stockholders and inverstors. Having a hard-to-crack DRM works wonders to appease their fears.

In the best-case scenario, you, legal user, don't notice it's there. In the worst case... well, you can imagine. But there are people who will sing wonders about Denuvo and how good it is for consumers, so that's that.

 

[Bluth54]

Most publishers are publicly traded companies who answer to stockholders and inverstors. Having a hard-to-crack DRM works wonders to appease their fears.

In the best-case scenario, you, legal user, don't notice it's there. In the worst case... well, you can imagine. But there are people who will sing wonders about Denuvo and how good it is for consumers, so that's that.

Denuvo isn't hard to crack anymore though. The new Life is Strange game got cracked in less than a day.

 

[MTC100]

Denuvo isn't hard to crack anymore though. The new Life is Strange game got cracked in less than a day.

It still seems like a reasonable protection for smaller independent developers though, as it still needs some effort from crackers to remove it and there are even some AAA Titles around for a year or two that haven't been cracked yet. Steep for example is still not cracked. It seems as though that the Windows Store exclusive games are the hardest to crack, too bad that they are also the worst versions of games as they like to crash if you use even simple stuff like Fraps...

 

[Toe-Knee]

Denuvo isn't hard to crack anymore though. The new Life is Strange game got cracked in less than a day.

Aren't there differing implementations depending what the copyright holder plays?

Pay less get less protection.

Iirc there are still some older uncracked denuvo games such at just cause 3 and far cry primal.

I never got why people got up in arms about it.

Surely if you aren't going to pirate it you shouldn't be bothered.

I've never had an issue with anything beyond steam itself that won't let me launch civilization beyond earth if steam is unavailable or my connection is down.

 

[Duffk1ng]

It can potentially harm SSDs. Any SSD has a limited number of times it can read/write files before it dies.

With the way Denuvo operates, by performing authentication checks at points set by the developer, means that every time it authenticates, it's reading files off your SSD, which counts toward its total life.

Of course if Denuvo is implemented sensibly, this doesn't matter at all, and you'd have to put an utterly absurd number in for it to have any noticeable impact.

The same with performance, most developers put their checks in parts of the game code that, while essential, won't impact performance, such as at the beginning of a load, or engine initialisation.

I believe the difficulty of cracking Denuvo comes from how it handles .exe files, on top of obfuscation of the above checks. The initial exe won't have enough in it to run the game, certain parts must be downloaded from their servers and then the exe is patched to run. You essentially get one that's specifically geared toward your hardware, right down to the specific batch of your processor model (which can have slight differences even if it's the same model number). There's a layer of obfuscation on top of this, and it all ensures that one patched exe won't work on another machine.

 

[FaustusMD]

At the end of the day, companies are out for your money. Even the companies that do not use Denuvo because it "isn't good for the customer" are still treating you as a customer. If some of those companies feel they will get more upfront sales by using some sort of anti-piracy measure, they're going to use it even if it gets cracked less than 48 hours afterward. Eventually, there will be another one that takes its place and then another.

 

[draliko]

It can potentially harm SSDs. Any SSD has a limited number of times it can read/write files before it dies.

With the way Denuvo operates, by performing authentication checks at points set by the developer, means that every time it authenticates, it's reading files off your SSD, which counts toward its total life.

Of course if Denuvo is implemented sensibly, this doesn't matter at all, and you'd have to put an utterly absurd number in for it to have any noticeable impact.

The same with performance, most developers put their checks in parts of the game code that, while essential, won't impact performance, such as at the beginning of a load, or engine initialisation.

I believe the difficulty of cracking Denuvo comes from how it handles .exe files, on top of obfuscation of the above checks. The initial exe won't have enough in it to run the game, certain parts must be downloaded from their servers and then the exe is patched to run. You essentially get one that's specifically geared toward your hardware, right down to the specific batch of your processor model (which can have slight differences even if it's the same model number). There's a layer of obfuscation on top of this, and it all ensures that one patched exe won't work on another machine.

About the SSD writing part it doesn't matter, no more at least, have you guys seen test on SSD lifespan? One for example http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html
Seems safe to say that denuvo or any regular program can't kill your ssd

 

[Duffk1ng]

Well yeah, you'd need a stupid amount of checks to actually hurt an SSD.

But technically it could reduce its lifespan by like 0.000001% or something.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Yeah I'm pretty sure this rumour came off the back of Lords of the Fallen and nothing else

 

[Joey Ravn]

Denuvo isn't hard to crack anymore though. The new Life is Strange game got cracked in less than a day.

Sure. That's what I was pointing at: Denuvo doesn't protect much anymore, except for the interests of shareholders.

In its defense, though, it seems that being implemented in a Unity game makes it easier to crack than if it was used with another engine. "Unity...", I guess.

 

[Hentailover]

At the end of the day, companies are out for your money. Even the companies that do not use Denuvo because it "isn't good for the customer" are still treating you as a customer. If some of those companies feel they will get more upfront sales by using some sort of anti-piracy measure, they're going to use it even if it gets cracked less than 48 hours afterward. Eventually, there will be another one that takes its place and then another.

The problem is I am not convinced they bring in more new customers vs amount of customers they drive away. The amount of pirates that would buy the game instead of just waiting and playing another games in the meantime is such an incredible minority, I don't think they'd constitute 0.001 of all people that purchase the game. Coming from person that used to be knee deep into piracy stuff and be quite in those communitites of people just downloading and pirating games for years, when i was a dumbo kid with no money.

 

[prudislav]

this was 2 years old hoax that was disproven quite fast ... but somehow pro-Denuvo people are using it till this day

 

[SomedayTheFire]

Nope it's bullshit, like most stuff said about it. Made up misinformation spread for fear and uncertainty.

 

[aaaaa0]

It can potentially harm SSDs. Any SSD has a limited number of times it can read/write files before it dies.

For SSDs, reads basically don't matter. It's write/erase cycles that wear out the flash memory.

Flash memory works by trapping electrons in quantum well.

Every time you write to a cell of flash memory, you're cramming electrons into a quantum well. Every time you erase what you wrote (so you can write something else), you're sucking electrons back out of that quantum well.

Each time you do this write/erase cycle, the insulation layer protecting the quantum well is damaged a little and so it becomes less efficient at keeping the electrons trapped.

Eventually the quantum well can hold so little charge that it can't be reliably read any more, and the cell is considered worn out.

Reading the flash memory cell on the other hand, is just measuring the charge held in the quantum well, which basically doesn't cause wear at all.

 

[Sailent]

If you want your game to sell good, make a good game.

Those who will pirate it because they have no money, will pirate it anyways.

And those who have the money will buy it.

(Then there's the rats who'll play it pirated even if they have the money to buy it)

 

[Budi]

If you want your game to sell good, make a good game.

Those who will pirate it because they have no money, will pirate it anyways.

And those who have the money will buy it.

(Then there's the rats who'll play it pirated even if they have the money to buy it)

That's not enough unfortunately.

 

[Mohasus]

It still seems like a reasonable protection for smaller independent developers though, as it still needs some effort from crackers to remove it and there are even some AAA Titles around for a year or two that haven't been cracked yet. Steep for example is still not cracked. It seems as though that the Windows Store exclusive games are the hardest to crack, too bad that they are also the worst versions of games as they like to crash if you use even simple stuff like Fraps...

Steep isn't cracked because it is an online game. I mean, it could be cracked, but wouldn't be playable. Same for For Honor and NFS 2015.