texhnolyze
Banned
Steam will live forever, Denuvo won't. Will and won't as in 100% chance.
Apparently that's what I can conclude from these discussions.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
PC version of Inside seemingly using Denuvo
- Thread starter JaseC
- Start date
Steam will live forever, Denuvo won't. Will and won't as in 100% chance.
Apparently that's what I can conclude from these discussions.
they do even the online-only ones for some strange reason
I can make backups of my non-Denuvo Steam games and play then even 30 years after Steam goes down. And even besides that, Valve already said there's a contigent plan if that ever happens.
They trust steam but not the guys who made denuvo.
Same thing with steam and the windows store.
Steam "DRM" is part of Steamworks DLLs, not the game executable itself, that is why you can "crack" 99% of Steamworks games by just replacing steam_api.dll with an unofficial one that works with all games.
It has been that way for quite some time and Valve seems ok with it because it wasn't even designed as a DRM(in the sense of avoiding piracy), it just adds more value(friends, cards, etc) to games.
texhnolyze
Banned
There's a plan for that? Interesting, good to know.
So, PC gamers are destined to be pirates at some point if that ever happen. Yarr!
Less of a gamble is still a gamble. I highly doubt that Denuvo's product life cycle and service agreement is endless.
That is like saying GOG users are pirates because they play games without DRM, nonsense.
Valkyr1983
Banned
Love how I make a topic like 4 days ago about how always online single player games are bullshit and shouldn't be supported
90% of the responses were "a good game is good and I'll play it regardless" or "I don't replay old games anyways"
Now all of a sudden that it's drm potentially affecting longevity and preservation everyone throws a fit
90% of the responses were "a good game is good and I'll play it regardless" or "I don't replay old games anyways"
Now all of a sudden that it's drm potentially affecting longevity and preservation everyone throws a fit
Gamezone
Gold Member
Don`t bother. Nothing is preventing publishers from going the always online rutine if Denuvo doesn`t work.
It's not the point at all and I love how you keep missing the point but that seems like a common thread with you.
There's nothing wrong with always online singleplayer games that exist which I would include Destiny and The Division. The issue here is that Denuvo at the moment will affect games that use it to be backed up for future play if Denuvo goes away and it's not able to be cracked than those games are useless.
Denuvo is not a bad thing but preservation of games for the long term is vital and things that prevent that need to be called out.
Actually they do (at least of games that came out after Denuvo released). It's even on fucking Unravel.
EA is by far their biggest customer.
I choose to buy from Steam because I trust Valve. That doesn't mean I trust every other third party unrelated to my software vendor of preference. It makes perfect sense.
It can be posited that there's difference between Steam Support guaranteeing practically indefinite access to Steam games and Denuvo having no such plan in place whatsoever. Do you agree or disagree? I'm affording you the chance to delineate your position as I really, truly do loathe suppositions that can be boiled down to reactionary, reductive and downright patronising strokes of the fanboy brush. Take this opportunity to express yourself in a proper manner rather than otherwise leaving yourself to be lumped in with the likes of "lol no point talking coz gaben rulez amirite". Unfortunately, I can't say I'm familiar with your posting history, but surely you're better than the latter.
from what i understood they even were their biggest investor
they kinda are in some way.. some of those games were possible to be there because of cracked DRMs on them (iirc there even was even article about it)
What does an officially released crack have to do with being a pirate? I hope this is a joke, and that I missed it.
Officialy released crack is still a crack created by pirates (every one remember the Ubi/Splinter Cell/ Starforce fiasco).... i guess i just explained myself badly - was just trying to tell that some of those GoG releases wouldn't be possible without pirates...
CosmicQueso
Member
Yeah nevermind. This discussion is tired.
Making fun out of a valid complaint is only making yourselfs look like fools. But hey, if you're willing to give away all your consumer rights, more power to you.
yeah thats part of whats makes me believe that there is something really wrong hidden there ... if it was as awesome and flawless as their marketing claims .. there would be no reason to hide it so thoroughly
CecilRousso
Member
I find it weird that you're most interested in annoying people you haven't met or will meet, then in your own purchases and consumer rights.
That bothers me also, and even when they admit to using it, they're always unclear about how it works and what the implications for your purchase is. And Denuvo themselves do their best to confuse people, and be as vague as they can.
Such things does not instill confidence in a product for me.
Valid complaint it may be, but minor annoyance at best in terms of consumer impact. Consumer rights remain intact. Don't buy it. Tweet @playdead and let them know you aren't buying it because of DRM. If enough people do, maybe a cleaned up version will be released. Probably not, though. Because unless the DRM really gunks up performance, or gives false positives that prevent paying customers from playing, not enough people give a shit.
Pay your $20, enjoy your game, trust in the powers that be that if in 2046 you really, really want to play INSIDE, it'll be pretty easy to do so. The alternative is going on a crusade against what appears to be the most innocuous DRM in popular use today. I like to pick my battles. There's only so much outrage to go around.
darkinstinct
...lacks reading comprehension.
Of course they say that. So they do not have a lot of confidence to survive? Steam's end is coming, publishers hate that 30 % fee and once all games will be streamed instead of bought Steam will die. I don't expect to see them around in twenty years.
Valkyr1983
Banned
How is a game requiring a persistent online connection not just as bad for preservation as drm like denuvo?
Both are relying on a service outside of your control that you need to trust
You being dense on purpose?
No, not if you buy DRM-free games. Which are available on GoG but also frequently on Steam.
Having to rely on bypassing a system which is known to be relatively easy to bypass is a much better position to be in than having to rely on circumventing a system which is far harder to circumvent (with no proven implementation).
It's really simple, despite all the false equivalences people conjure up.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
You have a tag that says "BG2 is best RPG ever". If it used SecureRom you wouldn't be able to play it (imagine enhanced version doesn't exist as that's a huge one off) right now on Win10 PC.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
Diablo 3 illustrates your example perfectly. It should very well have been available as offline SP game on PC. Wait for it... console offers that right now!
Hell, store online chars on Battlenet but let people play locally with chars that are local to PC like console. It's complete BS. Look at EA SimCity BS or NFS always online BS. Or look at Elite Dangerous which even had a Kickstarter SP goal and a lot of its user base only play SP mode.
I agree that for the actual SP games it's a terrible practice to have that online check, and basically ensures game has no longetivity (well, Blizzard will keep D3 online forever but that's an exception and shouldn't be needed). Now, Destiny or Divison are different animals as online is deeply integrated.
I mean without DRM period. Those just seem like the kinds of games that would eventually make it to GOG.
None of you are even remotely close to realizing how the statistics on this work.
You absolutely can't observe "trends" on such a high level and then attribute it all whether it has or has not DRM. There are way too many variable for proper attribution, and historical data has much too noise for you even achieve a reliable p-value at ridiculously high expectation for uplift. Same goes if you want to prove that it has no effect. Unless you can A/B-test it, sales data like Steamspy simply won't cut it, unless DRM would achieve impossibly high conversion rate, which it certainly does not.
Which brings me to the second point, which is your expectations. Most of you keep repeating the word "significant effect", so please tell me what's your expectation. 10% increase in sales? 5% conversion of pirates? What you don't seem to realize, that even a relatively marginal percentage, like 0.5% conversion or 1% effect in sales would be a considerable uplift in revenue, and surely worth the cost of the DRM (including license and implementation). But that scale of effect is something that you certainly can't prove reliably with data available to the public.
So in short, if you want to actually prove anything, first read a bit on the basics of statistical analysis and tests, and temper your expectations to a realistic level that would be profitable for a publisher.
So I can hear you ask how do you then prove the effect? Well, first step is to prove that piracy does not have an effect on sales (proving the opposite is easier, than it being true), which you can contact a few actual statistics companies like EEDAR or SuperData. Or if you have already been able to find correlation (not causation) between the availability of a pirated version and a change in your measurement, you can already know that there is correlation. Case in point:
I can also vouch for this drop from first hand experience of seeing sales curves, but because nearly all sales data is bound by platform agreements and publishers interests, you will not see this data publically.
So based on what you already know, and being able to track for example share of pirates showing up in your metrics, you can quite reliably know whether there is an effect or not. That should be comparable against the cost of the including DRM, so if the system is being retained after a few uses, in today's data driven environment it would be safe to say it's because publishers/developers can quantify a net positive effect on their revenue.
Now, I as a consumer don't especially like any form of DRM and certainly care very much about preserving games for my own enjoyment and for the future of our industry. But, it's very much a complex matter of factors that both affect both developers and consumers negatively and positively. So, for the sake of discussion I don't really have a personal stance one way or the other, but I can confidently say that there is absolutely an effect that if diminished, can easily result in a quantifiable net positive for the developer/publisher.
holygeesus
Banned
If you could still mod games protected by Denuvo would you still have the same opinion? I can totally appreciate modders being pissed, just as I can pirates who are actually having to fork out to play games, but potentially not being able to play a game 30 years down the line, seems a deeply strange reason not to buy a game that you could be enjoying now.
A few people making a stand and not buying, isn't going to stop companies protecting their games, at which Denuvo seems the best currently available way of doing so, as literally tens of thousands of people pirate games, at a minimum - the maths don't add up.
http://kotaku.com/a-closer-look-at-why-people-are-pirating-the-witness-1756850670
CecilRousso
Member
So your suggestion is that we all just shut up and deal with it? That we don't use the best numbers, sources and assumptions available to us, to make a descision as to whether or not we think that the gain from this compensates the freedom we time after time after time are asked to give up, because of what other people do?
Sorry, not buying that. Any developer are free to try and convince me when I'm wrong, and as to why I should accept Denuvo's authority over my purchases as something reasonable. And we're very far away from that. Creative Assemby's Q&A about it before the release is the first thing I've seen from a developer that comes close to being acceptable, and even there they were pretty vague about Denuvo's server depencies.
For me to be convinced about the gain from Denuvo being convincing, I want to see numbers from the devs themselves explaining the gainm, or I want to see a significant difference between similiar games, using and not using Denuvo. Anything that convinces me that me giving up more freedom over my purchase is worth that sacrifice, and that dev's f*cking up a good situation for the customers, where we were moving towards less and less depency on DRM, is a good thing.
I've been through pretty much every phase of copy protection systems, from the code wheels to my Amiga games, to Starforce to 3 machine Securom activation limits to always online, and before Denuvo I thought we were finally heading to a phase were focus could be on the paying customers instead of the non-paying ones. But enter Denuvo....
No, I am most certainly not suggesting. I am simply correcting on how you believe statistics and publisher/developer expectations work. Honestly, even as developer I don't know what's the way forward for us as a community. Understanding both sides is the first step towards a solution that has the least severe trade-offs for all (there will never be a perfect or best solution). I think we should at least give our feedback, make a reasonable plea for preservation and functionality in the long-term.
I get you and I definitely can't convince you to accept Denuvo's authority as even I question it (especially in light of the fact, that the server dependency seems to be a given for majority of the games), but unfortunately also most of the gaming audience doesn't care enough. But I have hope that others will follow CA's suit and make the matter more transparent, and hopefully with enough data work towards a better solution for long-term preservation.
This will simply not happen, and this thread is evident enough. The vast majority don't understand their position and simply do not even want to understand, and spending effort (money, resources and sanity) to talk to a tiny vocal minority will not be worth it. Not to mention that legally speaking they can't even show any data to prove anything, because of platform holder restrictions.
I know, but in such tough business, you as a responsible stakeholder will do everything in your power to maximise your chances of success, and combating piracy seems to be costs effective by all means, and the end-user trade-off not important to be an issue. It absolutely sucks, and I personally will always try to find alternative solutions (though for example on mobile platforms no sane producer would ever again go for such a call), but it's ultimately very tough matter for all involved, and there's no right answer as of now.I've been through pretty much every phase of copy protection systems, from the code wheels to my Amiga games, to Starforce to 3 machine Securom activation limits to always online, and before Denuvo I thought we were finally heading to a phase were focus could be on the paying customers instead of the non-paying ones. But enter Denuvo....
Woo-Fu
Banned
Unless you can prove that the drop was exclusively caused by availability of a pirate version---which you can't---the data isn't conclusive, particularly when most games---at least the ones that don't start slow and gain momentum off of positive word of mouth---see sharp drops shortly after release.
That said, sales figures aren't the only reason DRM is implemented so it isn't necessary to prove that DRM had an effect upon sales.
True, you can't absolutely prove causation, but you can prove correlation. However, you can always compare it to against a realistic projection, especially for larger titles and you can eliminate most other correlations with proper statistical tests. That'd be enough to convince any data scientist I have ever worked it that the correlation has enough causation for addressing the matter be reasonable action. There also aren't specific sharp drops, but it follows a pretty common curve.
True, support and network costs alone can be worth it, and if you ask for example ex-Iron Lore people they can tell you a bit about negative word of mouth caused by pirates etc. But that's not the matter I wanted to address; because of what I was responding to, which had to do with sales and statistical tests.
It might be "strange", but it's also extremely important. Games as a medium -- being interactive -- are in the unfortunate position that (unlike non-interactive stuff like e.g. movies) "working" DRM is actually possible. This also means that it is actually possible (and, given sufficient time, likely really) to lose games to DRM. And I find that prospect exceedingly distasteful.
I'd applaud perfect DRM if it also automatically and reliably self-removed after some given time period (e.g. a few years).
What would be your definition of a few years, out of curiosity? Like one year, five years, ten years? I ask just because I hear some people say this but I've always been curious on what the time-frame they had in mind was.
One might be a bit short, ten is certainly too long. I'd be happy with 3.
At that point you have passed through all the Steam sale tiers and are entering bundle territory.
CecilRousso
Member
For me, as the paying customer, I thought we had reached the point of mutual agreement and respect.
If we must have something, then Steam (and similiar competitors to some extent), that for the dev gives protection for Day 0 piracy, and the consumer is compensated with additional services for the devaluation of the purchase.
And we saw to larger and larger extent try DRM free options, and we had so many cases of big and small developers, known and unknown, be succesful with it.
Heck, we even got the point where the consumer became a part of the financing of the games with crowdfunding and early access.
And after this, Denuvo feels like such a giant backwards step for PC Games.
texhnolyze
Banned
Don't worry, I'm a gaben worshipper myself. It's just that I'm a bit misinformated regarding their plan.
My take on these Denuvo discussions is that, I HATE piracy. As a (mainly) PC gamer, it's hard to be threated as pirates all the time even if I don't do that anymore. Especially here in my place, a third world country, piracy is in our blood & daily life, and it's fucking embarassing to be associated with these people who could happily say "why buy games when you can download them for free?" with a straight face. Therefore, I'm ALL for anti piracy measures, and Denuvo seems like the best method we've got so far. And it's working if you ask me, because I live with them. People DO buy Denuvo games because they CAN'T pirate them. If they have the money to buy games, their highest priority would be Denuvo games. That's what happening here at least.
Nevertheless, if there's any other not so offensive method for fighting piracy, I'll be overjoyed.
I would say it had more to do with there not being a working, and cost effective solution like Denuvo on the market, more so than any other factor. Few developers had/have their own anti-tamper systems like Sega or 2K, but even Sega switched to Denuvo for Total Warhammer.
Fair enough, but as I mentioned earlier, it has nothing to do with being successfull in the grand scale, but maximizing the potential for success and minimizing the risks. That's really it, nothing more, nothing less.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Wow, that's really shitty. I'm not buying it literally entirely because of that.
Real_Madrid
Member
Lol.
They should make a Denuvo Steam curator group.
I would happily read through all the angry comments.
It's different because the games that have a persistant online connection won't be easy to back up and that's an issue that hopefully will be addressed with either the companies providing a way to preserve the game when it's dead but chances are most of them won't be preserved.
Your the one being dense, Things like Denuvo which are not a good thing, they hurt any type of preservation for all games associated with it if it wasn't for Denuvo than they can still be preserved because pretty much any Denuvo game has singleplayer attached to it.
I really like that idea, That is an ideal solution to me.
I definitely agree that Denuvo isn't obnoxious. Truth be told, it's not caused any issues for me and I've played many Denuvo-protected games, but as a long-time PC gamer I do empathise with the perspective that even though it's easy to understand why it has become the DRM method of the moment, the lack of a long-term commitment does, like virtually all DRM approaches before it, raise concerns about how Denuvo-protected games will fare in the future. The point is particularly salient as we live in something of a limbo period with GFWL -- many games will not be be patched and Microsoft has not offered any sort of update regarding when the service will be shut down. Bulletstorm is perhaps the best example as it is a reasonably popular title but, cracks aside, will become literally unplayable when GFWL is shut down as it's one of the relatively few titles that do not support offline/local profiles. It's in this regard that Denuvo is even worse as every single protected game requires online activation for what it considers a new system, and there's no reason to believe that Denuvo games will be patched to any greater degree than GFWL games have been.
i am from similar background of a country where piracy was bread and butter for so many years and noiw with steam its kinda starting to change for good (until denuvo .... also for some reason both Ubi and EA raised prices here by more than 10 euro)... but with Denuvo i expereinced some to me unacceptable issues while offline so to be its on the same level as the DRMs of old ..... yeah its hard to say that you buy games in society where piracy is a norm .... but its hard to convince anyone that buying is better when we are constantly harrassed by hidden DRMs microtransactions, annoying social features and unending season passes and for me the main issue problematic off-line mode. Also I just don't like being called thief by devs before even thinking of buyig anything...
as for this what i found here ... some people actually do buy it but not the usual full price licence .... but mostly just the cheapest from questionable sites like G2A (some devs even stated these sites are worse than piracy) or just do some account sharing (there is even grey market for this)