Note to studios: there is no amount of potential, unrealised profit that makes it ethical to install malware on another person’s computer.
I wonder how much they lose just from it having Denuvo in general…
That got lost in the wild. Also funny that shitier experience is more expensive than seeking for a better one for free. I remember it with Hogwarts Legacy when Denuvo free version got less frame drops and more FPS than Denuvo counterpart.
I doubt they’ll ever admit it, or even look into it.
I’m not going to purchase the document to find out, and the abstract doesn’t really cover it, but I’m curious what the methodology was here. I seriously doubt that piracy is that prevalent. It’s possible that people are upset with certain companies and aim to pirate their games, and the fact that those companies are the same ones that use Denuvo is happenstance. It’s also possible that they’re using total downloads of pirated copies vs. total sales as their statistic, which is misleading, because I’d wager the majority of folks who pirate the game would not have purchased it if it wasn’t available to download for free.
I’d also be curious if the price of the game was a factor; I imagine more people are looking to pirate a game priced at $70 than one priced at $40, for example.
Really, there’s too many factors to consider here and I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to say how many folks who pirated a given game actually would have purchased it.
In elementary school, back in the days when only 2 or so kids in a class had a computer I learned to pirate software, games, and movies my parents said we didn’t have money for. By highschool having a computer was more common and I became one of the nerd heroes by teaching others how to pirate games and avoid viruses, and save their allowance/meager part time pay.
Once I had my first decently paying ‘real’ job I just bought my own games on steam and while a lot of friends stopped gaming they still bought movies and eventually netflix subscriptions because it was cheap, easy, and had customer support included. Now everything is becoming shit again so all the corporate types are inventing bullshit reasons for the losses they created on their own.
It’s possible that people are upset with certain companies and aim to pirate their games
I’m kinda the opposite. I won’t even pirate some companies games because those company’s suck that much…ea and Ubisoft being major players in the slop I don’t even pirate.
I will pirate almost every other game though, as a full version demo. If it’s good, or I boot it up more then once I tend to buy it. Otherwise, I won’t even give it a second though.
The 2 hour refund window is sometimes not enough time to find out how trash a game is, so I use my above full version demo method.
Yeap! On principal, I won’t buy any game that dumps pre-orders of games on Steam in lieu of exclusivity, from other non-Epic platforms, even if I liked the game series before. For instance, I have really liked the Metro series of games. However, as soon as the third game was announced as exclusive to Epic, I refused to purchase it on Steam even after the exclusivity deal expired. It didn’t help that the creator of the Metro games caught wind of people refusing to buy the game and threatened to not make anymore if sales bombed on Epic.
I’m just so tired of all the entities in this world that would rather make a quick buck, then milking as much from the player-base as possible, while standing in the way of me eeking out some sort of happiness in this shit-ass capitalistic hellscape. Would I rather be doing more creative shit with my free time or enjoying life in some capacity? Sure, but until we tear down this shitty pyramid scheme our society has bought into, games are the one thing that I still enjoy. I watch them actively deleting content for games I love, or making the content only available on specific platforms, and it makes me want to flay these wealthy fucks and leave them for the crows…
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If a game has Denuvo, I will just not buy it. Ever. I won’t even consider it until it’s removed. Thankfully it doesn’t happen too often that games that interest me have it, but it does happen.
Since this can’t be quantified, because there is no real way to get numbers on people that do this or similar things (except for “wild guessing”), three big ones (being public or backed by traditional investors) can’t make an argument for not having it. So here we are.
This boycott is hard if you like Sega games, they are still paying for denuvo on their older titles like Judgement, multiple years of paying 100k USD a year, it’s insane.
The only studio that I have to completely avoid because of this, who actually make games I’d normally play, is frontier developments. Think things like planet coaster, Jurassic world evolution or stranded: alien dawn. They also never remove it. I think I read a quote that whoever is in charge believes people will “get over it” and eventually buy it anyway. I can’t speak for others, but I sure won’t.
It’s a shame, but there are other games in the genre(s) that are just as good, arguably better. And I already own more games than I can play, as the backlog seems to just grow.
I would pirate any game without protection if I would have to buy it with protection. Such cracked games, if truly cracked… run better and have no need for cumbersome registrations.
Why do they all pretend like CDPR doesn’t exist? I bet Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk sold way more than the vast majority of denuvo games.
🎵Piracy is a service problem🎵
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This is of course assuming they wouldn’t have had those extra 20% of sales if they went without.
Someone should try a comparison to release on one platform with the DRM and also on GOG with a discount for the amount the DRM would have otherwise added to the price and see which sells better.
I normally play games on quite a lag. I don’t have much free time, and there are lots of good games. I basically never buy games that aren’t 75% off or more.
But when I saw Baldur’s Gate 3 was on GOG, I bought it straight away, as it had great reviews, it’s full price seemed very reasonable, and if AAA publishers are putting recent games on GOG I want to support that.
Defiantly, GOG is the first choice here old or new even if it’s cheaper elsewhere just to support that model.
You’d need to account for size differences too.
Like Steam vs GOG would have steam winning hands down
Yeah, that’s the tough part. I would say base it on those who use both platforms but I suspect those who use multiple platforms tend to use a primary first and others if they can’t find it. Maybe a survey when you buy it asking why you chose this format could help?
And the race is on!
They do not state the methodology used (paywalled is the same as not existent to me).
So probably it’s just not true.
