News Denuvo Claims Its DRM Does Not Hinder Gaming Performance

[Admin]

The team behind Denuvo claims that its DRM does not hinder gaming performance as many gamers have claimed. To resolve this, Denuvo is building a new program that will allow reviewers to compare new games with and without the DRM installed.

Denuvo Claims Its DRM Does Not Hinder Gaming Performance : Read more

 

[jkflipflop98]

If it doesn't effect me, I don't give a crap. Steam itself is DRM. I don't even notice it's there when I'm playing a game. In 40 years of gaming over thousands of titles I've had DRM stop me from playing a game twice. Once was the DRM crap on Crysis when it came out. The other was when I lost the instruction manual for Hard Drivin'

 

[bigdragon]

Denuvo's upcoming benchmarks and tests do not invalidate my personal experiences. I don't need their cherrypicked and optimized metrics. Denuvo has negatively affected every AAA game I've tried to play in recent history. Stutters, FPS drops, increased loading times, multiplayer lag...all of these things I can attribute to Denuvo and other DRM solutions because the community build with DRM stripped out always runs better (when available). Period.

I've come to shun AAA gaming in part because of Denuvo. There are so many games from smaller developers that provide good performance, responsive networking, and thriving mod communities. Of course monetization, excessive unlocks, and formulaic game design are also huge negatives -- Denuvo isn't the only reason I don't buy AAA anymore.

 

[hotaru251]

Steam itself is DRM.

issue isnt DRM itself.

issue is Denuvo's specific type of DRM.
it makes exe go from say 12MB to around 200MB & has actual performance impact on games (Doom & some other game that got leaked w/o it yr or 2 ago are examples of w/ and w/o denuvo and there was noticeable impact)

Huin explained that gamers almost never get access to a game build that comes in both protected and non-protected formats.

"almsot never" because we have had some and the proof has been seen .

I don't support piracy for something you don't own, but if you buy something & it doesnt effect others my view is ur choice to do w/e with it. (and if want a anti denuvod version? go for it)

Of course monetization, excessive unlocks, and formulaic game design are also huge negatives

which should actually be banned from gaming industry.
"micro-transactions" arent micro when they cost 1/3rd the entire games price tag.

 

[Giroro]

Even if there is no performance impact (and there definitely is. Pirated copies of games consistently run better than the version with Denuvo)

Denuvo is still hugely expensive (a cost passed on to gamers), and most games are cracked in a matter of days.
There is no conceivable way for Denuvo to benefit players. The only reason they are still in business is because big business number crunchers believe that they gain slightly more money from "reclaimed lost-sales of games to people who don't buy games." than the cost to integrate the DRM.
We are talking a very slight net gain of *maybe* 1% to the launch week bottom line. It's not a worthwhile gain to anybody but biggest games and the greediest of ... Well pretty much just Bobby Kotick and a couple of his peers, actually.

Which is fine. It's never worth it to spend $60++ on a skinner box game that only exists to trick kids into spending more money.

 

[emike09]

The other was when I lost the instruction manual for Hard Drivin'

Ah, the old instruction manual DRM! Stunts (DOS game) did the same. My cousins had a copy of the game, transferred it via floppy, and used a copier at school to copy of the manual. People been hacking DRM since the idea was ever conceived.

Sim Farm used a simple, possibly unintended DRM, where the original install floppy used pkzip to compress the contents onto a single floppy. If you tried to copy the files from the C: drive to a floppy, one of the main files was larger than 1.44MB. As an 10 year old, I wanted the game so bad, and once I learned about zip and drive compression, the game was mine.

 

[umeng2002_2]

I'm sure he is ignoring the 1% and 0.1% lows.

 

[toffty]

Wait...
Checks calendar
Yeah it's not April. They're really late with the April Fools!

 

[Nazosan]

It has literally been benchmarked by people with the result that it made it worse. What's more, the subjective experiences of countless people simply can't be just ignored because at a certain point what started out as subjective becomes an actual statistic when it involves that many people producing the exact same result over and over.

Honestly they're wasting their time regardless. Even assuming they're actually right and somehow all those people who have tested both ways are all somehow every single one of them wrong, no one is going to believe them. Putting aside that logically it makes absolutely no sense for a super extreme over-the-top DRM mechanism designed to be super hard to crack by using lots of methods that the CPU must perform on the fly to somehow not, you know, take some of that CPU's performance away in the process (ok, it's really more of a latency thing, but the point stands,) even if they say "oh, we can prove it doesn't, look, we did benchmarks and our tests show it does not" absolutely no one will believe them. Not the actual gamers, and no, not even the devs. And publishers just simply don't care one way or the other. So in the end, this really has no effect and is a waste of time.

I want to say I hope they waste a lot of money on this pointlessness, but honestly, that cost gets passed on to us, so mostly I hope they just drop this as fast as possible and give up pretending to be that which they are not.

 

[setx]

Who would believe owner of that abomination? He probably doesn't even understand how it works.

If you want to know actual state of things ask the one who knows Denuvo the most – the Empress.

 

[Nazosan]

If you want to know actual state of things ask the one who knows Denuvo the most – the Empress.

Eh. I will absolutely agree Denuvo is a hot mess and that, logically, it can't not have a performance effect, but I've run across a few statements from Empress and there's a lot of blatant bias in a lot of things very clearly stated, so I wouldn't trust statements there either. But, like I said, there are plenty of those who have tested more objectively and the result is not in Denuvo's favor in those tests either.

 

[palladin9479]

Yeah anyone who has even a moderate knowledge of how Denuvo works would understand it's not possible for it to not have a performance impact. Best case is that the game developers put the hooked DRM code in some innocuous place like the credits screen or the games startup display that only gets shown once. Worst case is they are forced to stick the hook on some gameplay critical element like the GUI where it gets run constantly.

For those not in the know, the way Denuvo works is that you take some piece of game code and remove it entirely from the game, then store it at Denuvo's site. When the game authenticates with Denuvo it fetches a signed version of that code that only runs on your PC, periodically it needs to refetch the a new signed and encrypted code package. If the game can not authenticate with Denuvo, then it won't have that piece of code to run. Because it's signed and encrypted to that specific PC, it can't (in theory) be stolen and decrypted to be used to crack the game. The issue comes with how terribly optimized these code pieces are and how the game has to constantly decrypt them prior to execution. The Denuvo library will not let the game store the code in memory in unencrypted state it needs to be decrypted every time it's called. If it's a rarely called peice of code, then not a big deal, Denuvo best practices are to use something critical like some visual element on the play screen that then needs to be constantly decrypted prior to being run.

 

[gg83]

Its them Darn "gamers" making up false things and stuff. Maybe a "gamer" actually knows what they are talking about. I do get it though. There are a lot of "gamers" on forums and such post all sorts of negative stuff about games and dmr and whatever. Most of them are trolls who stopped playing the game or just heard reviews. But for the COO to just basically say, oh it's just gamers saying dumb stuff, is a little dumb.

 

[gg83]

Yeah anyone who has even a moderate knowledge of how Denuvo works would understand it's not possible for it to not have a performance impact. Best case is that the game developers put the hooked DRM code in some innocuous place like the credits screen or the games startup display that only gets shown once. Worst case is they are forced to stick the hook on some gameplay critical element like the GUI where it gets run constantly.

For those not in the know, the way Denuvo works is that you take some piece of game code and remove it entirely from the game, then store it at Denuvo's site. When the game authenticates with Denuvo it fetches a signed version of that code that only runs on your PC, periodically it needs to refetch the a new signed and encrypted code package. If the game can not authenticate with Denuvo, then it won't have that piece of code to run. Because it's signed and encrypted to that specific PC, it can't (in theory) be stolen and decrypted to be used to crack the game. The issue comes with how terribly optimized these code pieces are and how the game has to constantly decrypt them prior to execution. The Denuvo library will not let the game store the code in memory in unencrypted state it needs to be decrypted every time it's called. If it's a rarely called peice of code, then not a big deal, Denuvo best practices are to use something critical like some visual element on the play screen that then needs to be constantly decrypted prior to being run.

Really thanks for this. I was curious and assumed it wasn't an easy thing.

 

[JTWrenn]

By definition drm must use processing power to exist, thus it must have an affect on game play. How much is debatable, but believing the wolf when they say they are a sheep is a very stupid way to judge if it will bite you.

 

[edzieba]

Denuvo Claims Its DRM Does Not Hinder Gaming Performance

Huin explained that gamers almost never get access to a game build that comes in both protected and non-protected formats. Often, developers will remove Denuvo (more on that later) months or years down the road, after the game has received a boatload of bug fixes and optimizations that make the game run better. As a result, gamers will compare an early version of a game featuring Denuvo DRM, against the same game later on without it, without taking into consideration any other changes.

Given the number of games with denuvo-removal cracks allowing for direct version-for-version performance comparisons not only shows the performance impact of denuvo but was the reason we know of the performance impact in the first place, maybe the headline should be amended to: "Denuvo COO lies to everyone's faces in incompetent attempt at gaslighting".

 

[palladin9479]

Really thanks for this. I was curious and assumed it wasn't an easy thing.

It's pretty good at preventing day 0 cracks, so folks are forced to wait awhile before "theoretical" pirating takes place, this is all the Publishing companies really want anyway so they force the game studios to use it. If the developer use's best practices for implementing it then it really sucks performance out as the game has to constantly decrypt and then execute a piece of code.

 

[Nazosan]

Given the number of games with denuvo-removal cracks allowing for direct version-for-version performance comparisons not only shows the performance impact of denuvo but was the reason we know of the performance impact in the first place, maybe the headline should be amended to: "Denuvo COO lies to everyone's faces in incompetent attempt at gaslighting".

Honestly that's a pretty serious universal problem I've been seeing in basically any type of media (not specific to here or anywhere else really.) They just quote sources exactly and directly, lending a voice to said source. I realize they don't want to misquote people, but they don't have to post every word either. The problem is people tend to just believe what they read (yes, even on the Internet, lol) without bothering to check into it themselves. At the very least there should be a fact check and immediate declaration of the results of said fact check following any such quote, but I really do feel like when something fails multiple fact checks, basic logic and reason, and just plain common sense (whatever that is,) it possibly just should not be quoted word for word anyway. In a case like this I would say it should link to some results where people have tested as objectively as possible both ways with the statement of their results for those few people who have lived under a rock long enough to not have already seen them. When some people read a statement like that it puts a bit of doubt in their minds that maybe, just maybe everyone is wrong and Denuvo is oh so maligned. Which, of course, doesn't actually mesh with reality.

It's pretty good at preventing day 0 cracks, so folks are forced to wait awhile before "theoretical" pirating takes place, this is all the Publishing companies really want anyway so they force the game studios to use it. If the developer use's best practices for implementing it then it really sucks performance out as the game has to constantly decrypt and then execute a piece of code.

I'm not an expert by any means, but I honestly think from what I have seen out there at least that the only thing that truly prevents 0-day stuff is lack of interest on the part of those doing the actual cracking. And that is a fickle thing indeed...

 

[setx]

I realize they don't want to misquote people

While I agree with the rest, I think here you are wrong. It's not the fear of misquoting that drives them – it's that most 'authors' nowadays don't want to put any effort to do the fact checking. It seems that they are paid by quantity, not by quality. And that's exactly why there is intense fear of ChatGPT in such media.

 

[hotaru251]

and most games are cracked in a matter of days.

in days of old yes.
however today?
(with my limited info of scene) theres 1 person who can even crack denuvo games (and (s)hes...got some quirks) and 1 person who ONLY does it for football manager games. (supposedly becasue he likes the game and his method is inefficient)

nobody else cracks em and most go uncracked for months/never get cracked until its removed. (hogwarts went uncracked for over a week iirc despite the cracker specifically wanting to crack it asap)

The only reason they are still in business is because big business number crunchers believe that they gain slightly more money from "reclaimed lost-sales of games to people who don't buy games." than the cost to integrate the DRM.

they'd have the stats to back it up as business don't do stuff that doesnt actually make em more $.
and 1st months sales are usually largest profit of sales for a game.


and with AI advancing DRM likely going to get a lot rougher in future.

 

[palladin9479]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I honestly think from what I have seen out there at least that the only thing that truly prevents 0-day stuff is lack of interest on the part of those doing the actual cracking. And that is a fickle thing indeed...

With other DRM's maybe, but Denuvo takes awhile to crack, usually a few months. Remember the required bit of code simply does not exist on the PC and needs to be downloaded constantly. Basically every gaming using Denuvo is shipped as broken and only Denuvo has the fix to unbreak it. That fix is compiled in such a way that it only runs on the PC making the request and is stored encrypted in memory. It's a giant speedbump to ensure publishers get maximum return on initial game sales.

 

[NoahFB]

The problem is not so much the performances (which vary from game to game), but the fact Denuvo installs itself in kernel mode into your operating system.

Do you really want to have an unchecked piece of code having full control of your system, knowing it caused serious problems (and perhaps it still does)? I don't, so I'll never buy a game infected with that.