News Publishers face 20% game revenue reduction if Denuvo DRM is cracked quickly, according to new study

[Admin]

A recently published study on the PC video games market looks at the impact that anti-piracy tech is having on the business.

Publishers face 20% game revenue reduction if Denuvo DRM is cracked quickly, according to new study : Read more

 

[Giroro]

Somebody published a paper just to tell a company's customers that they should keep dumping obscene amounts of money into perpetually re-buying a license for temporarily effective software?

But who would pay to have this paper written, and why?

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The sad thing that DRM, not massive performance hindering or game breaking bugs, is the thing that reduces game revenue for the first 3 months...

 

[rluker5]

If I knew that a game would get DRM removed and a performance increase after 3 months I might wait to buy it. Then lose interest and wait for a sale to get it. I don't think I'm alone as many would prefer to have the game without it. Most sales happen in the first 3 months and you don't want to advertise that the superior version is coming out shortly.

To keep this from happening and to make the most possible profit it seems the answer is DRM forever. Maybe just make it stick to e-cores better.

Just to be clear: I don't want DRM in my games. But a company has to think about their bottom line.

 

[JTWrenn]

Would be interesting to cross compare this with which games had a poor implementation of Denuvo causing massive performance loss. If those are in this data set I think it skews the whole issue.

 

[hotaru251]

luckily for publishers only person who did it stopped.

Honestly dont care about denuvo for month or two, but i dont think should be on games after half a yr later...there is no point.

also the results of this are pointless.
You can't find out the actual cost becasue many ppl wont buy a game even if they cant pirate it. so regardless of denuvo or crack doesnt mean someone will pay you for it regardless. (and $0 is still $0)

 

[umeng2002_2]

I wonder who studied his research. I think a European study reveal that piracy has almost no impact on sales.

 

[das_stig]

It's not piracy that reduces revenue, that ship sailed years ago when it was found to be a lie and used by the industry to force through piracy laws for them by the paid for politicians, its the greedy publishers charging stupid prices for half finished buggy games and then expect us to pay for the DLC to fix these bugs and content that should be there on release, not to mention the 2nd rate console conversions.

 

[USAFRet]

I just find this mindset comical:
"This game sux so hard I will NOT pay for it. But I will play it."

If people would stop patronizing these crappy games, maybe they'd make them a bit better.

 

[Notton]

Which games were studied? or is this all speculative and a derived result?

 

[COLGeek]

As a reminder to all, Tom's Hardware does not support any form of software piracy. None. Period.

 

[nayir]

It's not piracy that reduces revenue, that ship sailed years ago when it was found to be a lie and used by the industry to force through piracy laws for them by the paid for politicians, its the greedy publishers charging stupid prices for half finished buggy games and then expect us to pay for the DLC to fix these bugs and content that should be their on release, not to mention the 2nd rate console conversions.

Why would companies lie about piracy and pay to enact laws if it doesn't cost them money?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I have purchased many games on Steam with Denovo and maybe i’m just lucky but the games seem to play just fine with no performance or stability issues.

 

[Mama Changa]

I call BS. Most of the big cracking groups have long stopped trying to crack most big game titles. Nearly all the pirated games are smaller indie titles. Of course there are exceptions, but it's rare to see big new titles anymore, and some only appear after a long time. Steam has decreased piracy enormously. If I know a game has BS DRM that is ruining the game, I boycott it until it's removed. I have never had desire to rush out and buy a bug laden unoptimised beta AAA title for insane prices. Ill wait 2-3 years, for it to be fully patched and 75% off in a Steam sale anyway.

 

[ThatMouse]

Some major BS. They don't understand how science and statistics work.

 

[CheapMerc]

I would suspect 95% of people that play pireted games had 0-5% chance of every buying the game. Either can't afford or don't not sure worth the dosh. 20% of 0 is 0

 

[TheHerald]

It's remarkable that games that are "cracked" day one (cause they don't have any drm) usually sell like crazy anyways. Baldurs gate 3, cyberpunk are prime examples.

 

[tamalero]

Some major BS. They don't understand how science and statistics work.

This!
Claiming every single people who didn't purchase is a "lost customer" is hilarious.
There are people who will never pay regardless of the state of piracy.

Or along those who want to "test the game" thanks to lack of demo and then finding the game garbage.

They assume 100% sales and all lost sales are 100% confirmed purchasers.

 

[das_stig]

Have I played pirated games, yes, have I purchased afterwards, yes when I enjoyed the game, DRM worked without interfering with game, my computer or the content, not full of bugs and I wanted to support the company for its development time and perhaps future content.

Thats the problem with todays publishers, they look at the quick profit now as players normally have short attention spans for a game and the game suffers. If they instead created quality games that have lasting appeal, that players will replay or buy DLCs everybody wins.

 

[watzupken]

DRM or not, it makes no difference in my opinion. Most people buying games can't really be bothered about the price even though they complain about the price increases. Adding DRM don't add any meaningful protection other than harm the people that are actually paying for these games. And even if this 20% loss in revenue is factual, it failed to account for the cost of paying for the DRM. But of course, game developers will still slap DRM because they are tone deaf.

 

[deesider]

Some major BS. They don't understand how science and statistics work.

I would suspect 95% of people that play pireted games had 0-5% chance of every buying the game. Either can't afford or don't not sure worth the dosh. 20% of 0 is 0

This!
Claiming every single people who purchase is a "lost customer" is hilarious.
There are people who will never pay regardless of the state of piracy.

Or along those who want to "test the game" thanks to lack of demo and then finding the game garbage.

They assume 100% sales and all lost sales are 100% confirmed purchasers.

The author of the paper in no way suggests that pirated copies of a game are equal to lost sales.

He quotes the CEO of Bohemia Interactive Marek Španěl:

“...our statistics from multiplayer show that for every three legitimate buyers playing their game in multiplayer, there are 100 (failed) attempts to play with a pirated version. This indicates that piracy is an extremely widespread problem on PC, and it’s also really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer. We do not have any such data for single-player, but I’m afraid there the ratio of pirates to legitimate gamers is undoubtedly much worse,”

He is claiming that it is likely that pirated players greatly outnumber legitimate purchasers, but no one is claimig eliminating piracy would convert those in sales. This is clearly evident from the recent success of Denuvo in preventing cracking - which clearly did not result in a huge increase in sales.

The methodology used by the author is to use statistical models based on the data of sales and proxies for sales (namely a combination of new reviews and active players) to compare the effect on sales over time dependent on whether the DRM of a game is cracked or not and when it is cracked.

He concluding remark was quite interesting:

The major shortcoming in this exercise is the use of a proxy for the trajectory of quantity sold. Even though there is previous literature supporting the use of reviews as a proxy, it is of course not as desirable as using real quantity sold data. Given this limitation, the door remains open for subsequent research to refine these results should future researchers find such data available. Furthermore, a follow-up study looking at games with strong network effects could elucidate the extent to which piracy can help video games, if at all, and by implication the extent to which DRM might suppress network effects to a game’s detriment.

 

[salgado18]

My only issue is with the conclusion that DRM can be removed 3 months later. If people were certain of that, then they would wait the 3 months to buy, which would make a part of them forget the game and don't buy it. The only option, according to the study, is to use DRM and stick to it for a few years.

 

[-Fran-]

I'm still waiting for some games to remove Denuvo. I think DOOM Parkour 2 removed it, so yeah.

I'm patient. My game queue is always full and I have plenty other games to play.

Regards.

 

[umeng2002_2]

DRM and Denuvo-type "anti-tamper" programs just hinder people who actually buy the games.

Look at RE Village. Every legit buyer has to deal with the stutterfest when the bug chick showed up on screen because of Capcom nesting the game inside a VM inside another VM with Denuvo on top. It took months for them fix it.

Pirates were having a smooth experience from the get-go. Yes, and as pointed out, DRM is now mainly to protect DLC sales, not really the main game.

 

[Ferlucio]

I can count on one hand actually good games that had denuvo: dead space remake, resident evils remake(I think that had denuvo no?) and SMT/persona games.
The rest are pretty universally mid to bad, and it's those mid/bad games that would (potentially, I don't believe in corporate studies) suffer from denuvo being broken as people who give it a try and find out it's trash don't buy it. Note that most games that win many game of the year awards and are critically acclaimed don't have denuvo at all, yet sell great, cuz even pirates end up buying them, or if they aren't able to, they'd still recommend the games to all their friends, engage with the community and raise the community numbers that usually results in more free advertising.
Research done by proven neutral parties has proven that piracy doesn't hurt sales.
Meanwhile many of the same publishers that lump denuvo into every game are also the :get used to now own your games" which I answer with "get used to not see any money".