Denuvo Anti-Tamper (anti-piracy solution)

[Carfax83]

Since I created the OP almost 2 years ago, I thought it would be fun to revisit this thread.

Since the thread was created, Denuvo has made even greater strides in their anti-tamper technology. Whilst a few of the earlier Denuvo titles were cracked (but with some issues), Denuvo has since patched those vulnerabilities and now recent titles that use Denuvo haven't been cracked at all to my knowledge.

An example is Far Cry Primal, which was released back in February, and still has not been cracked. Another popular title Doom also uses Denuvo and was released over a month ago, but as with FCP, no crack has been released by any piracy group/scene.

And from what I've been reading, I don't think any cracks will be forthcoming either. Denuvo has been a really solid anti-tamper solution that they keep revising and improving, which makes it extremely difficult to bypass.

Does this mean piracy on the PC platform is dead? Of course not. But day one piracy of AAA games is pretty much over with imo, provided those games use Denuvo.

 

[BudAshes]

Since I created the OP almost 2 years ago, I thought it would be fun to revisit this thread.

Since the thread was created, Denuvo has made even greater strides in their anti-tamper technology. Whilst a few of the earlier Denuvo titles were cracked (but with some issues), Denuvo has since patched those vulnerabilities and now recent titles that use Denuvo haven't been cracked at all to my knowledge.

An example is Far Cry Primal, which was released back in February, and still has not been cracked. Another popular title Doom also uses Denuvo and was released over a month ago, but as with FCP, no crack has been released by any piracy group/scene.

And from what I've been reading, I don't think any cracks will be forthcoming either. Denuvo has been a really solid anti-tamper solution that they keep revising and improving, which makes it extremely difficult to bypass.

Does this mean piracy on the PC platform is dead? Of course not. But day one piracy of AAA games is pretty much over with imo, provided those games use Denuvo.

So is it actually increasing sales?

 

[nurturedhate]

So is it actually increasing sales?

Probably not IMO. Then again the sample size is far, far too small and any meaningful data to back either side of the assumption would also be buried under two dozen other market conditions making it hard to commit to any data point. We cannot simply look at the sales of say Doom and state yes or no. Nor can we look at a year's worth of sales for all games and deduce the amount sold above what normally would have sold sans pirates as economic conditions and influences abound. Then you have things like Blizzard releasing a WoW xpac this year or Ubisoft's terrible handling of The Division. How do events like those impact game sales.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Question is, has it increased sales of products and will it stay uncracked.

It's questionable that people who would have pirated would then also go and buy the games, generally speaking people pirate to avoid buying the game due to cost and when piracy ceases to be an option it comes down to what games do they spend their money on. The deciding factor of that choice is quality of game which means the rational thing to do is not buy copy protection but instead invest your money into improving the quality of your game.

Some of these titles like the Doom reboot have remained uncracked for a long time now but that will only last so long, it's not feasible to create DRM which allows an all purpose computer to deny certain code from being understood, all you can do is slow down crackers, eventually they'll have a system to beat it and cracks will roll out for all the games using it.

What we'll see then is exactly what we saw when other prior games which remained uncracked for long times, huge bit torrent swarms sharing the game around the world with millions of people who preferred to wait rather than pirate.

Personally it's got to the point where I'd rather just wait for a drop in price, steam summer sales are on and games are dirt cheap. If there's a game that pushes the boundaries, new graphics, new ideas, new stories then I consider putting down launch price, but DRM for customers, it can only detract. All other things being equal the studio that invests thousands into the quality of the game will provide more value to me as a paying customer than those which instead invest that money in DRM.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Question is, has it increased sales of products and will it stay uncracked.

It's questionable that people who would have pirated would then also go and buy the games, generally speaking people pirate to avoid buying the game due to cost and when piracy ceases to be an option it comes down to what games do they spend their money on. The deciding factor of that choice is quality of game which means the rational thing to do is not buy copy protection but instead invest your money into improving the quality of your game.

Some of these titles like the Doom reboot have remained uncracked for a long time now but that will only last so long, it's not feasible to create DRM which allows an all purpose computer to deny certain code from being understood, all you can do is slow down crackers, eventually they'll have a system to beat it and cracks will roll out for all the games using it.

What we'll see then is exactly what we saw when other prior games which remained uncracked for long times, huge bit torrent swarms sharing the game around the world with millions of people who preferred to wait rather than pirate.

Personally it's got to the point where I'd rather just wait for a drop in price, steam summer sales are on and games are dirt cheap. If there's a game that pushes the boundaries, new graphics, new ideas, new stories then I consider putting down launch price, but DRM for customers, it can only detract. All other things being equal the studio that invests thousands into the quality of the game will provide more value to me as a paying customer than those which instead invest that money in DRM.

Besides, if would-be pirates just want to experience the story they can just simply watch the dozens of 1080p60 walkthroughs/LPs on Youtube like hours later after launch, heck they don't even need to spend on gaming hardware this way. The more "cinematic" the games the less reason they will spend money on launch day regardless of DRM compared to a pure gameplay title like CSGO.

 

[SPBHM]

I've been gaming since the 90s, I have never seen such a big low for piracy as now, it's not even close...

it would be interesting to have an unbiased view on something like the latest Tomb Raider (still not cracked after 6 months) vs the Tomb Raider from 2013 (cracked since the start), but it's so difficult because of other factors like, the new TR was not released on the PS4 yet, while the old one was released on everything and also given for free, I also can't really say which one had better marketing, but both have the same metacritic score on PC.

still, games with weak DRM or no DRM (Witcher 3, fallout 4, GTA V single player) still sold extremely well last year it seems, while it would be unfair to compare with Denuvo games, since I think no "fallout 4" used Denuvo yet?

 

[Elixer]

And from what I've been reading, I don't think any cracks will be forthcoming either. Denuvo has been a really solid anti-tamper solution that they keep revising and improving, which makes it extremely difficult to bypass.

I don't think that is the case, the only reason that we don't see any cracks for some titles these days is that the guys that knew what they were doing have grown up.
The new guys don't have the skill set.

I still say everyone should vote with their wallet, stop buying DRM infested games.