Denuvo Anti-Tamper (anti-piracy solution)

[cmdrdredd]

What does pirating have to do with the cost of the game? Development costs are higher now because of increased expectations on "story" (previous-gen games had less voice-acting, less intricate plots, simpler characters), "graphics" (previous-gen games clearly had less complex assets and less of them), and "marketing" (look at how marketing budgets has inflated over the years).

These are reasons specific to the gaming industry. But also consider that most games are still sold at $60, the same as a decade ago. That is a decade of programmer wage increases and general inflation eating into profits.

Combine both effects and you get a pretty convincing economic reason for the adoption of milking franchises to death, rehashes/remasters/remakes of classic games, Early Access scams, DLC galore, pre-order bonuses, micro-transactions/pay to win, and review embargos/other manipulative marketing.

I argue that all of these are harmful in some way to the consumer in their current form but that is just my opinion.

Yeah the pricing of games hasn't changed, the budgets did. So a company needs to sell more of a game than before just to break even on their expenses. I see nothing wrong with the pricing. In my view, gaming is a relatively inexpensive hobby compared to other options. I myself do not mind spending the money on a game that I find some quality with.

I only disagree on a couple minor points but it's kind of different than what you were getting at. I don't mind remakes of older games if they do a good job and clean up the assets for today's audience. There are some gems that today's gamers probably wouldn't play because the game is without a doubt, old. It looks, feels, and sounds like an old game. Clean it all up with some modern features and it can be fantastic. I also do not mind milking a franchise with a caveat. You cannot do yearly releases and expect the quality to be upheld. You may get lucky once or twice but after a time you have to go back and retool the engine, spend more time on the story and characters etc. When you try to push out a game that resembles the big blockbuster hit in name and basic mechanics only, but fails to hit the mark on every other important aspect, you get what you consider milking to death. Let me give an example. I do not mind that there were multiple Uncharted games on Playstation 3. Each one was a solid single game, but they all tied the characters together. I enjoy them as individual titles but I look forward to seeing how each adventure affects the relationship between characters. I do feel that Assassin's Creed has overstayed its welcome. What should have ended at Assassin's Creed Revelations did not and they butchered any lore and background story they were trying to tell with Assassin's Creed 3. Part 4 was a pirate simulator and had almost nothing to do with the greater story we were presented with between part 2 and revelations. To me it feels like that series should have ended a while ago. Same for Call of Duty but for different reasons. They never have very fleshed out stories anymore. It feels like they aren't trying on that end which is a shame because when CoD4 came out it really did a good job of telling a story and putting the set pieces together well. At least I think so. It wouldn't hurt to build a brand new engine to take advantage of new hardware either. There are still parts of the newest game Advanced Warfare that look bad to me.

 

[RampantAndroid]

if you look at how retail games work these days you will see a lot using the same services (like steam, origin, uplay) as DRM, demanding big patches and giving the owner the right to download... I still think there is a higher cost for retail copies, manufacturing, transporting, selling...
but my opinion is mostly for the consoles vs PC game prices, it shouldn't be the same,

Demanding patches, yes. But I listed console games for a specific reason - I cannot turn my disc into a downloadable game...ever. I can buy DLC, but then I'm paying for the infrastructure. There are still some DVD games that do not let you put them into a steam account (though I believe you can put any CD Key into Origin and get a download.)

 

[Azix]

sorry guys I dont pirate anything ever. i has million$$. :biggrin: :thumbsup:





You are admitting you pirate games.

You cannot talk about that here.

This is the guidelines in which members can talk about it.


http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=27076922&postcount=30


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[esquared]

Next person that continues this dialog of active pirating will be vacationed.

Not warned as the above two were.

Not infracted.

But vacationed.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[bystander36]

Being against DRM is not some weird point of view for people to have. History has shown that it hurts legitimate consumers and does nothing to curb piracy. The opposite has been true far less often to the point that they are statistical anomalies.

You're only hurting yourself making accusations like closet pirate. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy, and it severely weakens your stance. If Denuvo is as invisible as people say, I personally have no issue with it. But the fact that you won't let the idea that people are against DRM go is weird. Not everyone thinks the same as you, and just because their opinion is different doesn't mean it's not well thought out.

If you can't tell its there, then it doesn't hurt the consumer, only the pirate. This is why I just can't understand the hate, unless it comes from a pirate.

 

[tidy]

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[Grooveriding]

I don't care so long as the DRM does not break me playing the game. Major offenders are CD keys with limited authentications, gfwl - dead now and anything single player that requires always online.

As far as Witcher 3, CDPR will not use any DRM, so pirates can go nuts and just copy the game and play. I still have preordered on Steam because I'd rather have all my games in one place as much as possible. So a DRM free Witcher 3 is not preferable to a Steam version for my uses.

 

[Dankk]

If it's non intrusive, doesn't effect performance, and I can still play my game 30 years from now, I don't care.

This. DRM is a non-issue for me as long as it's non-intrusive, I can't see it, and it lets me play my game without any hassle. Come to think of it, I can think of very few occasions when DRM has actually given me problems.

However, I do remember reading up on Lord of the Fallen's DRM, and people on the Steam forums were apparently saying that the reason why the game was so poorly-optimized on launch is because of the heavy-handed DRM scheme it uses. People pirating the game were actually getting a better product because it was running faster and more smoothly than the paid copies. In my mind, that's a bit of a problem. But they may have patched it up since launch.

I never, never, never pirate. It sounds cheesy, but I simply appreciate PC games too much. I view modern-day video games as massive technical marvels of engineering and design; they are probably some of the most detailed and complex pieces of software being created today. I love the work that many game developers do, and downloading it for free is pretty damn low.

The classic Don't Copy That Floppy video hits my point pretty well. At the 3:00 mark, they actually interview some developers who talk about how much work goes into a game. ("There might be as many as 20 or 30 people working on a game!" These days, it's hundreds or even thousands.)

And unlike what some people here think, it's not necessarily a matter of money. When I pirated games, it wasn't that I couldn't afford them. The question is, why pay for something when you can get it for free?

There's a guy I know that pirated Assassin's Creed Unity, even though his rig costs at least 3K. If you can afford an expensive setup like that, surely you can afford 50 bucks for a game.

It's like those people who buy a $3k computer, and then buy a crappy $20 pair of Logitech speakers or mouse to go with it. Untold levels of degeneracy.

The problem of piracy has A LOT to do with crazy overpriced price of games worldwide. I can totally understand why PC gamers in poor countries pirate games. A lot of people in Russia only make $500-1000 a month, or about 5-10X less than a similar job in US/Canada. Yet, DAI Deluxe is $45 USD. No sh!t, your games get pirated. Until publishers get that due to purchasing power you MUST price PC games differently for different markets, the piracy on the PC will not be stopped. Steam has proved that with reasonable regional pricing, people start paying for PC games (Russia, China, Brazil).

Many (most?) publishers price their games appropriately for different reasons. When Skyrim came out, it was $60 in the US; $25 in Russia. Lots of big-budget games have cheaper region-locked Russian versions.

 

[SPBHM]

Demanding patches, yes. But I listed console games for a specific reason - I cannot turn my disc into a downloadable game...ever. I can buy DLC, but then I'm paying for the infrastructure. There are still some DVD games that do not let you put them into a steam account (though I believe you can put any CD Key into Origin and get a download.)

on the consoles more and more retail games depend on all the online infrastructure the same, games with 20GB patches and a ton of online functionality.

on the PC almost every game will allow you to register on steam, origin, uplay..

this is from 2010 but still probably relevant

"Another way to look at it is to say publishers such as Activision and Electronic Arts receive $45 after retailers take a $15 cut. Publishers turn around and pay a $7 licensing fee to console manufacturers such as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. The cost of making, packaging and shipping game discs to stores carves up another $4. Finally, not all games sell, so the expense of returning unsold inventory eats up another $7."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-60-dollar-video-game.html

so I don't see how launching a game on steam could have the same costs involved, or this information is totally incorrect

 

[Carfax83]

Well 5% is still 5%, especially for lower end rigs. What if a third layer guaranteed crack prevention for another month but took up 12%? And another layer could block crackers for an extra 6 months but needed 20%? And another layer... The issue to me, is more "slippery slope" than a specific "5%", ie, conditioning the masses to accept ever decreasing performance of any given hardware with zero benefit to the end user.

We can always come up with "what if" scenarios. The point though is that 5% is fairly acceptable. In fact, a 5% decrease in frames per second is usually not even noticeable. It takes about 10% increase or decrease in frame rate before most people are able to notice a change in performance.

Important for whom, Denuvo's marketing dept? In practice "Denuvo is overlaid onto DRM to protect .exe cracking, but not really DRM itself" makes zero difference to the average person how it's "classed" when it's still another "layer" with its own CPU overhead (on top of mentioned Origin / Steam / UPlay background CPU usage, which can and do spike up sometimes). DRM's only real function is "lock in".

For the sake of this discussion and of facts, it was important to make that distinction. We already had one guy in this thread claiming that Steam wasn't DRM when in fact it is..

There's probably a ton of PC gamers that don't think Steam is DRM, because they have a positive attitude towards it. Still doesn't change the fact though, that it's DRM..

 

[Carfax83]

People seem to have the false idea that a person who pirates a game, would have purchased the game if it was unable to be pirated.
This has been proven to be false.
The percentage of people who pirated a game, who would have purchased the game if it had been unable to been pirated is extremely low.
This percentage drops even lower when you move out of the US to poorer countries.

How was this proven? There is no "proof" in a debate about piracy, because there's no hard information. There is only evidence.

For your argument to be true, you would have to believe that PC game sales have never been affected by piracy at all. But if that's the case, why have PC games average selling price increased to the point of parity with consoles, despite having no licensing costs and with PC gamers fully embracing digital distribution, no retail packaging and transportations costs as well?

And why has the AAA PC gaming scene been so severely diminished over the years, especially when it used to be the opposite before high speed internet became available?

There are billions of PCs in the world, but only a small percentage of them are capable of playing the latest cutting edge titles. But still, even that small percentage constitutes MILLIONS of PC gamers..

The PC gaming market should be destroying consoles across the board in both game sales and developer investment, but it isn't. Only when you count MOBAs, MMORPGs and Indie games does the PC platform begin to shine..

AAA PC exclusive game development is practically barren though, because the risks of rampant piracy are too great for developers to look the other way..

 

[Carfax83]

I am a pirate. A huge one. And I would of NEVER bought any games unless I tried them first. You think I would of ever bought inquisition if I never tried dragon age? What about the 4 2k sports games I own? I woulda never bought them in a million years if I didn't pirate them first. So just by my post alone your post is flawed. I don't feel entitled and I feel that most games are highly overpriced for the return in entertainment.

First off, I never even implied that what I said about pirates was universal in any manner, so I don't know where you got that from.

I know that people pirate games for various reasons. Some people pirate because they can't afford to buy them. Some people pirate because they're sick and tired of buying games that turn out to be poorly coded and optimized and run like crap.. Some people pirate because there's a lack of access to legitimate games where they live.. Some people pirate games only from certain publishers or developers because they have a vendetta and want what they consider to be payback..

And yes, there's likely a significant number of pirates that have the "try before you buy" philosophy and eventually end up buying their favorite games legally..

But just as pirates like that exist, so do others that are just straight parasites. They have no intention whatsoever of paying for anything no matter how low the cost, as long as they can get it for free.

It's naïve for you to think that most pirates are like you, when you have cheap mobile games like Angry Birds that get pirated out the ass to the point where the developer just makes it free to play.

 

[Cerb]

Can't be that the game wasn't worth it, can it? Ubisoft, FI, bitched and moaned, while releasing games that were getting junk user reviews all over the place.

If game A, projected to cost $40M, would make $60M (going back to the publisher, not total sales revenue), cool. Now what if you're a big name publisher? Those textures, world, NPCs, etc. have to be grand. GRAND (a TES, FI, qualifies ten times over ). It must have posters in every Gamestop and Best Buy. It might get a TV commercial spot. Now, let's say all that cost another $40M (which might actually be low, from what I can dig up, ATM), but only makes them $70M. What is spent where needs to be carefully thought out. More dev costs and marketing can help a good title sell more, I do not doubt; but there will be hard limits, and diminishing returns, and those need to be taken into account, and don't seem to be.

Blockbuster development is a big risk, and there is not an unlimited market for such titles. A company does not deserve a greater return for spending more money. However much piracy may or may not affect sales, the maker needs to be fairly sure the cost will be worth it, before they agree to dump huge sums in. I see an unhealthy set of business practices, amongst most of the big publishers, more than I do piracy killing them.

As for not making PC releases due to piracy, what PC releases are going to greatly affect console sales? It's a total red herring. That the PC platform offers less control, will require more QA, more work on support after the sale, and likely need its own added, and substantial, marketing budget, are all very good reasons to not release on PC, if the developers have been stuck in the console world for years, or have a poor PC support history. A very small number of people that might pirate a PC version, who would have bought a console version, are going to be a blip in any set of stats they can gather.

 

[escrow4]

Piracy aside, you make a fat old million dollar AAA game exclusive on PC - who will play it? Users here @ Anandtech are a tiny tiny minority. Over here in Australia my 5930K cost just under $700, the 780 Ti GHz was just over $900, the DDR4 RAM was just over $300. In India and China how many would be running a setup truly capable of next gen gaming? Unity needs a pile of grunt (optimization sure, but fundamentally it needs grunt), DA: Inquisition slaps a Titan around (can't even crack 60FPS minimum, average is more or less there), imagine the Witcher 3. Sure you can turn down settings but then you may as well buy a console, I imagine if you sunk a $1K+ into a PC you'd want to experience the advantages over a console, especially in regards to a solid 60FPS with the settings cranked @ 1080p at least.

There may be piles of PC users, but how many will actually appreciate a game with semi decent hardware? A 290 isn't $250-$300 outside the US. Windows too adds $100 to the cost. PCs get sloppy ports for reasons beyond piracy . . . .

 

[Carfax83]

Can't be that the game wasn't worth it, can it? Ubisoft, FI, bitched and moaned, while releasing games that were getting junk user reviews all over the place.

Yeah, but is that an excuse to pirate their games? Ubisoft has one of the highest piracy rates on the PC platform, behind EA if I had to guess..

If their games are so crappy, why do pirates still pirate them? If people think the game is overpriced, then don't pay full price for it. Games always drop in price eventually, and by significant amounts.

Personally, I don't mind paying top dollar for games that I'm interested in because I don't buy many games to begin with. I usually only buy the big AAA games like AC Unity, Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher 3 etcetera and I take my time with these games as I'm a busy man with a large family..

It's probably going to take me months to beat Dragon Age Inquisition.

If game A, projected to cost $40M, would make $60M (going back to the publisher, not total sales revenue), cool. Now what if you're a big name publisher? Those textures, world, NPCs, etc. have to be grand. GRAND (a TES, FI, qualifies ten times over ). It must have posters in every Gamestop and Best Buy. It might get a TV commercial spot. Now, let's say all that cost another $40M (which might actually be low, from what I can dig up, ATM), but only makes them $70M. What is spent where needs to be carefully thought out. More dev costs and marketing can help a good title sell more, I do not doubt; but there will be hard limits, and diminishing returns, and those need to be taken into account, and don't seem to be.

Yes this is a salient point. One of the biggest reasons why game prices have gone up is because of expectations that gamers have in terms of asset quality; especially for current gen and PC. Then there's the marketing budgets, which are sometimes even larger than the actual development costs.

I remember a CDPR guy saying that the Witcher 3's marketing costs will be higher than the development costs.

Blockbuster development is a big risk, and there is not an unlimited market for such titles. A company does not deserve a greater return for spending more money. However much piracy may or may not affect sales, the maker needs to be fairly sure the cost will be worth it, before they agree to dump huge sums in. I see an unhealthy set of business practices, amongst most of the big publishers, more than I do piracy killing them.

Again, this is a true statement. The costs of development for games can be absolutely massive. Destiny reputedly cost 500 million dollars to develop and promote, which is absolutely staggering!

And there's no guarantee that they will get a good return on that investment. But still, there is definitely a market for such big budget games, as GTA V demonstrates.

As for not making PC releases due to piracy, what PC releases are going to greatly affect console sales? It's a total red herring. That the PC platform offers less control, will require more QA, more work on support after the sale, and likely need its own added, and substantial, marketing budget, are all very good reasons to not release on PC, if the developers have been stuck in the console world for years, or have a poor PC support history. A very small number of people that might pirate a PC version, who would have bought a console version, are going to be a blip in any set of stats they can gather.

There are disadvantages to working on PC, but there are advantages as well. Higher development costs are offset by higher profit margins, and longer sales cycles.. When GTA V does hit the PC, it will be selling for years as mods will greatly extend the sales cycle.

Baldurs Gate 2 is still selling almost 15 years after it's original release. You never see that on consoles..

And the PC still gets a large percentage of multiplatform releases, so developers must think it's still worth it despite the issues associated with PC development.

So the PC as a gaming platform is exceptional I believe. But it's hamstrung by rampant piracy. It will be interesting to see the sales figures for Dragon Age Inquisition on PC. If Denuvo continues to frustrate game crackers for months, or even indefinitely, then the sales should be strong on PC..

 

[RussianSensation]

You are being way too general with your logic. I have a friend that pirates purely on money savings. He has plenty of money to buy games but decides to pirate. Games that have DRM which don't allow a simple download and play have him buying the game no problems. I recently showed him some foreign key websites that he can get a big discount from and he uses those exclusively now because its easier than pirating and he gets to use the legit software like Steam. At least some money gets back to the dev now.

That's my point and Steam proved this model - cheaper game sales and a simple distribution model - is better than retail sales for the PC. Also, many indie developers said they make the most profits when their games like Trine or Torchlight are on massive 80-85% discounts.

As far as a couple users disagreeing with me that entertainment is not a right but a priviledge, well while true technically, you need to get out of the US/Canada and live in other parts of the world to understand what real world is like outside of your cushioned 3500 sq ft house and a 2014 Honda Accord. While I make a good living in North America where I can afford $50-60 games every month, having worked in South America, Middle East and Central Asia I understand that in poorer countries entertainment is one of the ways to keep members of society happier. If you price movies, games, theme parks, sports activities at US levels in some of these countries, you are not allowing hundreds of millions of kids to experience youth, not allowing people to enjoy entertainment just because those people weren't born in successful countries like Germany or the U.S. From a society's point of view, that's not particularly healthy overall if you start looking at everything from a profit point of view and ignore the sociological implications of such decisions.

While we can sit here and debate that it's not fair that a U.S. EA programmer works for 80 hours a week and in some countries EA's game sells for $20 instead of $60, the fact is since the publisher/developer still make money in those poor countries, the programmer gets to keep his 6-figure job and the gamers in those poor countries still get to enjoy his work.

If we allow all entertainment to be priced similarly to the US, what will end up is kids that turn to crime, generally a colder and angrier society in the developing and underdeveloped world. For this reason things like downhill skiing passes, rental of tennis courts, cinema tickets, and PC games often cost MUCH less in the developing countries. Let me guess you guys have a problem that millions of poor people legitimately pay $5 to see the next Hobbit movie because you have to pay $12-14?

But besides that, from a business point of view, as mentioned by another poster, it's about supply and demand in those markets. Their business models dictate that $50-60 games will result in lower overall profits due to lower revenues if pricing this form of entertainment like in the US. The point is if you lower game prices enough, you will get even poor gamers to purchase legitimate copies of games in those countries. Just look at % of Brazilian and Russian steam players. It's rising every year.

Let's not forget that costs of entertainment equipment are MUCH higher in many of these places than in the U.S.: tennis racquets, game consoles, skis, brand name (ie, NIKE) running shoes, PC parts (while salaries are much much lower). Therefore, the lower price of the service to enjoy these activities makes some sense or these activities would become only obtainable to the upper class elite.

Point is, even if some Brazilian or Russian PC gamer pirates some games, they could change their view over time and purchase legit games. The goal is to either get a pirate to switch OR get someone who partially pirates some games to purchase more and more legitimate copies until he/she stops pirating. If you price your product reasonably enough, a lot of gamers in poor countries will stop pirating.

There are 2 cases where pirating is 100% acceptable:

1) You pay full price for the game on Steam/Origin, whatever, and then pirate the cracked/non-DRM copy since you don't want garbage on your PC. This way you get the benefits of old school PC gaming without ripping off the developer. I have seen some PC gamers use this option when Online only or DRM frustrate them.

2) Since in some markets you can't buy physical PC games or older PC games, over time you could run out of the number of activation limits with your game due to constantly upgrading your PC hardware. This idea that I pay to have the option of only 3-4 times maximum activations for $60 is BS (not to mention you can run through these with a failed mobo RMA, memory/SSD upgrade (!), or a CPU swap). If For those games with a limited number of activation limits, where you maxed out your limits through hardware failures/natural upgrades/OS reinstalls, as long as you bought the original game fair and square, pirating is 100% acceptable. This type of DRM activation model is total BS for us PC gamers who upgrade and play with new parts fairly often.

In the end I find DRM intrusive and I am glad so few games have it.

 

[BSim500]

"And why has the AAA PC gaming scene been so severely diminished over the years, especially when it used to be the opposite before high speed internet became available?"

Correlation does not imply causation. Piracy has been with us since floppy discs, code-wheels & manual passwords ("enter the 3rd word on the 4th line of page 6"). "Here my friend, this game is great" [hands over physical floppy disc / CD-ROM in person that goes nowhere near the Internet]. Pre-broadband, people also swapped audio CD's & DVD's to rip, exchanged MP3 players for the weekend, photocopied expensive college text books, Microsoft Office CD's (or Wordperfect 5.1 for MS-DOS floppies if you want to go back far enough), all in person. The Internet didn't cause all of this, it just made it more visible & trackable. And the pre-broadband "golden era" meant devs actually had to finish their games before they sold them as they couldn't send out 2GB patches to those on 56k dial-up modems paying per-minute metered phone charges, so "release day" quality control had to be higher.

As for why the AAA PC scene has diminished, there are a multitude of contributory reasons that have a far bigger impact than piracy alone : an AAA industry shift to cross-platform development now universally designed to the Lowest Common Denominator (ie, made for consoles & controllers then ported up with PC controls tacked on as an after-thought), dumbing down for the "casual" audience or nerfing controls / game mechanics so they fit onto controllers limited buttons, ugly UI due to no attempt at 2ft monitor vs 8-10ft TV view distance HUD scaling, a fetish with trying to turn games into overly-cinematic railroad interactive movies, coming up with one winning game then "spam-sequelling" them to death with 20-30 cash-ins of the same game repackaged over & over, etc, have all lowered sales to varying degrees (and a non-sale doesn't = 1:1 "someone must have stole it purely because it's available to torrent" and vice-versa). "Account linked" DRM also has far more to do with stamping out the legal 2nd-hand resale market as it does anti-piracy (as a few industry figures have let slip in the past).

If you want a real visible correlation - the more buggy & consolized AAA titles became, the more the developers have to resort to "review embargos", killing off pre-release downloadable demo's (that reward only good games but seriously harm the bad ones), hyping pre-order bonuses that better reward uninformed purchase decisions over post-release informed purchases (bad games benefit far more from blind pre-orders), even Ubisoft "gifting" (ahem) Nexus 7 tablets to journalists during Watch Dogs hype events... Meanwhile, my own AAA purchases have plummeted over the past 20 years of gaming from being 6:1 AAA:Indie in the 90's / early 2000's to virtually the reverse 1:6 today, not due to "piracy" but sheer disinterest / disillusionment in above mentioned "consoley feel with PC as an afterthought" AAA games.

The PC gaming market should be destroying consoles across the board in both game sales and developer investment, but it isn't. Only when you count MOBAs, MMORPGs and Indie games does the PC platform begin to shine..

See above. Console gamers are buying consoles for reasons other than GFX (that's why they put up with 720p / 30fps). And the experience on PC's these days isn't "superior" at all when games are released with broken keyb + mouse support / screwed up HUD with size 40 fonts and the usual suggested "solution" is "buy a controller and sit 8ft away or wait 2-6 months for a patch"... And if money is pumped into marketing rather than hiring creative designers capable of producing decent cross-platform UI / controls without sacrificing one platform for 4 others, then it won't improve things either for the PC. If anything, excessive marketing is increasingly having the opposite effect with people getting sick of "over-hype", and over-hyped games getting slammed disproportionately harder in user reviews / gaming forums for not living up to their "glossy brochure" fake-E3 footage promises.

AAA PC exclusive game development is practically barren though, because the risks of rampant piracy are too great for developers to look the other way.

It's "barren" due to a total lack of imagination, stale recycled worn out "formulas" as a substitute for "risky" creativity, LCD design, and virtually non-existent quality control that increases the level of derision especially for the big two (Ubisoft & EA), who seem pathologically incapable of releasing a modern game that isn't broken out of the box in some major way. Release after release this year of mega-budgets (Watch Dogs, AC Unity, DAI, BF4, Simcity, Need for Speed Rivals, etc) has been one half-broken joke after another. Game after game they've got slammed in Metacritic user reviews many spelling out specific game-breaking bugs or poor controls - "but it's never our fault, anyone who says otherwise must be a hating pirate" is wearing very thin these days when simultaneously other quality games get high user reviews and sell well even with no DRM at all (Divinity Original Sin, Witcher series, Dragon Age Origins, etc).

The REAL reason the AAA industry is in trouble is their development & marketing budgets have both swollen many times greater than inflation-adjusted equivalents of 10-15 years ago, yet all that extra money seems less & less capable at producing titles on time & on budget that work out of the box, and coming up with new fresh-feeling original titles capable of standing on their own merits without having to be "franchised to death". The "formula" for AAA games has grown so stale and predictable (FPS = 2 weapon limit, cover-based "peashooter vs tank" gunplay, auto healing, brown & grey, quicksave-less checkpoints, cutscenes every 2m, etc / "modern inclusive RPG" = trying and failing to be both "MMO action oriented" and "heavy tactical" in the same game at the same time and falling flat on its face trying to be everything to everyone), that people are openly crying out for new "middle-weight" developers like Larian, CDPR, etc, to step forward and dilute the effluence with games focused with a sub-genre, but done really well.

Piracy may have some impact - up to point - but it also gets wildly abused as one huge convenient "one size fits all" cop-out, often by devs wanting to protect their stock values by shifting the "our game got voted down for bad design" blame onto an externality. And not just for gaming either. Remember former RIAA head Hillary Rosen's nickname "RNG" (ie, the Random Number Generator - due to the way she invented a new figure for piracy each time (including a record of 3 different figures within the same 10min speech...)

If Denuvo continues to frustrate game crackers for months, or even indefinitely, then the sales should be strong on PC..

Given that Ubisoft & EA have both claimed "up to 95% piracy rates on the PC" before, and given DRM-free Dragon age Origin sold 3.2m copies, it will sure be interesting to see what excuses get peddled out when DAI fails to achieve 64m copies sold for the PC if the game remains uncracked and every claimed "lost sale" is not turned into a purchase. "It's the economic downturn. It's the bad weather. It's..."

 

[Rakehellion]

There's also a rumor circulating around that Denuvo drastically increases the amount of writes to storage, which can potentially shorten the lifespan of an SSD or even kill it outright. This rumor started on some Russian piracy forum, and is almost undoubtedly pure FUD. Numerous tests by legitimate game owners have shown that the reads and writes to storage aren't any higher than normal..

How would a legitimate game owner perform such a test when they don't have a copy of the game without Denuvo? And why would you automatically assume the hacker groups are lying? Personally, I trust hackers to know more about computers than a gamer.

 

[Rakehellion]

So you think businesses that produce a commodity should price it so a certain target market can afford it instead of what makes a reasonable profit for them? Games are not a necessity. If one cant afford them, dont buy them, or wait for a sale and buy it then. Not being able to afford a game is certainly no excuse to pirate it.

They can price it however they want, but consumers don't have to buy it.

Games are not a necessity, and neither is an extra game sale a necessity for the publisher.

 

[Rakehellion]

Imo DRM always hurt legit buyer in different ways.

DRM is a fail approach.Steam is the best way to go.

Steam is DRM.

 

[Nebor]

I've never had any problems with DRM. In recent years I've switched entirely to Steam gaming. I have no games that aren't Steam games. Unfortunately that caused me to miss out of Dragon Age 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and the later Battlefield games, all of which I really would have liked to have played. I'll also be missing Dragon Age Inquisition because I assume it's an Origin exclusive.

It sucks to miss out on games, but I believe in Steam as platform. It saved PC gaming, and continues to provide low cost, quality games to people all over the world. If that doesn't deserve my support, I don't know what does.

 

[Rakehellion]

For your argument to be true, you would have to believe that PC game sales have never been affected by piracy at all. But if that's the case, why have PC games average selling price increased to the point of parity with consoles, despite having no licensing costs and with PC gamers fully embracing digital distribution, no retail packaging and transportations costs as well?

Because they can. That's like asking why soneone would throw away free money. And the $60 price tag doesn't even match inflation.

 

[Rakehellion]

If their games are so crappy, why do pirates still pirate them? If people think the game is overpriced, then don't pay full price for it. Games always drop in price eventually, and by significant amounts.

I downloaded Ryse just to check out the graphics, played it for literally 60 seconds, and deleted it. I got Assassin's Creed: Unity just for the hype as well and deleted it. These are games I had zero desire to play and had no interest in other than for research purposes.

Why is it no longer a thing to release game demos? It's like developers are trying to trick us into buying crappy games.

The classic Don't Copy That Floppy video hits my point pretty well. At the 3:00 mark, they actually interview some developers who talk about how much work goes into a game. ("There might be as many as 20 or 30 people working on a game!" These days, it's hundreds or even thousands.)

Meh, I write software too and I feel sorry for those developers only because their boss made them record that crappy video to increase his bottom line.

Fact is, those guys are salaried. If EA's stock price goes up 15%, that money goes straight to the CEO.

Mind you, I am the head of my company and the first one hit by sales numbers, but propaganda isn't how I make my decisions.

 

[master_shake_]

I downloaded Ryse just to check out the graphics, played it for literally 60 seconds, and deleted it. I got Assassin's Creed: Unity just for the hype as well and deleted it. These are games I had zero desire to play and had no interest in other than for research purposes.

Why is it no longer a thing to release game demos? It's like developers are trying to trick us into buying crappy games.



Meh, I write software too and I feel sorry for those developers only because their boss made them record that crappy video to increase his bottom line.

Fact is, those guys are salaried. If EA's stock price goes up 15%, that money goes straight to the CEO.

Mind you, I am the head of my company and the first one hit by sales numbers, but propaganda isn't how I make my decisions.

QFT

they ain't going to make boat loads of pre-order money with demos.

people will find out how broken or how bad the final product was compared to an E3 demo.

demos....

that's a good one.

 

[bystander36]

I downloaded Ryse just to check out the graphics, played it for literally 60 seconds, and deleted it. I got Assassin's Creed: Unity just for the hype as well and deleted it. These are games I had zero desire to play and had no interest in other than for research purposes.

Why is it no longer a thing to release game demos? It's like developers are trying to trick us into buying crappy games.

Game demos were rare in the past, and are still rare today, but they do exist. For the most part, only new companies and new genre's had demos. And that may still be the case today, but it still surprises me that I often run into demos while looking into games on Steam. I wonder if they have a method to just look up demos, rather than just having to stumble on them when checking out individual games.