Analysis of Denuvo DRM cracking shows significant impacts on publishers' bottom lines.
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The true cost of game piracy: 20 percent of revenue, according to a new study
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While Steam does have DRM, it's trivially easy to crack for any game if you're so inclined, so not on its own effective protection against piracy. Denuvo, on the other hand, seems very effective at stopping piracy until it is cracked on a per-game basis
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I link to that EU study high up, and the fact they come to different conclusions with different methdologies is interesting.
But this study isn't linking "one pirated copy with a lost sale." It doesn't even measure how many pirated copies are downloaded altogether. I urge you to reread the article/study.
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More on the not-insigificant costs of implementing Denuvo
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/jzl83j/denuvo_implementation_costs_crysis_remastered/
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Not really. There's a difference between "This game is for sale without DRM" and "This game is for sale with DRM, but it's easily crackable."
This study is interesting, but it really doesn't say a damn thing about whether DRM protects more sales than it wards off.
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uesc_marathon
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Whether or not they 'lose sales', and I'm still not convinced 1 pirated copy == 1 lost sale, game publishers should not be permitted to install malware on my computer deliberately.
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This. I don't buy any games with Denuvo. There are some games with Denuvo I would have liked to buy, but its presence is a deal breaker for me.
Sometimes, a game that launches with Denuvo subsequently gets it removed. 99% of the time, I don't notice when that happens, or if I do, have lost the enthusiasm or desire for the game since launch.
Similarly, sony's shenanigans with PSN post Helldivers 2 means that I won't buy any sony games or PC games that require PSN.
I also don't buy any Ubisoft games because of UPlay (and to be honest, because they haven't really made anything enticing to me in the past 5 years).
Games that go Epic-exclusive fall off my radar, and may or may not reemerge if they pop up on steam. I may not be the only one - nobody talked about Mines of Moria for the year that it was EGS-exclusive, but it got a lot of buzz when it appeared on Steam.
I do also buy games on GOG and itch.io, but they tend to be the minority, because I don't spend much time browsing there (and if I'm brutally honest, keeping games updated on GOG is a pain as Galaxy keeps breaking on me and manually updating every game is a hassle).
I haven't pirated a game since high school, nigh on many decades past. It's not worth the legal hassle, it's not worth the technical hassle, and it's not worth the security risk.
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Is it?
The release of Cyberpunk 2077 in its messed-up state was in part prompted by investor concerns as well as other financial issues at CD Projekt Red.
Sure it sold millions (refunds not withstanding), but 20% of millions is a lot to just leave on the table.
Again, in that kind of context this doesn't make sense to me.
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OK, but your argument is different from vlam's argument, which was "Cyberpunk sold well, QED..."
As for your argument, Denuvo isn't "easily crackable." The fact that many Denuvo games are uncracked for lengthy periods of time (>12 weeks) is in fact key to the study. I urge you to reread the piece.
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Thanks, and also to @Apophasis . I'm supposed to be working right now but I should have at least glanced at the paper to see the disclaimer
In my (weak) defense, in my college days last century papers didn't include such a disclaimer.
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I guess you'd have to ask CDPR why they value their anti-DRM stance more than the additional sales they'd garner from DRM (however many they might be). Maybe they'd argue that they think they earn more customer goodwill from not having DRM than they lose in sales losts, or that they think they're only losing a smaller percentage of sales, or that this position is more important to them than the money.
All of that is kind of orthogonal to the study, I'd argue. Plenty of big publishers do use DRM because they do want to protect what they see as losable revenue -- if anything CDPR is the exception here.
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This study clearly needs an accompanying study(s) along the lines of other lost revenue.
I don't pirate or crack games, but I also refuse to buy anything with Denuve in it, so whats the lost revenues from that? I know I'm not the only one who avoid them.
Also as other pointed out Denuvo is exceptionally hated and often targeted for cracking to make a point. I some of my Discords I know people who specifically pirate only Denuvo games and then pay for there other games. So whats the lost revenue for NON-Denuvo games with anti-Pirate tech/code?
I'm super curious how the income loss would compare across all 3 "user groups" (Crack Denuvo, Refuse to buy Denuvo, Has a different anti-Piracy solution).
Lastly, sure its a "peer reviewed journal" but there has been PLENTY of issues there lately. The fact that this ONLY covers Denuvo, and skips the other user groups and income lost from this "Problem" already makes me VERY skeptical that this wasnt "funded research by Denuvo" but either undisclosed, or passed through anthoer org to hide it. This is further exacerbated by having an actual section devoted to external factors yet compeltely ignoring not acknowledging other anti-priacy tools, or that some people avoid games that have it all together... They dont even acknowledge that, that is a thing and thats pretty basic level shit to list in your bias/contributing/confudsing factors.
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I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. I'm not saying that Denuvo is always easily crackable, I'm saying that comparing the sales of a Denuvo-encumbered game before and after the crack is readily available (and thus, the DRM becomes easily crackable) says little to nothing about whether the presence of DRM prevents sales or not.
We know there's some percentage of gamers that simply refuse to buy games with Denuvo or other intrusive forms of DRM. I'm one, and others have spoken up in this thread. I can't speak for all of them, but whether it's cracked or not is of little interest to me; I don't follow game crack news, and I don't crack or pirate games. I might buy a game once the publisher has officially removed Denuvo, but more often than not, I've moved on to something else and don't bother.
I'm not supporting vlam's argument. I'm refuting your counter-argument that the data in this study in any way is a refutation of their argument. Frankly, both of your arguments are equally unsupported; there's simply not enough data to support either one, and this study does not speak to either viewpoint.
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I did misunderstand your argument, it seems. But my counter-argument to vlam was just that Cyberpunk is an anecdote and not useful data in any way.
In any case, the study seems to make clear that legitimate sales do go down after a Denuvo crack is released. Maybe that reduction is smaller than the number of people that refuse to buy a Denuvo game ever, cracked or uncracked. But I'd need to see some data to suggest that "never buy Denuvo" market is anything close to 20% of revenue. At least more than a bunch of anecdotes from commenters speaking of their own preferences...
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I think this study finds that 20% of people wait for Denovo to be removed from a game by pirates in order to play it.
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I came here to say this: I would love to see the figures of games that don't have Denuo vs the ones who have it
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
But there is a strong implication that more than 20% of sales would disappear if a game were never protected at all.
They were able to see a decline in profit loss with every week a crack was available after all. So you can use inductive reasoning to infer that a week 0 crack (ie unprotected) game would lose significantly more than 20%
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Back in the physical media days, I would research whether a game could be played without the disc being present. If not, I would not buy the game until a cracked .exe was available. Maybe I was in the minority, but I only applied those to games I had paid for.
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
You can just infer that using the existing graphs. Imagine a game with a week 0 crash. It would lose more than 20%
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To be frank, the percentage of gamers that refuse to purchase Denuvo games is not significant enough to matter.
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Perhaps it's not. But that, again, is an assumption you're making in the absence of any relevant data. It certainly seems to be a popular viewpoint among savvy gamers anywhere I go.
Also, you're ignoring some extrinsic factors. The "never buy Denuvo" crowd doesn't have to be greater than 20% of revenue; it only has to be greater than 20% of revenue minus the costs of implementing Denuvo (licensing, technical, manpower, etc).
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Impossible. I swear on a stack of the hundreds of 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes full of warez I accumulated in my teenage years that never has anyone pirated something and then not bought it.
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I can't help but think there's other forces at play, but admittedly this study confuses me in how it's presented cut and dried. I can't say why, but this study feels like the old university physics "ignore the effects of friction" to make the math easier.
I would think factors such as playability on release (ie, release, then patch) would play into sales over time. Anecdotally I won't buy a new game on release after putting up with Cyberpunk.
There's also the altruism of 'fuck the AAA studios' that some people will never purchase anything. I would assume only the big studios can afford Denuvo (?) Wouldn't that affect cracks vs sales in a nonlinear way?
I would think factors such as playability on release (ie, release, then patch) would play into sales over time. Anecdotally I won't buy a new game on release after putting up with Cyberpunk.
There's also the altruism of 'fuck the AAA studios' that some people will never purchase anything. I would assume only the big studios can afford Denuvo (?) Wouldn't that affect cracks vs sales in a nonlinear way?
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I get what you're saying, and the number of people who just avoid Denuvo games altogether (however big it is) is definitely an unaddressed counter-argument for the study.
That said, in the absence of any attempt to measure the size of that contingent, I'll say I find it hard to believe it is a significant drag on sales relative to the drag from piracy itself (if it was, I think Denuvo would have a tough time staying in business)
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Skimming those numbers and assuming the 20% to be actual lost sales it does seem to work out well in favor of larger games incorporating Denuvo. Hopefully more developers pay attention as to how to properly incorporate it to mitigate potential performance impact.
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I take a pretty big issue with the part I bolded there. There's another big assumption - that publishers are perfectly rational and have access to perfect data.
Game companies are run by people, same as you and me. And people are not purely rational beings; they're susceptible to arguments that "feel right" and arguments that appeal to fear just like the rest of us. A salesman for a product like Denuvo can easily make a case for it just based on some of the same arguments you and others have made in this thread, and if I'm running a company and afraid of losing revenue, I may just buy it regardless of whether it's actually true or not.
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So is this hypothetical profit loss before or after the cost of licensing Denuvo DRM to protect against piracy??
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There's so many games coming out every year that I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing but game and not even touch a fraction of them. Meaning, I can skip the companies who insist on this DRM garbage and not loose a bit of sleep over it.
While I don't tend to pirate games anymore, I absolutely will not pay full price for them either. I'm happy to wait a year or 2 and pick it up on a steam or gog sale for 60% off (or more). Obviously, I'm not interested in multiplayer or live service games.
While I don't tend to pirate games anymore, I absolutely will not pay full price for them either. I'm happy to wait a year or 2 and pick it up on a steam or gog sale for 60% off (or more). Obviously, I'm not interested in multiplayer or live service games.
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I'm not sure they'd reply to an internet rando, but hey, sounds like a great idea for an article follow-up from an established outlet!
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Publishers certainly have access to more and better data than you or I do, and big publishers continue to use Denuvo after years of bad publicity and complaints about it for a very simple reason - they have good reason to believe they are earning more money using it than not using it.
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That's fair. OTOH, I think "a large percentage of potential buyers avoid buying anything with Denuvo" probably also just "feels right" to you, and we're kind of just all just going in circles by anecdotes on this point.
Also, as someone else here said, the publishers themselves have much better data on this than we do, and would have to justify the significant costs of purchasing Denuvo internally. I'm sure Denuvo's salsepeople are very good, but I don't think it's a blind trust situation either.
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I doubt that Denuvo did this study since 20% isn't probably as high as they're quoting to their customers.
But this does reinforce why companies keep using Denuvo. Although I would demand that if it's cracked in the first 2 weeks that I wouldn't pay Denuvo and hope that they wouldn't laugh too hard at me.
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It's revenue loss, not profit loss, so it doesn't take into account any DRM costs
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Which is really what I was saying all along - that this study is of little value in determining if Denuvo protects more sales than it prevents, and there really isn't enough data to make that determination one way or the other.
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The pro-DRM side claim DRM is vital but fail to explain how if there is an equivalent DRM-free version available, then why any significant sales happen ever.
I think we're all a little sceptical ever since Harvardgate.
No, people single out Denuvo because of its perceived performance hit.
https://meincmagazine.com/gaming/2017/06/crackers-say-denuvo-drm-caused-slowdown-on-rime/
https://meincmagazine.com/gaming/2018...-how-bad-denuvo-is-for-pc-gaming-performance/
https://meincmagazine.com/gaming/2021...-strategy-game-dev-blames-performance-impact/
It's referred to as simply "DRM" because that's the justification for its existence.
Edit:
Anecdotally, as someone who purchased every single The Sims, The Sims 2, and The Sims 3 title, spinoff, and pack on both PC and Mac regardless of merit, I have never played The Sims 4 on computer simply because of the added DRM. If EA put The Sims 4 on gog.com, I would purchase it, no questions asked.
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The best argument against piracy I've heard is "If you can afford to purchase e.g. a game, and you pirate it instead, you're a dick."
It's pretty hard to deny the merit of the 'word of mouth' argument, at least in some cases, like if you look at the state of anime awareness in the US in the 80s and 90s. Thousands of games are released on Steam annually now, and most don't break even because they get no advertising and there's no awareness of them, even if they're not shovelware.
Minecraft got no advertising in the early days, and word of mouth/early influencers are the reason it took off. Realistically though, most piracy is for stuff with large advertising budgets, and if someone is going to the trouble of downloading something, they're likely already aware of it (unless it came in a package with other stuff).
Then there's the 'pirate the original, pay for the sequel' phenomenon which is unaddressed here.
It's pretty hard to deny the merit of the 'word of mouth' argument, at least in some cases, like if you look at the state of anime awareness in the US in the 80s and 90s. Thousands of games are released on Steam annually now, and most don't break even because they get no advertising and there's no awareness of them, even if they're not shovelware.
Minecraft got no advertising in the early days, and word of mouth/early influencers are the reason it took off. Realistically though, most piracy is for stuff with large advertising budgets, and if someone is going to the trouble of downloading something, they're likely already aware of it (unless it came in a package with other stuff).
Then there's the 'pirate the original, pay for the sequel' phenomenon which is unaddressed here.
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The assumption in all these studies is that the gamer would buy the game if he could get a crack for it. I do not believe that is true. Now days I buy the games I want to play. But there was a time when I couldn't afford every game. Now & then I played a cracked game that I am sure I would not have bought as I just didn't have the money.
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Anyone else kinda feel like there's an incredibly easy solution to this that they can't even get pissy over? Just wait 3 months. If a single player game releases, and you want to crack its DRM, wait 3 months after the games launch to release it. They lose nothing, and now we have data that proves it. This will likely benefit them over time in fact.
Yar har mateys.
Yar har mateys.
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