Denuvo: Every Download Is A Lost Sale For This Anonymous AAA Title We're Referencing, So Buy Moar Dunuvo!
from the or-don't dept
The saga of antipiracy DRM company Denuvo is a long and tortured one, but the short version of it is that Denuvo was once a DRM thought to be unbeatable but which has since devolved into a DRM that cracking groups often beat on timelines measured in days if not hours. Denuvo pivoted at that point, moving on from boasting at the longevity of its protection to remarking that even this brief protection offered in the release windows of games made it worthwhile. Around the same time, security company Irdeto bought Denuvo and rolled its services into its offering.
And Irdeto apparently wants to keep pushing the line about early release windows, but has managed to do so by simply citing some unnamed AAA sports game that it claims lost millions by being downloaded instead of using Denuvo to protect it for an unspecified amount of time.
In a statement issued by Denuvo owner Irdeto (the latter acquired the former earlier this year), the company states that it tracked pirate downloads of an unnamed ‘AAA’ (big budget, major studio) title during the first few days after its release. Without Denuvo protection it was quickly cracked and made available on P2P networks and from there, pirates did their thing.
“Irdeto tracked the downloads of a major sports title on P2P networks after the title, which did not include anti-tamper protection, was cracked on the same day of its release,” the company says. “During the first two weeks, Irdeto detected 355,664 torrent downloads of the illegal copy of the title. Given the retail price of the game, this puts the total potential loss of revenue from P2P downloads at $21,336,283.”
There are, of course, many issues with this statement. First, citing an unnamed title is a bit odd, since the publisher of that title is quite obviously not a customer of Irdeto's. Or, at the very least, isn't a customer for that particular game. Why the need for anonymity, in that case? It would seem only to Irdeto's benefit to name the title that chose not to be protected by Denuvo. And, if this is all publicly available information, keeping that name secret doesn't make a great deal of sense.
From there, we can move on to Irdeto choosing to keep the math simple by suggesting that every download is a lost sale, in order to come up with its $21 million dollars lost figure. This line of thinking has been debunked so many times that it's not truly worth discussing, other than to say that a DRM company citing it as a valid number should tell you everything you need to know about the wider "report."
And, finally, Irdeto is citing a two week release window important for sales of games as though Denuvo hadn't been defeated on timelines much, much shorter than that. This isn't to say that it's always defeated within two weeks, but that often ends up being the case particularly for AAA titles.
It’s worth noting that while Denuvo games are often cracked very quickly, it’s definitely not uncommon for protection to stand up to the first two weeks of attacks. Denuvo can usually hold off crackers for the first four days, so these figures are obvious marketing tools for a technology that has been somewhat diminished after various cracking groups began taking its challenge personally.
But just in case Denuvo only manages a single day of protection, owner Irdeto suggests that the effort is worth it – even dropping down to the importance of standing firm for an hour.
An hour. An hour. When a DRM company has reached the point of touting that it can protect a game for an entire hour, we've jumped the shark. We don't have much information about the cost of using Denuvo for publishers, since everything I've read suggests publishers have to sign restrictive NDAs that prohibit revealing that information, but I'm struggling to understand how making pirates wait an hour for a cracked game can be worth whatever those costs are.
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Filed Under: copyright, drm, hype, piracy, video games
Companies: denuvo, irdeto
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"At least FIVE MINUTES!"
It’s worth noting that while Denuvo games are often cracked very quickly, it’s definitely not uncommon for protection to stand up to the first two weeks of attacks. Denuvo can usually hold off crackers for the first four days, so these figures are obvious marketing tools for a technology that has been somewhat diminished after various cracking groups began taking its challenge personally.
But just in case Denuvo only manages a single day of protection, owner Irdeto suggests that the effort is worth it – even dropping down to the importance of standing firm for an hour.
'Unbreakable'. Months. Two weeks. Four days. One day. One hour... Ah how the mighty have fallen, and desperately scramble to justify shelling out for their garbage product.
When you reach the point where you find yourself arguing that a single hour of protection is enough for people to infect their product with what you're selling, I think it's safe to say you've reached the point where you might as well give up and try something else.
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Re: "At least FIVE MINUTES!"
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Denuvo deserves to go out of business—not for producing ineffective DRM (whoops, tautology!), but for producing DRM and claiming it would be nigh-unbreakable. That is goddamned false advertising.
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If it's unnamed...
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It does, it just works at Nintendo.
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Pay no attention to the fact that paying customers hate our product, screw them you already got their money why care about them?!!?!? Chase those bastards who might DL the game to check it out once and delete it. Give us more money to drive home the point you hate paying customers & care more about people who will most likely never pay you!!!!!
Keep paying us so that consumers remember their place, to give you money & expect shit treatment!
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I can name at least three lost sales because of Denuvo: I would have bought Sonic Mania, NieR: Automata, and Dragon Quest 11 if they had not been bundled with Denuvo.
I still might, if the publishers remove it (like Bethesda did with Doom '16).
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The other is, besides a payment to denuvo, (and letting a shady company like denuvo learn about your process and/or running their scripts in your build chain), setting up some kind of bulletproof license/authentication server.
Bulletproof because if it goes down, every paying customer of yours is going to be screaming bloody murder.
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Since Denuvo often does have minor to drastic impacts on game performance, its inclusion does cause lost sales. No point in buying a game if the DRM makes it crash so often you might as well not be playing.
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Performance is not the only reason, being treated like a criminal for buying a game is up there as well. I wouldn't return to a store if after every step taken I had to endure a patdown to ensure I didn't steal anything.
I'll tolerate Steam DRM, as it's fairly light-weight (and I'm not talking about performance here) and gives me some value as well. However, I personally skipped buying several Denuvo-protected titles on Steam (and several with other DRM types). Didn't pirate them either, though, so I guess it doesn't register as a "lost sale" to their accounting.
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Also, if they do not trust me to respect their rights, why should I trust them to respect my rights and let them place extra software on my machine.
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That's the real lost sales, not people who would never have bought anything in the first place.
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Well, you are! You only bought the game in the first place so you could crack it and sell it to all the other pirate scum out there. You scum-sucking criminal, you.
/s
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The irony...
I know several such individuals - who "collect" cracked denuvo-protected games and seed them out of sheer spite.
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Re: The irony...
Those are the heroes we both need and deserve. Give them my kudos, please!
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Let's be fair, at least they said "potential" loss.
In other news, my potential loss of revenue from not buying a lottery ticket is at $10,000,000 or so. Can Denuvo help me with that?
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DRM Increase Sales
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Denuvo claims piracy is the reason for a loss of $21 million.
However, as I read the reviews of most sports games released today, I see people upset over the use of microtransactions to force players to pay even more for a game which should have been complete upon release.
These reviews rarely exceed 3 stars (out of 5) or garner a rating of 4 (out of 10), which the majority being disappointment.
While I will give some credit to Denuvo's claim piracy can affect *some* sales loss, it's blatant fraud to ignore the true factors resulting in a loss of sales.
True piracy is getting people to pay much more for a game released incomplete.
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Potential Loss
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