Denuvo DRM Removed From Upcoming Strategy Game, Dev Blames 'Performance Impact' (arstechnica.com) 56
A video game developer is abandoning the Denuvo DRM platform for its upcoming game's PC version, blaming Denuvo-related performance issues for the decision. An anonymous reader shares an article written by Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech: Amplitude Studios, a French studio known for PC-exclusive 4X strategy games, had previously announced that its next game, Humankind, would ship with a Denuvo implementation in August 2021. This prompted a post titled "The day Amplitude broke my heart" on Amplitude's official forum, with a fan declaring their love of prior Amplitude strategy games and then expressing their disappointment that Humankind had a Denuvo tag on its Steam page. After pointing to their disagreement with Denuvo's practices, including the block of offline-only gameplay, the fan offered a reasonably levelheaded plea: "To be fair, I totally understand why Denuvo was chosen (probably by [Amplitude studio owner] Sega). I understand how important it is for sales to protect the game around release, but PLEASE Amplitude, PLEASE consider to remove Denuvo after some months!" This request lines up with other game publishers' decisions to remove Denuvo protections after a PC game's launch window has passed.
Amplitude co-founder and CCO Romain de Waubert de Genlis replied to the thread on Thursday, July 15, with a surprising announcement: the fan wouldn't have to wait "some months" to see Denuvo removed. Instead, Humankind will launch on August 17 with no Denuvo implementation to speak of. On his company's forum, de Genlis admits that business considerations played into Amplitude's original decision: "We've been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam this year, so we know we're going to be targeted by pirates, more so than any of our previous games," he writes. "If Denuvo can hold off a cracked version, even just for a few days, that can already really help us to protect our launch."
But ultimately, his teammates felt they couldn't justify its inclusion after running into issues. While de Genlis admits that there's a chance his team could have added Denuvo to the game without impacting PC performance, tests during the game's June closed beta showed the performance hit was too great—and that it's "not something we can fix before release. So, we are taking it out." In other words: when left with the choice between delaying the game to optimize a Denuvo implementation and to launch the game without Denuvo at all, Amplitude opted for the latter. "Our priority is always the best possible experience for the players who buy our games and support us," de Genlis writes. "Denuvo should never impact player performance, and we don't want to sacrifice quality for you guys." After this, the topic's creator edited the thread title to read, "The day Amplitude broke my heart (and how they reassembled it)."
Amplitude co-founder and CCO Romain de Waubert de Genlis replied to the thread on Thursday, July 15, with a surprising announcement: the fan wouldn't have to wait "some months" to see Denuvo removed. Instead, Humankind will launch on August 17 with no Denuvo implementation to speak of. On his company's forum, de Genlis admits that business considerations played into Amplitude's original decision: "We've been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam this year, so we know we're going to be targeted by pirates, more so than any of our previous games," he writes. "If Denuvo can hold off a cracked version, even just for a few days, that can already really help us to protect our launch."
But ultimately, his teammates felt they couldn't justify its inclusion after running into issues. While de Genlis admits that there's a chance his team could have added Denuvo to the game without impacting PC performance, tests during the game's June closed beta showed the performance hit was too great—and that it's "not something we can fix before release. So, we are taking it out." In other words: when left with the choice between delaying the game to optimize a Denuvo implementation and to launch the game without Denuvo at all, Amplitude opted for the latter. "Our priority is always the best possible experience for the players who buy our games and support us," de Genlis writes. "Denuvo should never impact player performance, and we don't want to sacrifice quality for you guys." After this, the topic's creator edited the thread title to read, "The day Amplitude broke my heart (and how they reassembled it)."
just use steam DRM or maybe no DRM like gog (Score:2)
just use steam DRM or maybe no DRM like games on gog
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Steam also allows games on the platform to be free of DRM. What I don't know is if a game can be released with steam DRM and then it be removed a month later. It also sounds like Steam DRM is not effective beyond casual copying.
Anyway kudos to this developer for bucking the trend and siding with the gamers.
When Mutant Year Zero was nearing release, the developers derogatory condescending attitude towards gamers on the issue of denuvo was bad enough that it put me right off the game.
Re: just use steam DRM or maybe no DRM like gog (Score:2)
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Denuvo gets cracked regularly too so maybe that's a moot point.
The problem isn't just a performance impact (Score:5, Informative)
Re: The problem isn't just a performance impact (Score:3)
Hey asshole. Just because you are a pussy who cannot tolerate other people's political views without getting butt hurt doesn't mean in this world of cancer culture that anyone wants to hear your shit attempt at smack talk. Go back to playing Xbox Live.
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Has anyone ever tried to find a correlation between network stability and speed and performance?
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The biggest issue people seem to have is stuttering. Game mostly runs at 100 FPS but then odd frames take 100ms to render. Stuttering is very annoying and can cause motion sickness.
Many reviews these days include average FPS, 90th percentile and 99th percentile. In decently optimised games the difference between them isn't too great, and ideally you want to select settings that keep the 99th percentile above a tolerable threshold (often close to the refresh rate of your monitor).
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Most people don't even know how to read 90th or 99th percentile correctly and will make unfounded inferences from those single numbers.
For all the sloppy work Eurogamer's Digital Foundry does, I find their performance videos which include frame time graph via RTSS OSD very useful to estimate how smooth a game may run on a certain CPU/GPU combination.
With tools like free version of FRAPS99 you can also log the frame times into a file i
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The way GamersNexus presents it with a stacked bar graph is pretty clear I think.
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I've been subscribed to Gamers Nexus for years and I will testify that they do deliver some of the best quality content out there on youtube, but that doesn't mean their viewers know what to do with the data provided.
GN Steve again and again had to clarify that it doesn't mean what some people think it means when they argue "but AMD has better lows" for example. Furthermore, they also include frame time graphs now and then when they test graphics cards and or CPUs.
GN Steve also reiterates
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I recommend taking a look.
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Doing the right thing. (Score:4, Funny)
And the community is going to show their appreciation for this right decision by not pirating it, and buying at full price. Right?
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I had no intentions of playing destiny 2, but when it became free of charge and I had a taste of the game, I bought a season pass. Same with Warframe and Genshin Impact. I pirated Cyberpunk 2077 and if it wasn't as buggy as it was, I would've paid for it too. Paying for a game because I liked the poster or the genre or the reviews is not my cup of tea.
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So for how long did you play Cyberpunk 2077?
Seeing as how you'd found out about the bugs even without pirating it.
Re: Doing the right thing. (Score:2)
I played for maybe 20 hours to realize it was a mediocre product, that was quite repetitive, and I already discovered some of the bugs or simply poor player interactivity with the world.
There is no way in its current form it should have the price tag associated.
Then again I play on a 4 year old ROG laptop so maybe if it was a bit more flashy from a top of the line graphics card I would of enjoyed it more.
This being said the story seems alright and I liked the voice acting.
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Pirating games is an inconvenient and dangerous hassle. You have to find the download first, some of them are fakes or shady, or the download simply doesn't work. Then you have to find the crack, if it's not cracked already. Both with the game download and the crack you risk putting malware on your system.
I pirated games while I was a poor student, practically living from one day to the next. The inconvenience of pirating a game was less than the inconvenience of not being able to pay for rent or food. I do
Re:Doing the right thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the community is going to show their appreciation for this right decision by not pirating it, and buying at full price. Right?
Games are not owed money, games sales are determined whether the game is good or whether there is any interest. There are thousands of games competing for the same dollar. Just because a developer makes a game that doesn't mean they deserve success.
Let us not forget the last 23+ years the industry has been stealing games from the public under the MMO/f2p marketing moniker by pulling stealing the networking code out of games which started in the late 90's with ultima online and everquest, we were supposed to get dedicated servers like Neverwinter Nights (2002).
That's why dedicated servers disappeared, a standard feature was literally stolen out of the game and sold back to us minus ownership at inflated prices. There's been a war on game ownership since 1997.
For those of you who don't believe, go get Neverwinger Nights (2002) from gog, and notice the multiplayer button, we were expecting all future rpg's to be local applications with dedicated servers+level editors, that was the zeitgeist for Descent, quake, Warcraft, Starcraft in the 90's until Richard Garriot blew that all up by teaching publishers about the software stealing superweapon under the worlds continents --.
Two or more computers networked together become and behave as a single machine, so you can start splitting any program into two seperate lists of binary executable instructions and taking control of games out of customers hands, it's literally fraud and they've been doing it for 23+ years now.
So I'm pissed that the public has been so stupid and oblivious over the last 23 years. Fortnite, Dota 2, League of legends, Smite, Warframe and Destiny, would have all been traditional boxed PC games in the 90's with singleplayer campaig and/or multiplayer which you owned and controlled like Unreal tournament 2004 or quake 3.
So no, the game industry doesn't deserve any money, Valve and the rest are theives.
Guild wars 1 should have been a bog standar PC rpg with the ability to host your own games /w level editor, that quickly changed when everyone saw the sick money Ultima online and everquest were making, and all rpg's they had in development that they thought they could back end they did and rebranded them mmo.
Link to neverwinter Nights 2002.
https://www.gog.com/game/never... [gog.com]
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A comment that had nothing to do with the one you were replying to. Well done.
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A comment that had nothing to do with the one you were replying to. Well done.
It did, you idiot, too many gamers on slashdot don't grasp the game industry has been stealing games from them. Steam was an attack on game ownership in 2003, valve didn't launch steam because valve was nice, it was to undermine game ownership on the PC and drive up game prices so they could put microtransacitons in them. Pre steam modding was huge and games had level editors and dedicated servers, they were expected features. In 1997, the game industry took a basic feature (the ability to host your own
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None of which has anything to do with
"And the community is going to show their appreciation for this right decision by not pirating it, and buying at full price. Right?"
All your comment comes down to is a moan about some other games, which I happen to agree with. But it's still irrelevant here.
If you weren't computer illiterate you'd know that.
Yeah, yeah.
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All your comment comes down to is a moan about some other games, which I happen to agree with. But it's still irrelevant here.
No it's totally irrelvant, you chimpanzee, before dipshits like you got internet we got complete fucking videogames, the fact that games can now be "shut down" can only happen in a world of fucking morons. It's software idiot, why would ANY pc game require a 2nd computer half a world away unless they weren't comitting fraud by selling you half an application?
Transformers fall of cybertron had its multiplayer 'shut off' even though it uses the fucking unreal engine, aka there was no reason for TFC to even h
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For those of you who don't believe, go get Neverwinger Nights (2002) from gog, and notice the multiplayer button, we were expecting all future rpg's to be local applications with dedicated servers+level editors
No we weren't. The naïve among us may have been, but even in the mid 00s the future and actual benefits of centralised servers with proper matchmaking tools was clear. You may see this as an a front to ownership, but honestly who cares. Entertainment is fleeting especially for multiplayer, a few hours and you get your value's worth.
In the meantime actual benefits to centralised servers (when done properly) in the form of player ranked matchmaking preventing noobs from getting crushed by experienced pla
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but even in the mid 00s the future and actual benefits of centralised servers with proper matchmaking tools was clear.
Dude it was all bullshit, the matchmaking tools were built into quake 3 and UT2004 they started pulling out server lists because gullible people like you got internet. That's why modern games literally have their multiplayer disabled and shut down, an impossibility before the gullible mmo generation started feeding the cancer that was stolen pc game software.
Try to pay attention retard, they weren't for your benefit, they were so they could take control of the game so they could stop piracy, steal the game
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The fact you lack the social skills to effectively influence people but are old enough to reminesce about online gaming in the late 90's but keep screaming into the void anyway is kinda depressing.
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Unfortunately you are a minority in wanting this. Most people actually prefer corporate run closed source servers for online play.
Corporate servers have better cheat detection and matching than open ones do. That's especially true on console where cheating is harder than on PC. Most people aren't interested in hosting their own games, they just want to play against other similarly skilled players without having to find a server, get to know the people, wait for them to be online too etc.
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Are you sure you aren't just annoyed that there are games that are effectively online-multiplayer-only that you want to play by yourself, offline? Because I know how that feels. Destiny looked pret
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How is that "literally fraud"?
Same thing as selling you a broken game idiot, aka you think "MMO" is a different type of game, it is the SAME game sold back to you minus the ability to host your own games under a different brand moniker.
So let me clue you in: In an internet enabled society, every program can be split into two sets of files, whether thats windows, microsoft office, or your video games. We could take every local application game from the 90's and reprogram them client server, but you'd never do that if you had a clue bec
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Furthermore, those few claims that can be extracted from the linguistic disgrace you regurgitated at me are generally ridiculous and entirely false. What remains, and is intelligible, seem to be restatements of your negative opinion of modern multipla
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Take a deep breath, calm down for a few minutes, and produce something readable instead of the poorly-transcribed maniacal rantings you've presented us with so far.
Not my problem you can't read, anyone who has any clue of the computer industry knows they've always wanted to lock down the PC and kill piracy. Go have a read.
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja1... [cam.ac.uk]
The big lockdown of our pc's, so software and game companies can now engage in all sorts of fuckery on our PC's.
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja1... [cam.ac.uk]
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People who pirate also typically wait out the Denuvo window. It's a bit of a fantasy that DRM has a meaningful impact on sales greater than the cost of implementing DRM in the first place.
If you have a good game people will buy it regardless of its DRM status. Doom Eternal (I didn't like it) made $450million in sales despite having no DRM (accidentally) on launch. Even Cyberpunk scored a shitton of sales, and that's from a company that doesn't implement DRM on purpose.
Mind you I pirate nearly all games befo
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"The community" is a very flimsy term to work with in the first place, because it's a hugely diverse group of people.
Unless you make some kind of MMO there WILL be copyright infringement. The question is just how much of a difference it makes to your profits.
As empirical evidence shows, well designed games generate a good amount of profit regardless of DRM, while shitty games simply don't get 'pirated' that much. Because it turns out that people, just because it's free, are not going to
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I realize
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And the community is going to show their appreciation for this right decision by not pirating it, and buying at full price. Right?
Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
What the snake oil DRM peddlers ignore is that their DRM is broken on day one. The pirates aren't stopped, it's only legitimate customers that are affected by DRM and well, looks like Amplitude has realised that. In the long run, they will probably increase their profits by not having to pay a per copy license fee for the DRM even if they don't sell one additional copy than they were before.
As mentioned, those who would pirate, will do so anyway. Those of us with money to spend on
Awww (Score:1)
Dear Game Developers, (Score:1)
Bought the game sight unseen (Score:1)
just to encourage this behavior in game devs.
I refuse to buy any title with Denuvo (Score:2)
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Re: I refuse to buy any title with Denuvo (Score:2)
You can back up games and play offline. It's a different kind of ownership but not like renting. as far as I can tell if steam closed down tomorrow we would all just use our games in offline mode.
This whole Denuvo shit is NOT about "anti-piracy". (Score:1)
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I'd rather support piracy than surveillance.
Because... well, guess which one affects me.
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and the developers have kept refusing to remove this "copy protection" after countless pleas.
In many cases it takes actual effort to remove Denuvo and publish an update to a game. It's no surprise that developers don't give a shit. Also the overwhelming majority of Denuvo titles are *not* cracked within a day. The routinely take months to do. Those which are cracked within a day are usually due to some incompetent error (e.g. Doom Eternal which accidentally left an uncracked binary in a subfolder on release day leading to the Denuvo game to be reclassified as "no DRM"). Scene groups often take week
Why the apology? (Score:1)
People still buy games at release? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, what am I saying, people still preorder that shit.
How much does it take for you to finally start to wisen up? Games get released unfinished, unpolished and unready, a buggy mess of half-baked, half-running and unoptimized trash, to be fixed later. Maybe.
Back when I was still developer, we called this "bananaware". Like bananas, this software is delivered while still green and unripe and ripens and matures at the customers'.
You save a lot on QA. Why bother testing your shit when your customer does it for free... hell, he doesn't even do it for free, he pays for that privilege to be your testing department. And with a hint of luck he'll be "done" with your game before you're done fixing it, so you never have to fix it.
And all you have to do to get all that is to reskin something and call it a "preorder bonus".
Why do we do that? You get a buggy, unfinished and often unplayable game, either because the game has more bugs than features or because the always-online servers are overloaded with people wanting to play it RIGHT NOW, so even if the game worked you can't play it, you get to deal with the woes of crippling copy protection schemes that border on spyware or outright malware (hello Sony, still saying "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" [afterdawn.com]?) and you even pay a premium for the privilege of being the guinea pig, because either the game is good, then it will be fixed 2 months later and you can play it, or it's generally panned, then you can either dodge that bullet or get it at 66% discount 2 months later.
Why the hell do you do this?
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Well, I wouldn't put too much on the time displayed with Steam reviews, between people playing the game off-Steam and Steam simply being notorious for really bad time keeping, the amount of time you allegedly played a game according to Steam and how much time you actually played it can vary wildly.
As for people who have thousands of hours in a game and suddenly giving it a negative review, that's something that can happen for a number of reasons. Especially in the time of Early Access (or, as I call it, "at
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delaying a purchase of a game by a few months is absolutely, 100% unthinkable. For them it's like being abused. Seriously, that's how they feel. They "need" to buy the game on release or before, whether they'll hardly ever play it or play it to death and then dump on it.
Well, I seem to be one of that group of people. That is how I see this: 1. The AAA titles are not going to be discounted for quite a long time. 2. Multiplayer games usually get online events/seasons. These seasons are fun at the beginning, and mostly only the first season makes sense and is fun. The rest is usually a weak copy. 3. Anytime later, if you buy an AAA title, the servers might not be full to the extend you want. When I want to play high difficulty content, I usually find not too many experienced
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Hell, what am I saying, people still preorder that shit.
How much does it take for you to finally start to wisen up? Games get released unfinished, unpolished and unready, a buggy mess of half-baked, half-running and unoptimized trash, to be fixed later. Maybe.
To be fair, this isn't some fly-by night operation like EA or Ubisoft we're talking about.
Amplitude studios has a proven track record of supporting their games years after release (in the interests of fairness, with a fair bit of DLC but that is actually something in demand of the previous games). Humankind is without a doubt their most ambitious project but they are a studio that listens to their players instead of bilking them dry (OK we're now up to maybe six DLCs for Endless Space 2, but they are sti
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That being said, I am a 100% paid up member of the No Preorder Club for precisely the reasons you have mentioned. I do intend on buying Humankind on day 1
Good luck with that. It's been five years since Amplitude has been bought out by Sega. Amplitude built their brand with 4x games set in the Endless universe, and then drop that to compete with the Civilization franchise? Sure, ok.
I guess if you tend to be very skeptical most of the time and wait for games to go on summer/winter sale, then it's ok to get burned once in a while.
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