[3dk]

A good example of this is the Denuvo DRM for games. As I understand it, game data was temporarily decrypted, while playing which led to poor performance. Denuvo games were cracked and the pirate versions performed better. Developers paid a lot for Denuvo DRM which didn't even fulfill the promise of stopping piracy.

[kgbier]

Once the game has been cracked some publishers/devs have opted to release an update that removes the DRM and the potential performance hit (eg. Mass Effect Andromeda, Hitman, DOOM). The performance hit in question, however, is an implementation detail that some developers handle better than others (Rime comes to mind as a game that performed Denuvo DRM checks many many times per second, it's speculated it was tied to per-frame update calls).

Denuvo still has a place (if it stays effective) in reducing the number of day-one pirates, which is its main selling point at this time. On Steam, interested players have a choice to put money down on release (with the potential to refund), or wait an indeterminate number of days (weeks?) to download the cracked version. This uncertainty period has a conversion rate that Denuvo clients balance against the costs of the DRM.