[Daedren]

Wonder what will be the consequences of this. I dislike Denuvo for the performance and stability penalties it gives games, but I do wonder if the "security" it gave publishers wasn't a big part of the reason why we've been getting more and more big name games on PC.

This isn't about being right or wrong but about what the publishers will do when they see their games are again getting cracked day one, and if it'll be a catalyst to again return to getting either less PC releases or at least delayed releases compared to consoles.

I will hope that does not happen.

[altairprime]

Denuvo’s market is ‘first 90 days’ revenue protection, not lifelong revenue protection. Lots of games using their crap remove it after a few months to shut down the flood of support issues the DRM causes. If only Microsoft hadn’t fucked up so badly with Windows 11 requiring an account, they’d have a way to stop using it altogether.

[akimbostrawman]

>Lots of games using their crap remove it after a few months to shut down the flood of support issues the DRM causes.

No, the overwhelming majority of denuvo games released after ~2020 (when they changed there licensing model to SaaS) have it removed after 2-4 years not because of user complaints but because of licensing costs, contracts and compliance.

If anything with many games it is very clear that the developer/publisher do not care for the user, since even when the DRM gets broken and has lost its purposes, many still refuse to remove it and give paying customers the same better non DRM experience as pirates.

>If only Microsoft hadn’t fucked up so badly with Windows 11 requiring an account

I don't understand how that is related at all.

[Fabricio20]

This is not true at all as evidenced by the fact that most games do not get Denuvo removed once they are cracked. And the companies that DO remove denuvo only do so after several years because of licensing costs as denuvo transitioned to a SaaS model.

[Ferret7446]

I feel like the "first 90 days" is just because games no longer include a demo, so they force players to commit to a purchase before a wide consensus forms. A lot of people pirate simply to try the game out. Most people who can afford the game would then purchase the game if it were good.

[AussieWog93]

I have not read a study on this but I suspect the percentage of people who would buy a genuine copy of a game they already have pirated would be something like 3-5%

[kakacik]

Untrue, where are all the after-90-days-hacked AAA games? Nowhere, denuvo lives on as long as publisher is willing to pay continuous licence, which is usually years.

And users complaining because denuvo messes up their Windows, sometimes games don't run and so on? Just cost of doing business, as long as enough people buy it who cares.

[snvzz]

If this was the case, I'd wait the 90 days before buying a game.

As this isn't the case, I have been waiting for several years to buy many games. Denuvo still hasn't been removed, so I continue to wait.

[pier25]

I honestly doubt it will make much of a difference.

A good percentage of people who would download the cracked games would not have bought those anyway. And with Steam being so convenient it's hard to decide to go for a cracked copy of dubious origin that might install god knows what into your machine.

We're not in the early 00s anymore.

[TiredOfLife]

> performance and stability penalties

There are none. Or rather they fall in the margin of error.

[cyanydeez]

i think your underwstimating the anticheat value that still exists. many of the online games are trash when theres not strict cheat control.

[MrDrMcCoy]

Run anti-cheat server-side. Give us private servers again. There's no reason we should have to put up with client-side rootkits written by non-kernel-devs to play a game.

[eikenberry]

Cheating is a social issue, not a technical one. Communities are the solution.

Private servers are a nice way to do this and do still exist in places. My favorite online game uses them along with server side anti-cheat and while cheating occasionally happens, it has never been an ongoing issue. I've maybe seen a cheater once or twice in all my many hours playing the game over 10 years (elite dangerous, in case you were curious).

[ThatPlayer]

Community servers don't want server-side anti-cheat either. Hell they invented client-side anti-cheats back in the day. Even current day community servers like Face-IT have additional anti-cheats, not less. Same with modded GTAV FiveM (even before the main game added anti-cheats)

[will4274]

It's not possible, technically, to run effective anti-cheat server-side. Clients need precise enemy location data for things like sound effects. The server can't tell if the client is using the data for unfair purposes or not.

[MrDrMcCoy]

Too bad. It's not possible for rootkits to be a good idea for a video game.

[sadeshmukh]

Once the data is sent to the client, in an untrusted setting, all bets are off. Not your hardware, no control over it.

[not_a9]

>written by non-kernel-devs

What exactly separates a kernel dev from a non-kernel dev?

[MrDrMcCoy]

One has experience writing secure, stable code for drivers, memory management, etc that is subject to broad review by other experienced devs. The other is looking at those things adversarially and pushes out whatever they think is good enough. Crowdstrike served as a useful reminder for who should be allowed in kernel space, and video game anti-cheat has far less justification to be there.

[johng]

This. There are a lot of online games I loved playing but the cheating got so bad it made it impossible to play. MW1, MW2, Battlefield, CS, etc... you could see the wallhacks and aimbots taking over every lobby. I eventually stopped playing. I tried using Consoles for online gaming after that but never really got into using joysticks.... still prefer mouse and keyboard. Now I play limited games where the cheating isn't quite that rampant.

[jospeh554]

Im not a big gamer, but playing GTA Online, and getting taken out as soon as you spawn. Or items just spawning in front of you, like ramps. REALLY ruins the experience

[ChoGGi]

Or everyone in the lobby getting nuked over and over.

Or trying to do heists and having a cheater in every session.

I'd like to play the game again but it's just not fun.

[trallnag]

There are still some servers online for games like the first CoD or United Offensive. No hackers as far I can tell anymore. They have all moved on