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Playdead, the developer of hit creepy, indie side-scroller, Inside, has ditched anti-tamper software, Denuvo from the game just as the Steam Autumn Sale hit. Considering Denuvo has proved so successful in protecting other games, it's quite a surprising move to see it ditched, especially during a sale period.
Denuvo has been one of the most successful and least intrusive additions to gaming DRM perhaps forever. It works by acting as an anti-tamper system for existing DRM like SECUROM, which prevents the games from being cracked. Just Cause 3 has been out for over a year and has still yet to be made available to pirates.
Inside was a little different though, since its digital protection was bypassed in just six weeks, with the game appearing on torrent sites shortly after. With a version of the game out there in the wild, perhaps there isn't much reason to have such stringent copy protection if all you're doing is making minor tweaks to the game moving forward (thanks PCG).
It could be that even though Denuvo's presence isn't really felt by gamers – especially when compared to more traditional DRM – that Playdead simply wanted to strip its protection back to the minimum, since the game had already been cracked. It could be that Denuvo is paid for on a subscription basis too, so perhaps Playdead simply didn't want to continue paying the bill for something that isn't working.
It did at least work for those first six weeks though. That's the most important period for a game to be protected in, as that's when historically the greatest rates of piracy occur.
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KitGuru Says: Now that I'm a little more flush and there are so many services that make game buying, downloading and installing easy, I don't see the need to download games. If you do though, what's you're reasoning?
“Isn’t felt by gamers”…
Discounting a lot of the issues I was hearing about during Win10’s launch, I suppose? Denuvo is a terrible DRM module, as it has caused a huge number of issues both with detecting platforms other than original release platform, and in general.
Outside of GFWL and the buggy mess THAT was (try playing an old disk copy of Fallout 3 with a terrible net connection, every time you disconnect you get booted TO THE TITLE SCREEN), I don’t think I’ve heard as many stories about “this incorrectly read X as hacked/cracked copy” as I did with Denuvo.
Hypothetically speaking, if one felt that one might want to try out a game before shelling out big bucks, then one might find a way to get access to said game first and then decide if it was worth shelling out for.
Dishonest marketing seems to be so rampant these days, with publishers showing and promising one thing at game expos and then delivering something entirely different. An excellent example of this would be No Man’s Sky, but games from big publishers have done the same, if not to the same extreme degree. So, to be able to actually test out a game before paying for it, should almost be mandatory. I’m loathe to say it, but EA is actually doing good things, having made it possible to try out games on their Origin platform, and they even have a return policy.
This is what refunding is for, both Origin, Steam & Uplay support refunding after trying out a game.
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well now everyone has an actual way to test the performance impacts of denuvo. with it stripped from the game it should be easy to see if there’s a difference now, maybe validate (or put to rest) the rumors about it eating up cpu cycles.
You just beat yourself to death with your own reply. Every smart comment you made referred to something you heard about rather than something you experienced. Just because you read or heard about it doesn’t make it true, meet my friend Mr bandwagon. I’ve never had a problem with Denuvo, in fact the only problem I’ve ever had was two days downtime with Steam itself when it got caught in a verify email/steamguard loop.
I’m all for copy protection, if you can’t afford it you can’t have it. Watch a play through on Twitch/ YouTube.
I don’t mind copy protection; but I’ll take articles popping up on Toms Hardware a lot more seriously than I’ll take random forum crawls. I think PC Gamer covered the whole “Hey, if it’s got Denuvo it’s proooobably not gonna work on Windows 10” thing.
Given the amount of crap I take elsewhere from people that make stumps look highly intelligent (“DURR HURR HURR THE .22 YOU BUILD CAN SHOOT DOWN AN AIRPLANE IMMA BURN YOUR HOUSE” being a particularly irritating example), I tend to bring things like this up if they come from a relatively credible source–as I’ve heard nothing good about Denuvo, I’ve avoided it as much as possible. Better than the worst does not equal good.
Edit: Wait, are you implying I pirate? *gigglesnort* Buddy, I wasted six years with a game company that flopped because my partner took off with our legal documentation. If I don’t have the money, I wait until I do. Or I decide I didn’t really need to be saving for a television… damn you, Deathwing.
Did you just refute his claim by citing your own anecdotal evidence?
1 year ago I finally abandoned my previous work and it was a best decision i made in my life… I started doing a job at home, over a site I discovered online, for a few hrs every day, and I profit now much more than i did on my last job… Last check i got was for 9k dollars… Superb thing about this is the more free time i got for my loved ones… CHILP.IT/728813e