Denuvo is looking to push pro-DRM propaganda

www.techspot.com Denuvo wants to prove its DRM doesn't affect game performance

Irdeto – the company that acquired Denuvo back in 2018 – has traditionally been quiet about any criticism thrown at its DRM software, but that's about to...

Everyone calling out Denuvo for being a laggy mess, rejoice! Denuvo is being hurt bad the bad PR enough to launch a full on propaganda war. One such weapon in their arsenal: Giving "trusted" outlets access to both the unDRM and the DRM copies of the game.

Now for anyone who knows game's journalism, you do not bite the hand that feeds you. Your income revolves around being one of the first to the punch when it comes to a review and the only way to be first is to ensure studios like you enough to give you early access copies.

Does anyone here think these outlets are going to say that Denuvo is slow? Not if they ever want that kind of access again! "Trusted" is right. "Trusted" to be in Denuvo's pocket.

43 comments

Plenty of games to play that don't have Denuvo.
- Still sucks when the game you want has it and you have to try and find a inferior way to scratch the itch with a different game. As a paying customer for 100% of my library, you guys get the better edition. It may still have Denuvo on it, but at least you didn't pay for it.
  
  There are so many games out there and my waitlist has already grown so long that I feel no problem in completely ignoring any game that has Denuvo. Odds are it'd be so long before I got around to it that the hype would be gone anyway.
  
  All the games on my Steam account are legit but entirely from Humble Bundles. My high seas have more to do with music, TV and movies.
- Sometimes the correct answer isn't just vote with your wallet, but to vote for the policies/people who will fix the shitty system.
  That being said, yes protest with your wallet if nothing else, but it won't change anything usually, unfortunately.
  
  Bro no politician cares about fucking denuvo. Not buying games with that crap is the only thing you can do. Besides cracking it yourself of course. That is bound to hurt the company.

Is there a way to tell if a game is using this crap?
EDIT 3: Another auto-updated list of games to avoid that use Denuvo
EDIT: found this list, will leave it here in case someone needs it. (REPORTED TO BE OUTDATED)
EDIT 2: also as they pointed out in the comments (for Steam users) this list is more updated, and if you follow it, it shows you if a game uses denuvo or not when you are browsing a game's store page.
- Not exactly up to date... Half the things on this list (Ex: Nier Automata) already removed Denuvo.
- For steam, there is also this curator that marks it.
  
  That's cool but you can't search through it and the way the list is displayed makes it so there is no game title in text so Ctrl+F isn't possible either. Am I missing something?
- I don't think that list is complete. Dead Space does have Denuvo, even though it doesn't say so on its Steam page. There a re probably more.
- Steam page
- what about this one? https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Denuvo#List_of_games_using_Denuvo_Anti-Tamper
  
  Sir, you are a chad.
  Im putting the link in the comment so if anyone needs it they can find it easily

hard no for me. it is removed for a product you buy to dictate how you use it
- Try being a e release engineer and having to use it. It's awful. You have to configure your nodes to connect to their servers and then wait for the "magic". Quite often it would time out and this was for a mega video game studio. Denovo is trash.
  
  I still remember Sony rootkiting my PC and fucking up DVD play back

Hopefully they leak the denuvoless exe
- While I am right there with you, these will likely be fingerprinted builds. Meaning that a single instance of a leak will result in them no longer being considered “trusted.” No outlet is going to chance that, and exceedingly few individuals are going to jeopardize their income like that.

Saw a propaganda piece like that a few days ago on Ars Technica. The comments there were pretty much the same as here, "Ah yes, the classic non-answer of saying BS until the person forgets what they asked", in regards to them ignoring the many games' sudden CPU spikes and frame drops caused by denuvo

Gamer 1: Dude, if you preorder the collectors digital bundle, you get Denuvo+ for free.
Gamer 2: you know I preorder everything, but it doesn’t matter. I have denuvo ultra+. That way I have denuvo on games that do not normally have it.
Ad: A nerd walks up to his waifu pillow and asks, “you want the D don’t you?” Then you hear him speaking to himself in a high pitch voice pretending to be the waifu, “Please Senpai, I NEED the D right now!” Then he put a denuvo patch on the pillow.
- This comment reads like a deconstructionist modern art piece.
  
  lmfao spit my tea
- I'm not sure if I should upvote because I laugh or downvote because I don't get it and it seems to make no sense.
- i wheezed
- What

It'll be nice to see who's immediately on the take, followed by learning those who will swallow it to the hilt.

Getting in the way of even launching the game is pretty much the biggest performance hit a game can play. So unless they start testing that aspect of ensuring people don't run into issues of expired licenses when playing offline or running into activation limitations doing something like switching proton versions the testing is flawed from the get go and obviously biased.

Denuvo is being hurt bad the bad PR enough to launch a full on propaganda war.
Uh...they've been doing this since Dragon Age Inquisition. Hardly anything new, or a sign that they're "hurting".

I honestly don't even care. Denuvo is still cancer and I'm not gonna pay for games with that crap. Even if denuvo would make the game run 10% better.

I'm a liberterin, and it's prime time the tech industry got the hammer. We have no consumer protections and since most are sold globally, its a complete waste of time to boycott, ubisoft is still around. Prime time for some consumer protections and major regulation. For starters, after 5 years, complete source code with engine and editor(everything needed to build the game or the software, doesn't have to be a game, and modify it) should be released. gradiuty for lifetime artwork be screwed And drm or anything similiar should be completly outlawed along with software licenses. YOU BUY IT YOU OWN IT, WHICH MEANS YOU GOT SOURCE CODE ACCESS if they can't make a profit off that, then their product was garbage. Most games are sold as in an early alpha state, lets make them go bust

Man they would make so much money if their software didn't make games laggy

Sounds like your getting mad about something that hasn't happened yet. Sure a few "journalists" will make fluff pieces, but there are plenty of tech reviewers I trust to actually put that shit to the test.
- The only game journalist I trust is James Stephanie Sterling and Denuvo sure as shit isn't sending them a copy

43 comments