With all the new amazing games coming out basically every month, lets not forget some slightly older games worth playing. Like DOOM Eternal, that just removed Denuvo Anti-Tamper.
I feel like this is just a new cash grab technique, and it’s actually pretty smart. The audience of people who will buy immediately despite DRM will do their thing, first wave of money complete. Over the next few years, trickle in more cash through steam sales. Once that well dries, get one more wave of cash by removing DRM, which appeases the audience that abstained the whole time, collecting their cash.
Edit: my half baked conspiracy theory got some attention. the argument that companies remove DRM like Denuvo because of cost makes way more sense, Occam’s razor holds true. Both can be true, they save money by removing the DRM, which has the nice side-effect of creating a small new wave of sales. Win/win. I’m sure Denuvo hates this and will one day make it more difficult for studios to just remove their software, because money.
Sorry but that doesn’t really make sense. In that scenario it is more sensible to just release a DRM free game at start, because the first group would buy either way and the second group would buy at the higher launch/near-launch pricing (since games drop in prices over time). It doesn’t make sense to make essentially 2 versions of the game over such a span of time like you described.
A more realistic scenario would be that there is some cost / licensing fee to use Denuvo tech and it no longer makes financial sense for Doom Eternal to do so, hence BOOM! DRM free.
Well, the intent behind adding DRM at first is to maximize profit by making piracy more difficult. Trust me I hate DRM too, but it’s not like they add it for no reason.
I didn’t say anything about that. I’m saying the main reason Bethesda removed Denuvo from Doom Eternal is likely because of cost reasons, not because it’s a marketing play to drive sales (like OP suggested).
That’s the intent behind it, how well does it actually work in that front well it’s tough to say. Fact of the matter is I know this from hanging out in these communities people who aren’t willing to pay for the game but still play it usually aren’t willing to pay for it just to play it.
The actual amount of people who “give in” is tough to estimate, because many people who do it are either astroturfing or are pretending, and most of the people who do “give in” typically will keep quiet about it, it’s not in their best interest to Brand themselves as a shill to other pirates.
So the legitimate people almost never speak up about doing this, and most of the people who speak up aren’t really doing this either. So it’s hard to say just how much the DRM actually curbs it, and since the companies and their shareholders are paying for it they would probably want to imagine that number to be as high as possible because if it isn’t they really are paying for it for nothing more than an imagined benefit.
Pretty sure that’s literally Denuvos pitch. They don’t expect it to be uncracked forever, just last long enough to maximize initial sales and then eventually remove it when it’s done its job. It’s like a padlock on a bike, keeps honest people honest but won’t actually stop a real thief.
It stops real thieves “long enough”, which is why developers and publishers continue to use it. Lots of AAA games go uncracked for a year or more. The first few months or so are the most critical time for sales.
They’ve come a long ways since the '00s, when DRM schemes were both far more draconian and rarely effective for more than a few days.
I mean, it isn’t “new”. This has been the semi-standard approach for games over the past couple years (decade?).
DRM at launch to protect quarter one sales. Remove DRM a year or two later as one of the final patches. It builds up good will with people who want to be able to “play this game forever” and probably reduces licensing fees to denuvo or securom or whatever.
Not every game does it and the fantasy of “We are going out of business. Time to make my last act to be removing DRM from my game” never made sense. But a lot have.
If this were actually true, the vast majority of publishers would be running torrent sites rather than considering giving money to denuvo.
The reality is that it is an incredibly rare piece of media that benefits from piracy. Like “Game of Thrones is the cultural zeitgeist for five or six years” level of rare.
For the vast majority, it is either background noise or actively detrimental to sales. And is why we see so many pointless multiplayer modes and pre-order incentives.
The other thing that gets referenced is the devs who will say something like “if you are going to buy our game on a key reseller site, just pirate it instead”. Which more speaks to how key reseller sites are built around chargebacks using stolen credit cards and exploiting regional pricing in ways that mostly screw over “the global south”. As opposed to the idea that piracy will increase full price sales or whatever.
The other blatant bad faith argument that I always love to see is: “I pirate games to try them out. If it is worth playing I’ll buy it”. Which ignores the ever increasing amount of demos out there, stuff like Steam having incredibly generous return policies, and the reality that is “Well, this is fun but it is more like 40 dollars of fun. I’ll play it now and then buy it later when I see it for that price” that TOTALLY happens.
If you’re gonna pirate, pirate. But don’t pretend it is somehow a moral high ground or that devs should work harder to prevent you from pirating their games but NOT use drm?
Dude, I literally played the pirated version for a weekend and then bought Doom eternal because it was so damn good. I do it all the time. It’s in my steam library and I finished it twice and bought 2 expansion packs for it.
I will now also download version 6.66 + All DLC’s from a pirated source for safe keeping to avoid any future fuckery via online services shutting down etc.
This is not uncommon behaviour at all. Many games are absolute trash these days even when the tech press gushes over them. In spite of your assertions, demos are almost a thing of the past. Hardly anyone does demos anymore.
My personal experience with chasing a refund after purchase does not reflect your experience either. Until critical mass builds into a full public backlash, if you’ve exceeded the return period (mere hours) then you are done.
Then you personally should go buy yourself a cookie (assuming you are representing things correctly).
That is not normal. Again, if it was normal, publishers would be running the torrent sites. But apparently, instead, those greedy publishers… want to make less money by making it marginally harder to pirate their games?
Games are expensive as hell in my country and the tech press have become completely disingenuous worldwide. A good review means nothing. I’m not about to drop $100AUD to $150AUD unless I know for sure that I am going to get a large number of enjoyable hours out of it.
I’m well aware of the old adage “never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to stupidity.” But…the number of times that a completely unprotected update is pushed in the first week of a release is too damn high for it to be accidental.
No. I am not surprised. In the slightest. I’ve seen that article. It was bullshit in 2017 and it is bullshit in 2023.
Because if you read even one line after the headline:
Results suggest a positive effect, but there’s a huge margin of error.
And if you go all the way into the article itself
The 306-page “Estimating Displacement Rates of Copyrighted Content in the EU” report (PDF) points out a number of caveats for this headline number, not least of which is a 45-percent error margin that makes the results less than statistically significant
But even if we say that this glorified coin flip of an outcome has any validity: That doesn’t say that piracy is good for a game. It says it is good f or gaming. To put it in context: Maybe people pirated Game of Thrones but actually bought the blu-rays for The Last Kingdom as a result. Which… is not at all useful to HBO (but better for people. Because Uthred Son of Uthred is a delightfully entertaining fuckboi). And is pretty much the same logic as “I buy the games I like” justifications.
Again: The people who ACTUALLY have this data are the publishers. Why would they be hellbent on trying to stop piracy if it actually made them more money?
I watch a show once and I’m done. I have some games in my library with over 1000 hours of playtime. I’m about as careful with those purchases as I am with a good pair of boots, and buddy I am the most annoying man at the hiking store.
I have used piracy to determine if a product is worthy of a retail purchase my entire life with everything from Android apps to AAA games. I know that you are making the argument that I am an outlier here but I don’t think I am.
Avenza maps is a good example. I tried it out with a cracked copy years ago and found it so useful in my personal and professional life that I have maintained an annual commercial license now for probably 10 years. I don’t receive any additional functionality compared to using a cracked copy, and maintaining the license between installs is actually FAR more difficult than just installing a cracked APK. Avenza has become so essential to my life that I directly support the development at a level above what I require, to hopefully ensure the continued development of this reasonably niche software into the future.
Given the forum we are in, I would compare it to the paid versions available for several popular linux distributions these days. You can download Zorin OS completely for free and have a very close to fully featured operating system much like you can have an almost fully-featured version of a pirated game. You could use this daily without paying a cent. That still didn’t stop me buying Zorin OS Pro. It’s the same deal. I want Zorin OS to stick around and keep doing what they are doing, just like I want ID Software to stick around and keep doing what they are doing. That doesn’t make any of them immune from releasing a box of garbage for full price (I’m looking at you, Rage and Rage2).
The only significant change in the landscape here in the last 30 years is the advent of services like EA Play Pro and Xbox games for Windows live. For me these services serve exactly the same purpose as piracy. If there’s something I’m interested in I can sign up for a month, try the thing that I’m interested in and then cancel the service without any significant penalty. If the game is good, then I’ll grab it when it becomes available on steam. So long as there continues to be no penalty for cancellation, this is an acceptable compromise to me but otherwise I am going to pirate your shit and if it is garbage then I won’t buy it.
I tried Battlefield 2042 via EA Play Pro for one month. At release it was an absolute joke. Not even close to finished. A truly terrible game. Those that managed to win a refund were ok, but many people were deemed to have played too many hours in a day to qualify for a refund. My friends and I bought the game on steam for a steep discount a full 18 months after release. That’s how long it took for them to fix the many issues and turn it into a worthwhile experience and a worthwhile purchase.
You can’t hire games from the video shop these days to try them out and I’m not about to be somebody’s sucker. The gaming industry is a complete mess, constantly pushing unfinished garbage and broken games. You’ve got to look after yourself.
I feel like this is just a new cash grab technique, and it’s actually pretty smart. The audience of people who will buy immediately despite DRM will do their thing, first wave of money complete. Over the next few years, trickle in more cash through steam sales. Once that well dries, get one more wave of cash by removing DRM, which appeases the audience that abstained the whole time, collecting their cash.
Edit: my half baked conspiracy theory got some attention. the argument that companies remove DRM like Denuvo because of cost makes way more sense, Occam’s razor holds true. Both can be true, they save money by removing the DRM, which has the nice side-effect of creating a small new wave of sales. Win/win. I’m sure Denuvo hates this and will one day make it more difficult for studios to just remove their software, because money.
I heard Denovo is a subscription so eventually it’s less cost effective to keep paying for it
Whoa, it looks like you may be right. Quick search shows it’s a sum for the first 12 months, then about €2000/mo after.
The one time software as a service comes through in our favour…
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Sorry but that doesn’t really make sense. In that scenario it is more sensible to just release a DRM free game at start, because the first group would buy either way and the second group would buy at the higher launch/near-launch pricing (since games drop in prices over time). It doesn’t make sense to make essentially 2 versions of the game over such a span of time like you described.
A more realistic scenario would be that there is some cost / licensing fee to use Denuvo tech and it no longer makes financial sense for Doom Eternal to do so, hence BOOM! DRM free.
Well, the intent behind adding DRM at first is to maximize profit by making piracy more difficult. Trust me I hate DRM too, but it’s not like they add it for no reason.
I didn’t say anything about that. I’m saying the main reason Bethesda removed Denuvo from Doom Eternal is likely because of cost reasons, not because it’s a marketing play to drive sales (like OP suggested).
@habanhero @corytheboyd Will they really re-release a game just to say it has no DRM to make more money in sales? that sounds really exploitative
They haven’t re-released the game, it’s just an update that removes the DRM which they have to continue to pay for otherwise
deleted by creator
I mean, if there are people who want to buy it, why not? It would just be icing on the cake for Bethesda.
That’s the intent behind it, how well does it actually work in that front well it’s tough to say. Fact of the matter is I know this from hanging out in these communities people who aren’t willing to pay for the game but still play it usually aren’t willing to pay for it just to play it.
The actual amount of people who “give in” is tough to estimate, because many people who do it are either astroturfing or are pretending, and most of the people who do “give in” typically will keep quiet about it, it’s not in their best interest to Brand themselves as a shill to other pirates.
So the legitimate people almost never speak up about doing this, and most of the people who speak up aren’t really doing this either. So it’s hard to say just how much the DRM actually curbs it, and since the companies and their shareholders are paying for it they would probably want to imagine that number to be as high as possible because if it isn’t they really are paying for it for nothing more than an imagined benefit.
Pretty sure that’s literally Denuvos pitch. They don’t expect it to be uncracked forever, just last long enough to maximize initial sales and then eventually remove it when it’s done its job. It’s like a padlock on a bike, keeps honest people honest but won’t actually stop a real thief.
It stops real thieves “long enough”, which is why developers and publishers continue to use it. Lots of AAA games go uncracked for a year or more. The first few months or so are the most critical time for sales.
They’ve come a long ways since the '00s, when DRM schemes were both far more draconian and rarely effective for more than a few days.
Edit denuvo lasts longer than I thought… https://fossbytes.com/list-of-all-popular-games-cracked-by-pirate-groups/
I mean, it isn’t “new”. This has been the semi-standard approach for games over the past couple years (decade?).
DRM at launch to protect quarter one sales. Remove DRM a year or two later as one of the final patches. It builds up good will with people who want to be able to “play this game forever” and probably reduces licensing fees to denuvo or securom or whatever.
Not every game does it and the fantasy of “We are going out of business. Time to make my last act to be removing DRM from my game” never made sense. But a lot have.
Doom eternal was cracked on day one of release. I believe in this instance, they “accidentally” pushed an update with an unprotected version.
When your game is as good as this one was, piracy can actually help to move more retail units.ID software and Bethesda know this better than most.
It only hurts sales when your product is trash.
If this were actually true, the vast majority of publishers would be running torrent sites rather than considering giving money to denuvo.
The reality is that it is an incredibly rare piece of media that benefits from piracy. Like “Game of Thrones is the cultural zeitgeist for five or six years” level of rare.
For the vast majority, it is either background noise or actively detrimental to sales. And is why we see so many pointless multiplayer modes and pre-order incentives.
The other thing that gets referenced is the devs who will say something like “if you are going to buy our game on a key reseller site, just pirate it instead”. Which more speaks to how key reseller sites are built around chargebacks using stolen credit cards and exploiting regional pricing in ways that mostly screw over “the global south”. As opposed to the idea that piracy will increase full price sales or whatever.
The other blatant bad faith argument that I always love to see is: “I pirate games to try them out. If it is worth playing I’ll buy it”. Which ignores the ever increasing amount of demos out there, stuff like Steam having incredibly generous return policies, and the reality that is “Well, this is fun but it is more like 40 dollars of fun. I’ll play it now and then buy it later when I see it for that price” that TOTALLY happens.
If you’re gonna pirate, pirate. But don’t pretend it is somehow a moral high ground or that devs should work harder to prevent you from pirating their games but NOT use drm?
Dude, I literally played the pirated version for a weekend and then bought Doom eternal because it was so damn good. I do it all the time. It’s in my steam library and I finished it twice and bought 2 expansion packs for it.
I will now also download version 6.66 + All DLC’s from a pirated source for safe keeping to avoid any future fuckery via online services shutting down etc.
This is not uncommon behaviour at all. Many games are absolute trash these days even when the tech press gushes over them. In spite of your assertions, demos are almost a thing of the past. Hardly anyone does demos anymore.
My personal experience with chasing a refund after purchase does not reflect your experience either. Until critical mass builds into a full public backlash, if you’ve exceeded the return period (mere hours) then you are done.
Then you personally should go buy yourself a cookie (assuming you are representing things correctly).
That is not normal. Again, if it was normal, publishers would be running the torrent sites. But apparently, instead, those greedy publishers… want to make less money by making it marginally harder to pirate their games?
I think you would be surprised.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/
Games are expensive as hell in my country and the tech press have become completely disingenuous worldwide. A good review means nothing. I’m not about to drop $100AUD to $150AUD unless I know for sure that I am going to get a large number of enjoyable hours out of it.
I’m well aware of the old adage “never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to stupidity.” But…the number of times that a completely unprotected update is pushed in the first week of a release is too damn high for it to be accidental.
No. I am not surprised. In the slightest. I’ve seen that article. It was bullshit in 2017 and it is bullshit in 2023.
Because if you read even one line after the headline:
And if you go all the way into the article itself
But even if we say that this glorified coin flip of an outcome has any validity: That doesn’t say that piracy is good for a game. It says it is good f or gaming. To put it in context: Maybe people pirated Game of Thrones but actually bought the blu-rays for The Last Kingdom as a result. Which… is not at all useful to HBO (but better for people. Because Uthred Son of Uthred is a delightfully entertaining fuckboi). And is pretty much the same logic as “I buy the games I like” justifications.
Again: The people who ACTUALLY have this data are the publishers. Why would they be hellbent on trying to stop piracy if it actually made them more money?
It’s not really the same thing though, is it?
I watch a show once and I’m done. I have some games in my library with over 1000 hours of playtime. I’m about as careful with those purchases as I am with a good pair of boots, and buddy I am the most annoying man at the hiking store.
I have used piracy to determine if a product is worthy of a retail purchase my entire life with everything from Android apps to AAA games. I know that you are making the argument that I am an outlier here but I don’t think I am.
Avenza maps is a good example. I tried it out with a cracked copy years ago and found it so useful in my personal and professional life that I have maintained an annual commercial license now for probably 10 years. I don’t receive any additional functionality compared to using a cracked copy, and maintaining the license between installs is actually FAR more difficult than just installing a cracked APK. Avenza has become so essential to my life that I directly support the development at a level above what I require, to hopefully ensure the continued development of this reasonably niche software into the future.
Given the forum we are in, I would compare it to the paid versions available for several popular linux distributions these days. You can download Zorin OS completely for free and have a very close to fully featured operating system much like you can have an almost fully-featured version of a pirated game. You could use this daily without paying a cent. That still didn’t stop me buying Zorin OS Pro. It’s the same deal. I want Zorin OS to stick around and keep doing what they are doing, just like I want ID Software to stick around and keep doing what they are doing. That doesn’t make any of them immune from releasing a box of garbage for full price (I’m looking at you, Rage and Rage2).
The only significant change in the landscape here in the last 30 years is the advent of services like EA Play Pro and Xbox games for Windows live. For me these services serve exactly the same purpose as piracy. If there’s something I’m interested in I can sign up for a month, try the thing that I’m interested in and then cancel the service without any significant penalty. If the game is good, then I’ll grab it when it becomes available on steam. So long as there continues to be no penalty for cancellation, this is an acceptable compromise to me but otherwise I am going to pirate your shit and if it is garbage then I won’t buy it.
I tried Battlefield 2042 via EA Play Pro for one month. At release it was an absolute joke. Not even close to finished. A truly terrible game. Those that managed to win a refund were ok, but many people were deemed to have played too many hours in a day to qualify for a refund. My friends and I bought the game on steam for a steep discount a full 18 months after release. That’s how long it took for them to fix the many issues and turn it into a worthwhile experience and a worthwhile purchase.
You can’t hire games from the video shop these days to try them out and I’m not about to be somebody’s sucker. The gaming industry is a complete mess, constantly pushing unfinished garbage and broken games. You’ve got to look after yourself.
Can I get a cookie, too? I’ve bought a lot of games after first playing, ahem, a full demo.