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Comment by qazpot | Hacker News Reader

It is still profitable to add Denuvo for game publishers, because most sales happen in the first week.

You are assuming that everyone purchasing a game, would not purchase it if they could download a pirated version. Call me naive, but I like to think that a lot of people that have the money to purchase a game in the first week, would still purchase it even if a cracked version is available. Just look at the billions of revenue earned by Spotify and iTunes before it, even if most music is available on release date (or even before the release date!) online without even needing cracks. I like to think that most (!) people pirating stuff, would not purchase the pirated product at all if no pirated version were available.

On the other hand, you seem to be missing the number of people just sick of DRM and all the hoops it makes you go through before actually being able to play a game. Some people may just start pirating games because the hoops of running a cracked version are easier than the hoops of running a legit version with all the DRM restrictions. Or they may just give on games altogether and decide to spend their valuable time and money on something else entirely.

So adding DRM may just as well be a net negative for game publishers.

I don't have the data to say which is correct, but just assuming that DRM is profitable because most sales happen in the first week, before a crack is available, seems a bit too simple.

Don’t forget about hyped up kids, they spend months posting to forums and Reddit about how (new game) will be the best thing ever. Then once they get a chance to play it are disappointed since it is impossible to live up to the expectations they have built up in their mind, then immediately move on to the next big thing.

Before it’s cracked they will probably buy it because of how excited they are and FOMO

Kids also don't have much money to buy games, and have lots of free time to figure out how to pirate them. Maybe some of them can convince their parents to buy it for them.

For me Buying a 60-80$ AAA game (I was a teen in the early 00s) by earning 5$ from time to time mowing the lawn or washing my dad's car was a hard sell. Even when I started working retail at min wage (7$), it was still a hard sell.

Games publishers have all the data you're talking about and much more. They've all mostly experimented with either no DRM on game releases or very trivial DRM, and have models that can predict quite accurately these days what investment into a protection will yield what sort of return.

I'm always shocked by the frequent assumption made by people in the software world that game/movie studios don't know what they're doing financially, despite decades of experience and being the world's biggest entertainment businesses. Of course they know.

> I like to think that a lot of people that have the money to purchase a game in the first week, would still purchase it even if a cracked version is available.

This is incorrect.

> It is still profitable to add Denuvo for game publishers, because most sales happen in the first week.

This is one of those "false wisdoms" which get perpetuated by DRM industry, very similar to creative accounting to calculate monetary losses due to piracy.

The numbers don't and never did really support this conclusion (even inside the industry). My first hand experience shows that DRM is pretty much about ass-covering between publishing industry and distribution channels - basically so everyone in the chain can say "we did all we could and added this amazing Denuvo thing that's certified by our amazing legal department as completely secure!" and concede the fault for percieved "lost sales" to someone else in meetings with management and board.

When you look at the statistics you can see that the cracking time is becoming faster.

Which means that one day the crack should be released within the first week. I guess, then game studios have to rethink their DRM.

I don't think you can really tell from these stats. 120 days ago the mean cracking time was 73 days. Now it is over 75 days and rising. To estimate how long until cracking takes less than 7 days would require much more historic data be shown on the graph.

Depends on whether those sales would otherwise not happen, and on how much it costs to license, add, and remove Denuvo.

Also, don't forget that game reviews are relevant near release, and that is when Denuvo is still enabled which impacts performance.

from wikipedia's entry about denuvo :

However, technology website Ars Technica noted that most sales for major games happen within 30 days of release, and so publishers may consider Denuvo a success if it meant a game took significantly longer to be cracked

I personally have absolutely no problem waiting a few months. Sometimes I wait for far longer, because I'm in no hurry and because there's a chance of the game's rough edges being ironed out during that time.

So why not remove the DRM after the first week then?

Annoying bugs being patched is another reason to buy. Often cannot get the latest version without buying retail.

What’s the benefit for the publisher to do that?

DRM often creates bugs and performance problems for users, so removing it makes users happy.

If they see it’s the cause they can decide. From that i can tell there is very little evidence that Denuvo causes problems if well implemented so i doubt there is much incentive to remove it.

> From that i can tell there is very little evidence that Denuvo causes problems if well implemented so i doubt there is much incentive to remove it.

The game will become unplayable after a decade or so if/when Denuvo decides to shut down it's servers. Lots of MMO's from early 2000's are already in this state. DRM like Denuvo is a disaster for long term preservation of games.

I can take a movie from 1940 and watch it today with minimal effort, but the same can't be said for games. It's already difficult with rapidly shifting computing landscape (eg. try playing NFS Porsche Unleased on a Win10 PC), shit like Denuvo just adds insult to the injury for some hypothetical gain which might not even be real.

> game will become unplayable after a decade or so if/when Denuvo decides to shut down it's servers.

Which is even more of a reason for a publisher not to remove it. Opens the possibility to do re-releases in the future.

Doom removed it after four months. https://kotaku.com/denuvo-explains-why-doom-dropped-their-an... Rime removed it after the DRM was cracked. https://www.pcgamesn.com/rime/rime-denuvo-removal Rage 2 and Hitman 2 also removed it after a while.

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