4 ms·

> Denuvo says it still considers even a few days of effective DRM protection to be valuable to its publisher customers This is a pretty ridiculous position and

• google234123 7y ago
  I don't think you understand the point of this DRM. If one week of protection means that you sell 80,000 more copies of your game to people that are too impatient to wait for piratable version, it's worth it. Your analogy doesn't work.
  • Retric 7y ago
    If it’s free then sure, but your numbers are unlikely to be accurate and this stuff both directly and indirectly expensive. So, it’s easy for it to slightly increase sales and still be a net loss.
    • capableweb 7y ago
      Basically most of the sales of the blockbuster games comes from the initial week or two, when people can't wait to get their hands on the game. The anti-piracy protection companies and the game companies know this, and that's why it's fine that the anti-piracy protection gets broken eventually. Just not when the game initially launched.
      • Retric 7y ago
        Preorders are a huge part of that initial sales rush. Clearly those are independent of if the game happens to be cracked on opening day.
        • roywiggins 7y ago
          If everyone expects the game to get cracked the same day, they might be less likely to pre-order in the first place.
    • kllrnohj 7y ago
      It doesn't have to be free for it to be worth it. Let's take that 80,000 number. After Steam takes its cut that's $42 going to Bethesda's pockets per unit sold (worst case, ignoring the lowered fees as units sold increases). There's no further distribution costs, so that's a straight 80,000 * $42 = $3.3M of revenue. If Denuvo costs even $100k then it's already paid for itself 30 times over. As for the 80,000 number, Doom 2016 sold 500,000 copies on PC in its first 2 weeks. You only need mid to high single digit percentage increase from DRM to turn into substantial amounts of money. Heck, if Denuvo costs $100k then even a 1% sales increase during that first 2 weeks would have been a net gain of $110k.
      • Retric 7y ago
        Denuvo likely costs vastly more than 100k, and the difference in samples are unlikely to hit 80k. Using 2 million for the software and 20k net sales I hit a net loss of 1.1 million. Yep, those numbers where picked from thin air, but ”As of August 2018, the company employs 1,000 people“, so that math only works if their licenses are freaking expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo
        • kllrnohj 7y ago
          > Acquired in January by digital platform security firm Irdeto, Denuvo has essentially grown from a company of 45 people to over 1,000. I believe that's saying that Irdeto has 1,000 employees, not that 1,000 people work on Denuvo itself. Instead it sounds like Denuvo "only" needs to cover the salary of around 50 people unless they've grown substantially since the acquisition as pre-acquisition they were 45 people. I'm guessing they didn't jack up the licensing costs 10x since they were acquired, so using numbers for ~50 people a cost of $2M seems way too high. In 2017, so pre-acquisition, there were around 50 games using Denuvo: https://www.game-debate.com/games/gamesWithDenuvo https://www.game-debate.com/games/gamesWithDenuvo I'm sure the scale of the game influences costs and a AAA would be more than an indie release etc... but the math still works for numbers far lower than $2M licensing costs. And presumably Bethesda & others have done these analysis and concluded the licensing costs are worth it.
• vidarh 7y ago
  This is a poor example. Most locks - like most DRM - does not stop the most determined people from gaining access. It makes it slightly harder, more time consuming and/or more resource consuming to get access, with the hope that it will deter the most opportunistic attackers, and slow the more determined ones "enough" where "enough" is a function of the cost of the protection vs. the benefit of delaying access. We accept that because we recognize that there is a cost/benefit tradeoff to be made to protection - it is relatively rare for a protection to need to be absolute to be worthwhile; in fact in a lot of settings protections that attempts to be "absolute" will be prohibitively expensive and/or complicated.
  • leetcrew 7y ago
    as they say, "Locks don’t keep robbers from stealing. Locks keep honest men from making mistakes."
  • roywiggins 7y ago
    A lot of DRM isn't like locks because a crack can be applied by casual enthusiasts, not just experts. Keygens are not hard to use, whereas lockpicks require a bit of skill, time, and equipment that you can't just download. (Some DRM does actually act more like a lock, such as console DRM that require hardware mods and would void the warranty)
    • eu7durb3rjdur 7y ago
      Lockpick guns aren't hard to use either and can be employed by casual enthusiasts, the idea that lockpicking is hard is a myth that comes from outsiders observing the hobbyist communities and failing to realize that they aren't devoted to simply opening locks but rather the cultivation of skills to open locks in a particular manner.
    • vidarh 7y ago
      What you are betting on with a lock is not primarily stopping a lock-picker, but that most people are hesitant to force the door or break a window.