4 ms·

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 impatie

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.

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.