Legendary PC developer says Denuvo is “a punishment to the consumer”

www.pcgamesn.com

Denuvo and DRM punish the consumer, legendary PC developer says

Quote from the article: “The inclusion of intrusive DRM softwares [sic] like Denuvo is a choice that yields an unfair punishment on the consumer,” Running With Scissors says. “Respect the consumer, make a game they want to play, and you will never feel the need to fight piracy. The gaming industry deserves a better future, fight for that.”

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nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works

2y ago

Denuvo and DRM punish the consumer, legendary PC developer says

www.pcgamesn.com /postal/denuvo

82 comments

Running With Scissors is a "legendary" developer?
Postal was a violent mess that didn't age well.
Postal 2 was a buggy mess that also didn't age well.
After that, it was just legitimately bad games on top of the humor not aging well. (They literally don't even acknowledge Postal 3)
Seriously, who the fuck would label them legendary? They've been a broken mess for over a decade.
- I'd label them legends in the sense that they're probably one of the game studios I know by name the best even though that's all they have to show for it. Postal 2 for as bugged and edgy as it is, is an extraordinarily famous game.
  
  know by name
  Sure
  know the best
  Ehh.... Even putting aside things like Nintendo.... Let's just say I know the names of actual developers on several small studios, including bad games, and I have no idea of a single person who made Postal
- The Titanic is a legendary ship, but it wasn't a very good ship
  
  But everybody has heard about the Titanic.
- People who agree with their stance on DRM.
  Theres a definite trend of people elevating the value of opinions of those they agree with. It makes any kind of intelligent discourse very hard to do.
- They didn't release the third game, it was done by a third party (I believe with some licensing shenanigans?), which is why they don't acknowledge Postal 3. They didn't make it. Which is why they (somewhat recently) have given the A-OK to pirate that game.
  I'd assume that last part is why they say legendary.
- No one said the legends were good.
- You're not the target audience, the target audience is edgy teenage boys. Postal 2 was the perfect game for 13 year old me.
  You're right labeling them as "legendary" is just weird tho.
- For clicks and to bait comments exactly like this one.
- While I'm not fond of the company, and perhaps legendary is a bit excessive, they're still a big name that made remarkable videogames. With Postal 2 they nailed it, can't say about the other 3 because I've never played them.
- All this serves to prove is that you have fucking god awful taste
  
  I'm thinking that's gonna be a bit of projection on your part.
Denuvo is the apex of a long history of bad choices.
Maybe actually sell us the games in a way we really own it, without any sort of online activation/account/telemetry/data-gathering like when we could buy a disc and just use it, and it should all be ok.
I feel like a dinosaur every-time I think this nowadays, but what is so problematic with the "own as in physically own" that is so hard to implement? If they want to provide a service, sell a service.
In the past I used pirate versions of games I bought just to be able to play them offline, or because I did not agree with the terms of service. It is so much for our info, it goes beyond just knowing you are the real owner of the software copy: it comes to the point where it looks like it's to guarantee we are not its' owner.
Now some DRMs even destroy gaming performance and its just faster to use 'ked versions. I hope it changes somehow.
- Is it really possible to own them properly? If in almost all cases we lack the source code and there are even proprietary requirements for both software and hardware, what chance do they have of working halfway well in a few decades?
  
  And with stuff like SecuRom, even owning a legit physical copy of the game does not help you when the service vanishes
Even the devs hate denuvo. It slows down the build times and makes it hard to debug.
- The publisher? The business types?
  
  Nah the Devs definitely get forced to use Denuvo by corporate... Stockholders and such. Denuvo gets advertised as the best anti piracy method and stockholders see that and say I want that in our game.
  
  So why would anyone hate Denuvo? Nobody is forcing you to play Denuvo-using games. It was your choice.
  
  Not if you work for a massive publisher.
  edit: or if you publish under one. It's likely in your contract. Devs really don't want to use it, but they are required to do so.
- That's the problem though. They want you to commit to a purchase and hope that you forget about your 2h grace window
- I mean I just pirate it and play the pirated version lmfao.
  No sense in paying money at that point
- Actually yes.
  In my childhood it wasn't very easy to find a licensed copy (TBF, even pirate copy sometimes), but demos would be distributed with magazines etc.
  And after playing a demo which you like a licensed honestly bought copy becomes emotionally much better than piracy.
  It was a working mechanism. For games which are not crap anyway.
- You can return games on Steam tbh, enough of a demo for me if you're a Steam user.
  I think you can also return physical copies? Depends.
  
  Two hours really isn't enough for a lot of games. Some games you can't even get through the tutorial in two hours.
- I appreciate Postal 2 because the premise is kinda funny. It's deliberately designed so you can beat it without doing any violence at all. You're given tasks like get milk, pick up your paycheck, etc. And it involves standing in lines or people berating you. You're stuck doing tedious annoying repetitive tasks, or you can get a flamethrower. I think standing in line to get Gary Coleman's autograph takes 90 minutes if you do it normally.
  Otherwise it's very silly early 2000s edgy white guy dudebro humor
Abolish intellectual property (and private property in general)
- There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
  The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’
  But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
  This land was made for you and me.
  
  And the sign said anybody caught trespassing
  Would be shot on sight.
  So I jumped over the fence and I yelled at the house,
  "Hey, what gives you the right
  To put up a fence to keep me out
  Or to keep mother nature in?"
  If God was here he'd tell you to your face
  "Man, you're some kind of sinner!"
I think the best way is to just have basic piracy detection, if someone trips it, then have a message that you can get past appearing guilt tripping them for it lmao
- Back to OG times in gaming where you would have stupid hats saying pirate or other weird things happening in game like not being able to complete it if it was cracked, good times.
I’ve seen RWS’s take on this a bunch recently. This feels like a feel-good PR move because they don’t have any substantive updates on their actual games.
Crackers: We don't do it for the piracy, we just like the challenge.
Denuvo: Try this one then.
Crackers: Too hard bro, at least give us a chance!
I acknowledge that this isn't going to be a popular opinion in a piracy sub, but the main reason people hate Denuvo is that it works.
It's basically killed the entire game hacking scene, because by the time they break it, nobody is interested in the game any more. There's like one person left that can do it, and they're more than a little bit odd.
It may be "anti-consumer", but you know what was worse? All the other shit they tried on PC. Always online bullshit. Single player games that you couldn't save any more if your connection wobbled. Actual rootkits.
- People hate Denuvo because it requires a regular connection to the Internet and has a big impact on the performance of games.
  I'm not buying these games not because I can't pirate games with Denuvo (I don't really pirate games at all anymore) but because they tend to run like shit.
  
  I pirate because the original runs like shit.
- I haven't pirated any actual software since the 1990s (too cowardly) but my hatred for Denuvo and the like burns with unsurpassed intensity. I will never knowingly buy a game that includes it. "Anti-tampering" indeed. I'm not sure if that shit should be legally allowed at all, but certainly not in ordinary mass-market PC games.
  It does require you be online, and it is essentially a "rootkit." Its malware features are more polite and better hidden than some of the worst of what has been tried before, but that just adds to the danger that it might be seen as acceptable by people who don't know any better.
- Death to the concept of intellectual property and all but I've never actually felt Denuvo making problems for me when I played a game using it, you're right it seems to be working as advertised.
  I'm still hoping someone to crack it in a more reliable and fast manner, fuck large gamedev companies and their profit margins.
  
  I've definitely played games that used it, and I wouldn't even have known without the handful of negative steam reviews shouting about it.
- I've seen Denuvo combined with the always online requirement with the latest Far Cry 6 on steam. The always online requirement makes a cracked version worth it in my use case.
  
  Most bad Denuvo stuff seems to come from any extra DRM they add as well, just in case Denuvo wasn't enough. Always online sounds like one of those extras, because I don't think it's part of Denuvo itself. I think the Denuvo online requirements are when you install, every X days (seems to vary from two weeks to a month, probably configurable per game), and when you change your hardware configuration.
  Denuvo alone is enough, because as soon as Denuvo is removed, the rest can be removed by regular mortal hackers.
- I acknowledge that this isn’t going to be a popular opinion in a piracy sub, but the main reason people hate Denuvo is that it works.
  You act like this is some hidden secret lmao. You should change your name to Captain OBVIOUS.
  
  damn you fucking got their ass
Do I need to repeat the Gabe Newell line again?
Basically lit the fuse to keep people pirating...
It is bad for the consumer... but the alternative is instant cracks, as seen with a lot of games on r/Crackwatch that don't have the DRM.
Denuvo is the first software in a long time that has been able to successfully stop the supposedly inevitable march to cracking. It's a miracle that more AAA devs don't use it, since it works so well. (EMPRESS aside)
You can hate me all you want for saying this, but the war against piracy, for the most part, has been won.

82 comments