Cristata wrote:

I think it reflects poorly on Amplitude that they know their customers already had a major issue with this during their last games launch, yet here they are now trying to launch a game with it again. 

I've already de-wishlisted this game on Steam.

and from the sounds of it the devs might be doubling down on it, but I still want to know if this is a launch only thing or if its permanent.

Rarek wrote:

Gotta think of the PR fallout

I don't think they expect one, since

a) unlike HK there is no direct competitor to turn to

b) game's audience will probably be "modest" anyway, to begin with

Sublustris wrote:

Just like they patched ES2 and its DLCs. If they won't remove it earlier, then they stop pushing new DLCs out, it will stay there forever.

On that note, I do wish that they would patch some of the more glaring issues in ES2/DotE and finally bring the Let The Pug Out update for DotE to PC.

Well isn't this funnier than fun? Amplitude who swore they will never change, after willingly selling themselves to Sega strikes again LUL, great stuff. Some guys from here maybe still believe Amplitude is the same great company as it once was and we all loved it, that is why they are shocked and still care a lot. Times have changed unfortunately after they sold themselves to Sega for a good steady income so they could care less about their fan base in reality and depend even less on their money. They only say they still care in words, but the results and the implementations they come with confirm they don't care anymore that much, they are going mainstream. 

So, the more the quality of their games will degrade and become worse, oversimplified, mainstream, and so on, the more Denuvo, DRMs, loot boxes, mobile like features, skins, child addiction methods and so on you will see implemented. Unfortunately that is the new normal :facepalm:. You can see that from Humankind, the worst 4x they ever made (after they sold themselves to Sega) that has for more than a year the lowest rating on Steam (mixed) compared to any of their previous games that gave good/great ratings. Endless Dungeon who seemed like a cool sequel on paper is more like a oversimplified pew-pew-pew looter shooter and 0 brain with almost no strategic depth from what I saw in their OpenDev. So let's wonder what will it be next? A Diablo Immortal loot box driven Endless game? LUL

You can also feel it in your gut when the most upvoted discussions change from: what a great game, what a great concept, such cool features, to why should or should not DRMs and loot boxes and other crap be implemented, why is the game so simplistic compared to the previous and lots of other great stuff :)))

So everyone enjoy the new Amplitude Studios who willingly sold themselves to Sega!

To make the DRM situation even more horrible, Denuvo announced recently that they're releasing Denuvo Anto-Tamper for Nintendo Switch.  This is probably somehow worse than Denuvo for PC because there has always been comfort in the fact that you can load a Switch cartridge into a console and expect it to run in some capacity even if Nintendo's online servers go down.  (Sure, you'll miss out on updates, but technically the game should run without Day 0 patches.)  If the cartridge shipped on Day 0 has Denuvo on it though, then the excuse of "well, we will remove it later" goes away because Nintendo is not reliable at all when it comes to keeping their online servers up and running for older consoles.  So when Nintendo decommissions the Switch servers and you cannot download game updates anymore, then you're going to have a completely bricked cartridge if Denuvo decides to discontinue support for their Switch authentication servers and you don't have the Denuvo removal update backed up somewhere.  Of course, I'm sure that the emulation scene will have it circumvented eventually which means that the people who paid for their Denuvo'd Switch cartridge will once again be the losers here (along with the company who got scammed into purchasing the worthless Denuvo license in the first place).

So this is yet another reason why DRM is awful and anti-consumer, and its horrible to see this blight creeping into console games.

Mithrandir wrote:

we live in a world where developers are forced into using it when launching their games. 

The devs aren't forced to do anything. Piracy does not mean that the devs lost a sale, and including DRM means that the pirates will just play something else until the DRM is cracked/removed. These pirates can download basically any game made over video gaming's entire 50 year history so what makes you think that they'll suddenly decide to pay for a new DRM'd game when they literally have hundreds of thousands of other games that are already in their piracy backlog?

Mithrandir wrote:

but we live in a world where developers are forced into using it when launching their games. 

no, we do not

Another thing to note is that Denuvo actually encourages Piracy as it gives people a reason to crack the game, If Amplitude worries about piracy, then getting rid of denuvo actually will help ease their worries. It may not outright stop piracy (because nothing can), but it will definitely minimize it as there wont be as much of a reason to crack the game.