Khaar wrote:

New Kotaku article about Resident Evil Village: Denuvo causes stuttering when the player kills a zombie and slows down performance. A cracked version of the game without DRM fixed the issues.

To keep things fair and consumers informed, it is Capcom's own DRM that causes stuttering, Denuvo just served as anti-tamper component there. This is the case of bad implementation I've mentioned earlier.

Khaar wrote:

Gaming Route article: Doom Eternal is unplayable on PC due to the Denuvo update

This title is also false, Doom Eternal uses Denuvo Anticheat (not Anti-temper) for multiplayer, that operates at kernel level, and that fact is the source of controversy. Initially and for a brief period it was always loaded along with the game, even if you don't play multiplayer. That was changed in subsequent update. Still, Doom was hardly unplayable at the time, issues mentioned in article were not related to it and also fixed.

Geez, guys, I hate that piece of crap just as you, but at least don't spread false info on how it works and what issues it creates. Denuvo can and will cause performance issues in some cases, it's just in the nature of how it works. In others you will never notice it was there. So please avoid sharing unverified or debunked rumors.

This ongoing emotional landslide is quite the spectacle.

I think some sort of official rep should say something regardless at this point to simply alleviate concerns / fears. This topic is more ignited than any beta feedback I've seen from opendevs LOL. No worry of economy being borked or AI being X Y or Z has amounted to this level of forum engagement.

Sublustris wrote:

SpikedWallMan wrote:
This is drifting into semantics now.  Denuvo "Anti-Tamper" exists to micromanage digital access rights to the software which by definition makes it DRM.  It doesn't matter what Denuvo's marketing people decide to call it.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a duck, etc, etc.

This has nothing to do with semantics or marketing, this has to do with how it works. It has a duck-bill, but it's not a duck - it's platypus. Existing DRM works mostly the same, with or without Denuvo. The latter just make it very hard to modify executable and disable DRM checks, i.e. to tamper with it. Hence - anti-temper. Players mostly used to all kinds of DRM at this point, they buy DRM-protected games from Steam, Origin, Uplay, EGS etc. without a second thought. But it's Denuvo anti-tamper implementation that rises most concerns, being a VM (and not even one nowadays) that bloats executable with tons of unnecessary instructions just to obfuscate actual logic, potentially hindering performance on low-end machines and producing unpredictable behavior, up to BSODs, in most severe cases of bad implementation.

I mean, you are technically correct as far as the operation is concerned, but DRM can take many forms.  In the DOS days DRM often involved entering passphrases from the user's manual, and some applications require a hardware dongle to be plugged in as a way to manage digital rights.  So I guess it comes down to your definition of DRM.  I tend to interpret "software DRM" as the entire protection system (local/remote authentication, anti-tamper, physical hardware keys, passphrase codebooks, etc, etc.), but I guess there are other places you can draw the line if you're so inclined.  Regardless of the interpretation here, I believe we both agree that the end result is a poor experience for paying customers - and only paying customers - in the long-term for the reasons already discussed in the thread.

Sublustris wrote:

SpikedWallMan wrote:
Interesting point. So first of all, this is pointing out how ineffective DRM is in the first place because it is inevitable that pirates will get around it. Secondly, it shows that pirated copies are superior to the ones delivered to paying customers which makes DRM anti-consumer. And finally, it shows that paying customers who still want to play the game that they spent money on will one day be forced to browse sketchy "high seas" websites and download cracks potentially infected with who knows what solely because the customer decided to do the right thing and pay the company for the product.  So the notion of "you can pirate it when Denuvo gets discontinued" sounds like a very strong argument against Denuvo and DRM in general.

That I'm agreeing with, legit customers should not under any condition get inferior service.

But I'll add one small correction: denuvo's purpose is not to protect forever, but to delay crack process enough to secure initial sales. Those have largest share in overall profits. Whether or not this is effective at all and to what degree is debatable, of course. I think it depends on the nature of the game.

I will agree that is incredibly bad form for a company to make dealing with a cracked pirated copy of a game a better experience than a legitimately licensed copy.  Don't harm the people who are giving you money and supporting your business.  And yes, the "initial sales" line is the one that Denuvo likes to drop when people point out that their DRM is ineffective, but many Denuvo games appear to have been cracked within days of release.  (I'm seeing news reports that some Denuvo games were cracked on or before the release date.)  Of course, I am sure that the goal is to "protect" the game forever, but they just say "initial sales" to downplay their shortcomings.  With that said, if DRM was designed with an automatic self-destruct switch that activated after the "initial sales" period ended, then I would have a far weaker anti-DRM stance.  In that case, it would be a win-win because the dev would get their hypothetical "initial sales" money, and I would not lose access to my copy of the game after the DRM goes defunct.  But that's not the current state of DRM which is why my opinions on DRM are what they are.

I don't know if this is appropriate and if it is not, I would ask a moderator to remove this post but I'd like to conclude with a little tale I was tempted to regale you all with earlier that might shed some light on what I'm saying.

About 15 years ago, when I was getting started with this new, online community discussion lark, I frequented a site to discuss a WW2 wargame. I made a few posts that I thought were both "accurate and insightful" and I was 'corrected' by an older, more established poster. He clearly knew more about what we were discussing than me but he wasn't exactly 'tactful' in correcting me so I got angry when he replied to my posts. WW2 grogs can be quite abrasive from time to time. :D

Anyway, to cut a short story long, I was involved in a rather 'interesting' discussion with some other posters and he intervened again and this time, I saw red and started to write a really strongly worded response to him. But, while I was writing, I realised that he was actually agreeing with me and backing me up. Thank God I never completed that post or sent it. We actually got on very well after that and never had an angry exchange again although we still disagreed from time to time. The lesson I took away from that and have never forgotten was that I should never post until I had calmed down sufficiently to read and understand what others were posting to me. Because I was angry, I 'saw' words or phrases in his post that enraged me and I completely misinterpreted what he was saying. That experience has mostly guided all my subsequent posting but it is true that I have lapsed once or twice since with unpleasant consequences for myself.

Unlike the egregiously misleading verse we were taught as children, 'sticks and stones...' suggests, words are actually far more powerful things with tremendous capacity to inflict hurt and they have a particular potency when they are written down. Nobody likes it when people disagree with them, especially when they are disagreeing with us about something that is important to us. While there are definitely some folks who enjoy antagonising other posters, most posters are honestly expressing what is important to them on the same matter so they're not flaming you when they post. If you take a break before responding to a post you have been upset by, you just might find that people are not actually disagreeing with you ;)

Kutuzov wrote:

Unlike the egregiously misleading verse we were taught as children, 'sticks and stones...' suggests, words are actually far more powerful things with tremendous capacity to inflict hurt and they have a particular potency when they are written down. Nobody likes it when people disagree with them, especially when they are disagreeing with us about something that is important to us. While there are definitely some folks who enjoy antagonising other posters, most posters are honestly expressing what is important to them on the same matter so they're not flaming you when they post. If you take a break before responding to a post you have been upset by, you just might find that people are not actually disagreeing with you ;)

then why do you belittle us, calling us the minority despite being the only person here disagreeing with us, acting as if you speak for the supposed majority. why are you trying to make the topic look unimportant by calling it a mere inconvenience despite the fact it can make games that money was spent on unplayable and having been identified as malware in some occasions. why do you want us to be quiet about something that can be a potential scam, telling us to simply post our concern and move on. 

We are being hard on Amplitude about this because we want their game to succeed, we are being hard on them not because we want to antagonize them, but because we want them to be at their best. So for you to put words in our mouth by saying things like having a fantasy of Humankind being a paragon of 4X gaming is flaming us. Amplitude in their humankind dev diary: origins, said that they believe they have finally mastered the ability of making great strategy games, that humankind will be their most ambitious game to date and that they are ready to make it, meaning it will be more than games like endless space 2 and legends, so us expecting it to be the best game they have made is no fantasy.

Kutuzov wrote:

I don't know if this is appropriate and if it is not, I would ask a moderator to remove this post but I'd like to conclude with a little tale I was tempted to regale you all with earlier that might shed some light on what I'm saying.

I'm not going to remove any denuvo posts for now, there's no need to.

DragonGaming, chill out or I will give you an infraction.

Tygari wrote:

I don't get why people are making a huge deal about this?

I guess you said what the problem is very well in the end. You said "Let Amplitiutde focus on what they do best.  Making great games" and than you said about their final great game code that you buy, you will "Absolutely not" let it run on your computer and "That stuff is practically a virus". Than you suggest "Buy the game so it's legit.  Then download a DRM free version from pirates Bay or some such site."

Maybe not everyone wants to get a game with code modified by some unknown people and run that or have never been to hacker sites or don`t care about pirate stuff. Maybe like normal people we just want a clean good game that we can play from day 1 form the company that we love and delivered that always till now: a clean good game that we can play from day 1 without the need for 3rd party alterations. I mean when we pay they don`t have to go to a pirate site so they can get safely our money.

At least give us a statement, why you changed and what is happening so we know exactly what are the facts. 

As pointed out before they always talk about their community and are proud of that and truly till now they listened to the community. Did something change after they sold to Sega and now it`s just PR/Marketing talk about the community or they still listen and give us feedback and ideas as we give them here for free so they don`t have to pay/hire other people/testers to get that same feedback and development ideas that we give here? Was it not like we help you you help us and together we prosper?

DragonGaming wrote:

im sorry if my text came off as aggressive or angery, ill admit that. I just want to know why our valid concerns about denuvo are being treated as unimportant/minor complaints.

I understand your passion and that you come from a good place. Just be smart about who you talk to and how and i guess you will be fine. Don`t get into debates with people that aggressively attack others and call them names and afterwards they play the role of the victim and make posts about their childhood memories in a thread about DRM and other subjects (instead of making a separate thread about their life`s adventures) just to divert attention and fill the thread with unrelated stuff

Tygari wrote:
Buy the game so it's legit.  Then download a DRM free version from pirates Bay or some such site.

Because whole notion of purchasing legit copy so that then you have to go extra steps to make it usable, up to taking security risks of downloading 3rd party software, is ridiculous and defeats sole purpose of being legitimate customer. Like, you are paying money for this, remember?

Tygari wrote:
Once you own your own copy you're allowed to do what you wish with your copies code as you see fit within the confines of personal use, including removing the DRM you hate so much.

You aren't, according to end user agreements.

Tygari wrote:
That stuff is practically a virus

By far and large it isn't, but it is unwanted all the same.

Tygari wrote:
There are ways to deal with this without all these attacks on Amplitude.

There is no any other really. If we always are going to let this pass, nothing will ever change for good.

Tygari wrote:
I personally would like to see a thread discussing how we might remove Denuvo from the Humankind source code.

A direct way to get swiftly banned, at best. Remember Voksi? Guy got arrested after he published guides on how to crack it.

Sublustris wrote:

Tygari wrote:
Buy the game so it's legit.  Then download a DRM free version from pirates Bay or some such site.

Because whole notion of purchasing legit copy so that then you have to go extra steps to make it usable, up to taking security risks of downloading 3rd party software, is ridiculous and defeats sole purpose of being legitimate customer. Like, you are paying money for this, remember?

100% Agreement!

If I pay for a game I want it to be playable and without technical issues as it is, without having to modify it myself or use and illegal and unsafe (Virus) copy of the game.

The whole suggestion itself (to use a cracked version of the game to avoid technical issues) is an argument NOT to implement Denuvo in the first place! It simply can't be the solution to first buy the game and then use a pirated copy to play it! 

Tygari wrote:
I personally would like to see a thread discussing how we might remove Denuvo from the Humankind source code. 

Again, this is an argument NOT to implement the DRM in question. It is NOT OUR JOB to make the game playable!
Instead of removing Denuvo from the game by ourself or used a cracked version, we should try to talk to Amplitude and make our point loud and clear.

But to be honest, I think the only way to send a message to Sega would probably be to cancel preorders. Just image what would happen if more than 50% of the preorders would be canceled (I know this will not happen). This would be such a powerful signal, they couldn't ignore it and need to react ASAP, because:

"It all comes down do money in the end, to Dust." - The Lumeris, Endless Space 2.

(Arguing with an in-game quote? Oh man, I AM the "#1 fanboy" )