For me it comes down to: Focus on your customers. Deal with the ones who support your work. The others are unlikely to buy expansions or DLC and support your game in the long run.

It makes no sense to make your paying customers uncomfortable and give them an inferior experience with added software anti-tamper solutions. They are not going to be the ones tampering with it.

With all the publicity that HK has been getting and the preorders, I doubt you are in a position of failing. I'd be very surprised if that was the case. So I don't know what you are trying to accomplish with this very disliked software in your game. I do hope you will reconsider this, Amplitude.

Khaar wrote:

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" )

I wish to make it clear I in no way support stealing a copy of the game.

I favor acquiring a legitimate copy of the game and then once a person legitimately owns a copy then they are free to do with that copy for their personal use whatever they wish.

That said here is my responses:

Sega is forcing Amplitude to do this.  Sega doesn't care.  It is a faceless, heartless, soulless, corporation.

I do not see Amplitude having any saying in removing Denuvo no matter what happens here on the forums.

This whole fight feels like a waste of time.

If Amplitude goes against Sega then Sega may shut them down and that is no good for anyone.

Canceling that many preorders would get a reaction I agree.

That doesn't mean the reaction is guarantee would be a good one for Amplitude.

I don't feel trying to force Amplitude into doing something drastic that could potential get them shut down is worth the risk.

Amplitude ultimately releasing a DRM free version would be ideal.

But we do not live within an ideal world.

Sometimes we simply have to either grunt and bear it or do a little work to make things better.

It feels like it is just lazy of the community to demand everything of Amplitude and not do anything on its own.

Either accept a DRM version or take the time to make/acquire a DRM free version.

Please stop trying to force Amplitude into a dangerous choice.

If you wish to be so proactive against DRM why not take it to capitol hill?

I see several voices raging here.

Are any going above and trying to fight the heart of the issue where it would really count?

Where it would give Amplitude real legal choices?

Some people here are making great point-by-point cases.

But on this forum, it is just tolling.

Take it to the government and win better rights for everyone.

Kwami wrote:

But Amplitude did have a choice. They chose money when they sold themselves to SEGA. Don't let them off the hook on this!

And I don't know if you've noticed, but the government is rather busy with a lot of other stuff and isn't going to care about a French/Japanese game being published with DRM. In fact, the government has always been pro-DRM because they almost always put the rights of corporations over the rights of people. And that's not just true in the US (where I am), but almost everywhere. Besides, which government? The world government? The game isn't only sold in the US.

Aside from that, there's no guarantee that there will ever be a DRM free version of the game. Some games actually don't get cracked. Sometimes, DRM actually works. Unfortunate, but true. In that case, Amplitude has lost loyal fans in order to appease the money gods. In the other case where the game is cracked, well, then the DRM was pointless. Either way, DRM is a loser. It always has been and it always will be.

In any case, you should stop mentioning illegal things or even suggesting them. That's a good way to get threads like this one locked or deleted. Please don't keep pushing that boundary.

There is more to it than just selling out to big money.

Amplitude got a lot more than just money.

Things Sega had that Amplitude didn't,

It is not all about the money and not right for you to generalize and assume.

The governments are pro DRM cause corporations are the biggest voices with the biggest push on the issue.

Anti DRM needs more voices trying to push for it.

As I said there are a lot of voices here.

How many are supporting the Anti DRM groups fight DRM in the courts?

This is not the simple reality you are making it out to be.

We don't know.

We can only hope.

What I am saying is not illegal everywhere.

Only in some nations.

As you stated this is a global game.

Please do not request the sequestering of my right to free speech while you vocalize your own.

If Amplitude asks me to stop I will.

whats a drm?

Tygari wrote:
I do not see Amplitude having any saying in removing Denuvo

You'd be surprised

Tygari wrote:
If you wish to be so proactive against DRM why not take it to capitol hill?

Dude, they are French, located in Paris

Sublustris wrote:

I bet most of you played HK OpenDevs/Beta and didn't even notice it had Denuvo.

No one will mention that though

SpikedWallMan wrote:

Fudgeyman wrote:

Sublustris wrote:

I bet most of you played HK OpenDevs/Beta and didn't even notice it had Denuvo.

No one will mention that though

They'll notice when Humankind stops working after Denuvo inevitably shuts down their servers.  On a more personal note, I also reported unusually poor performance in my beta feedback.

I didn't get to play in the first two open beta's but the last one had a lot of crashing,

GlorySign wrote:

Fudgeyman wrote:

Sublustris wrote:

I bet most of you played HK OpenDevs/Beta and didn't even notice it had Denuvo.

No one will mention that though

If they truly introduced it without announcing it beforehand in a clear way for everyone so all user really knew what they were downloading than that is pretty scummy as nobody knew about it before like 1 month ago

Also as i said before if they did put Denuvo in OpenDevs i bet it was only on Poe because that was a big step back in regarding how the game ran compared to Lucy/Victor and it had crashes for the first time on the same machine that never had them on Lucy/Victor, loading games also crashed the game sometimes, a lot of lag was happening in mid-late game. A lot of users started to complain about performance, high resource consumption, one mentioning that on his older PC Cyberpunk 2077 ran better and with less resources than Humankind. So i guess it was in Poe that Denuvo got inserted if it really was in any OpenDev

I only had one of the signature key files left over after I uninstalled the beta, so I suspect that you're right.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all your feedback on this, we have been following along and having internal discussions before getting back to you. Based on data from our trial during the Closed Beta, we have decided not to include Denuvo in Humankind at launch.

 First, let me explain the reasoning behind our initial decision including Denuvo – We work really hard and pour our hearts into these games we make, and pirating really does affect our ability to keep creating games with you guys. 

We’ve been working on this game for more than 4 years now and personally it’s been my dream project for 25 years. We’ve been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam this year, so we know we’re going to be targeted by pirates, more so than any of our previous games. If Denuvo can hold off a cracked version, even just for a few days, that can already really help us to protect our launch.

That being said, our priority is always the best possible experience for the players who buy our games and support us. Denuvo should never impact player performance, and we don’t want to sacrifice quality for you guys. 

We believe that it’s possible with the right integration, which is what we wanted to test during the Closed Beta. However, we found that the way it was currently integrated was not good enough, and it’s not something we can fix before release. So, we are taking it out. 

I hope this answers your questions. Thank you as always for your support, and we can’t wait to see you all at launch (and beyond!)

 - Romain, CCO & Studio Head

I can only purchase/justify one game per year, and I do love strategy games. For 2021 I decided to pre purchased Humankind, I want to support Amplitude Games, you guys look enthusiasts, and I think this community is great and you will also provide regular updates for this beautiful game taking into account our feedback. So I want to help and enjoy the game with or without Denuvo, fortunately I have a good rig.

@SpaceTroll: Thank you very much for making the decision to not implement Denuvo in Humankind. I am 100% in favor of you all making as much money as you can as a result of your hard work, but I disagree with your statement that a few days of DRM will somehow boost sales. If someone is wanting to pirate a game, then they have already made to decision to not pay and will be willing to wait for a cracked version. Paying customers, on the other hand, will have to deal with the DRM until it is removed by the dev...assuming the dev ever bothers to actually remove it.

However, I am very thankful that you decided to focus on providing your fans with an optimal experience and appreciate very much that you listened to our feedback.  Best wishes for a highly successful launch.

Thank you, glad to see sanity prevailed. 

SpaceTroll wrote:

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all your feedback on this, we have been following along and having internal discussions before getting back to you. Based on data from our trial during the Closed Beta, we have decided not to include Denuvo in Humankind at launch.

 First, let me explain the reasoning behind our initial decision including Denuvo – We work really hard and pour our hearts into these games we make, and pirating really does affect our ability to keep creating games with you guys. 

We’ve been working on this game for more than 4 years now and personally it’s been my dream project for 25 years. We’ve been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam this year, so we know we’re going to be targeted by pirates, more so than any of our previous games. If Denuvo can hold off a cracked version, even just for a few days, that can already really help us to protect our launch.

 

That being said, our priority is always the best possible experience for the players who buy our games and support us. Denuvo should never impact player performance, and we don’t want to sacrifice quality for you guys. 

We believe that it’s possible with the right integration, which is what we wanted to test during the Closed Beta. However, we found that the way it was currently integrated was not good enough, and it’s not something we can fix before release. So, we are taking it out. 

 

I hope this answers your questions. Thank you as always for your support, and we can’t wait to see you all at launch (and beyond!)

 - Romain, CCO & Studio Head