'It even breaks my heart a bit': Denuvo pushes back on its haters, says Steam forums are a 'very toxic, very hostile environment'

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A lock and keys.

Not everyone thinks Denuvo DRM is a crime against PC gaming, but you’d probably struggle to find a PC gamer who says theylikethe anti-piracy software. And why should they? If it works properly, the only people who should notice the existence of Denuvo DRM are the software pirates trying to crack it. Everyone else is free to hate it—because they think it hurts performance, or just because they don’t like DRM—or have no feelings about it at all.

That’s been the status quo for a long time, but Denuvo is finally pushing back on gamers who characterize it as the Lex Luthor of PC gaming, and says that not only should we not hate it, we should appreciate Denuvo DRM for the good it does for game developers.

In the RPS interview, Ullmann describes the Steam forums as a “very toxic, very hostile environment” and says that Denuvo no longer wants to let the crowd make claims about its software unchecked. The company has been adamant that its DRM does not hurt game performance, except in rare cases such as Tekken 7, where the problem was due to an error. (Our results have lost relevance because of their age, butwhen Durante tested Final Fantasy 15 performancefor us with and without Denuvo DRM in 2018, we found no difference.)

“Pirates cannot play games which are using our solution over quite long time periods, usually until the publisher decides to patch out our solution,” he said. “So there is a huge community, a lot of people on this planet who are not able to play their favorite videogames, because they are not willing to pay for them, and therefore they have a lot of time to spend in communities and share their view and try to blame Denuvo for a lot of things—trying to make the gaming publishers to not use our solutions so they can start playing pirate copies of games for free again.”

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The other reason, Ullmann thinks, is that there just isn’t a clear reason for gamers to like Denuvo: All they know is that it’s a tool big publishers use to combat piracy so they can make more money. But he argues that with today’s giant budgets, a 20% loss of launch revenue—which is whata recent study claimsDenuvo DRM protects—is a significant setback.

In theRPS interview, Ullmann also discusses why Denuvo hasn’t debunked performance claims with its own testing—the short answer is that it would need permission from its clients, no one would believe it anyway, and there has been some independent testing already (he pointed to our own Final Fantasy 15 test as one example).

As for why he wants to change the perception of Denuvo now, Ullmann reiterated what he told me back in March: Aside from the obvious goal of attracting more business, it’s personal.

“I’m with the company for such a long time,” said Ullmann. “The guys here are like my family, because a lot of the others here are also here for ages. It just hurts to see what’s posted out there about us, even though it has been claimed wrong for hundreds of times.”

Today, publishers who use Denuvo often employ it during the critical launch period, and then remove it later with a patch. The upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard will somewhat surprisinglynot use Denuvoat all, although EA says that it won’t offer preloading as a result.

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