the useless Anti-Piracy System: Denuvo Software
I have wanted to talk about this topic for some time now and I don't see a better time than this to raise my voice against the useless programs that most of the time developers put in place to hinder the user. This weekend was confirmed again why one of the most useless software that PC games can have should disappear, it turns out that several games were disabled for Saturday and Sunday due to a bug in the tool and its website, For many years Denovo has been the software of choice for developers to "protect" their games but today I wanted to explore a little more about the negative repercussions it is having on the gaming community, the key is not so much if the system works and if it actually protects titles from piracy but what it costs us and our PCs that a code like this is being used in video games.
First of all Denovo is a current that has been spreading over the years and the rise of piracy in PC games, it acted in the first instance as a program integrated into the source code of a video game to be constantly performing a type of call-response action with a database of purchased game keys to determine if the game had been violated, The issue is that we have seen this type of programs in PC games and they are always passed and overcome, although Denovo and his team have improved the software year after year there will always be programmers who know how to circumvent them and deliver a complete copy of the game without these protections, why is it used then if it is so ineffective? One of the reasons seems to be to decrease the number of people who can progressively circumvent the system and to protect the releases at least in the short term, but the results have been visible for some time, piracy is not decreasing at all and today it is just as easy to buy on Steam as to download a game from any website.
But this tool brings with it other unexpected negative attributes, players have already experienced with its integration some resource consumption that are out of the ordinary as a result of the operation of the program, the games that use it are becoming slower and FPS drops as well as increased CPU consumption and high latencies make this practice one of the most hated among players, the worst thing is that most of the big developers use this program in an attempt to lower the number of illicit downloads but sacrifice the experience to a greater part of their players.
Another thing is that games do not really need to circumvent piracy to be successful in the market, there are an infinite number of developments that thanks to their quality are not only successful in sales but it does not really matter if there are people pirating it, this is the case of many developers away from the big releases of blockbusters that use this type of protection programs as well as a function of being always connected to the network despite being in some cases only individual experiences.
If we make a summary I would say that most PC gamers hate this feature, it adds nothing to their games but on the contrary it degrades the performance of most PCs and slows down games for no benefit, the protection the big companies are looking for from virtual pirates I would venture to say does not yet exist (probably never will) and the production companies have to take that and use it to their advantage, online content seems to be a solid answer to the loss of revenue from piracy but if we look at it from a broader point of view we will notice that we are in a golden age for doing business in videogames, most of the top developer studios are having the highest profits in their history today and it seems unfair to hinder their users' experience in exchange for a bland protection.
But now it's your turn, what do you think about video game piracy? Is it really worth it for companies to protect themselves from this practice?
