Never really understood the hate against denuvo. Yes, it’s annoying and unnecessary, but it’s no vanguard or ricochet that requires full access to the system. Especially on linux this is honestly a complete no-issue since it runs as a user-process within the prefix.
There’s other battles that should be fought, especially against vanguard, ricochet or EAC.
Denuvo, and in fact ALL anti-piracy countermeasures (including kernel level anti-cheat like nGuard Protect, or Vanguard) added to computer software, is cancerware. It does not do anything to prevent piracy beyond maybe a month depending on cracking scene interest. But it does severely negatively affect game performance. In some cases, games with Denuvo removed have seen +40 fps and more for end users with absolutely no change to game settings or hardware.
Denuvo runs game functions within a VM, and uses the game license, your machine HWID, and magic numbers to make calculations so it can decrypt the partially encrypted by Denuvo game code. It does this EVERY FRAME. Computers have become fast enough that people like you might say you dont notice the difference because your copy of the game runs at 60fps “most of the time” with dips into the 30s or 40s. But without that literal circus of cancerware your game could be running at 90+ fps with absolutely no change from you. Now why, exactly, does Denuvo need to do these checks with your license and HWID every single frame? Well, you silly wallet, your license might expire or be revoked inbetween frames.
Denuvo, and all DRM, only harms genuine paying customers. Its only a minor inconvenience to game cracking groups and pirates.
Just because kernel level anti-cheat is bad doesn’t mean that Denuvo is somehow good. They are both equally bad.
I mean, did we all forget SecuROM? It is malware, defined by most operating systems and anti-virus software as malware. Thats what all DRM is.
Denuvo, and in fact ALL anti-piracy countermeasures (including kernel level anti-cheat like nGuard Protect, or Vanguard) added to computer software, is cancerware. It does not do anything to prevent piracy beyond maybe a month depending on cracking scene interest.
This part I can agree with.
But it does severely negatively affect game performance. In some cases, games with Denuvo removed have seen +40 fps and more for end users with absolutely no change to game settings or hardware.
Never seen that myself so idk. However, I’ve checked youtube for “denuvo vs no denuvo fps”, and I’ve quickly skipped through around ~20 videos, and the FPS loss is in all cases either minimal or nonexistent. The only game that was seriously affected was hogwarts legacy with a ~25 FPS difference between cracked and non-cracked which is obviously huge, however, that could be due to a wrong implementation or other factors. No other game displayed that behavior, leading me to believe it’s not necessarily denuvo that’s the problem in hogwarts legacy.
Denuvo runs game functions within a VM, and uses the game license, your machine HWID, and magic numbers to make calculations so it can decrypt the partially encrypted by Denuvo game code. It does this EVERY FRAME
You make it sound like that’s a huge deal, but this is running in parallel, not in sequence. Meaning denuvo would only be a bottleneck if the game renders it’s frames faster than denuvo takes to finish it’s next step. This is unlikely as denuvo isn’t utilizing the GPU as the game mostly does, but the CPU, and the CPU is rarely ever a bottleneck in modern games. So, at worst, it consumes a few more CPU cycles and therefore a teensie tiny amount of power, which is quite frankly negligible.
Computers have become fast enough that people like you might say you dont notice the difference because your copy of the game runs at 60fps “most of the time” with dips into the 30s or 40s. But without that literal circus of cancerware your game could be running at 90+ fps with absolutely no change from you
Well, the reality shows that this isn’t the case and those numbers sound like you made them up for dramatic effect like some supplements tiktoker telling me that costco rotisserie chicken is literally poison.
Now why, exactly, does Denuvo need to do these checks with your license and HWID every single frame? Well, you silly wallet, your license might expire or be revoked inbetween frames.
Once you boot a denuvo game, it (usually) connects to a server and receives a ticket. Now, how long that ticket is, depens on the game. The ticket lifespan is configurable by the developer/publisher, it could be days, weeks or even months. Less than a day? Very unlikely. Afaik, the ticket is only checked on game startup anyways, so the license will never expire inbetween frames. Only a restart of the game could do that, in which case the game would probably request a new ticket.
I mean, did we all forget SecuROM?
SecuROM, Starforce or vanguard install themselves as an application on your system, requiring root access (or whatever the pendant on windows is. Admin?) on your system, enabling it to do all kind of things and literally being an open security risk on kernel level.
Denuvo doesn’t. It runs in userspace and doesn’t have any more privileges than the game itself. That’s why denuvo doesn’t really cause any problems on linux - because it’s a userspace process that runs in the prefix. That’s it.
I get you don’t like denuvo, but your dislike of it seems to be founded on either:
Best case: Very outdated information
Bad case: Wrong information
Worst case: Information you made up for dramtic effect, as you did above
I would prefer if you’d just say: “I hate the thought of not fully owning my game” which is a perfectly legitimate claim. But making up these horror stories like “DENUVO IS LITERALLY EATING YOUR CHILDREN !!!” is just not a good way to argue against something. It makes you unbelievable.
Ok, well you obviously don’t understand how Denuvo actually works, so let me give you the simple TLDR version. Maybe if you understand how it works, you can see why it is so bad.
When a developer compiles their game with Denuvo, Denuvo adds itself to various functions of the game (set by the developer but has defaults as well). Usually this includes at least the main game loop which runs every frame, but also to other functions in the game as well. I cannot remember if Denuvo is added to every function of the game by default or just a lot of functions of the game, but it is added in multiple places and not just one. Anyway, by doing this, Denuvo basically partially encrypts the functions it adds itself to. Then, when the game is running in Denuvos virtual machine, it uses a magic number set during development and does a math calculation using a formula with parameters that include your HWID and your game license. It then compares the math calculation result to the magic number, and if those both match then everything is good and the game can keep running. Again, it does this in every function it is added, and since it is usually at least in the main game loop that runs every frame, you often can have Denuvo checking your license multiple times each frame, which is at the very least, wasteful. This is the only actual function that Denuvo accomplishes, by the way.
Denuvo ALSO adds a bunch of other unnecessary “dead end code” to these partially encrypted functions, which either loop on themselves or do nothing, in order to throw off cracking groups. This dead end code contains calculations that the CPU actually processes. They are not just there for looks, they do take up compute power even though functionally they do nothing important. Again, wasteful. The ticket can certainly expire between frames and cause issues.
When you said you watched videos comparing cracked games and non-cracked games and saw minimal gain, this is where I knew you didn’t really know how Denuvo works, because I wasn’t even talking about cracked Denuvo games.
Cracked Denuvo games still run Denuvo. Yes, thats right.
The way that Denuvo games get cracked is simple, but it is tedious and takes time. A hacker has to sift through the game code to find every Denuvo infected function. Then, they have to find where Denuvo checks the results of the magic number and the math calculation which is not always at the end of the function. The hacker then alters the check to always pass even if the numbers don’t match. Sometimes, they can catch the function before it does the math and it just instantly passes the check, but other times it has to be done later in the function depending on what the function does in the game and where it performs the check in the code. Regardless, this is why it generally results in a negligible performance gain: its still running Denuvo. Denuvo is just modified to always say “yes, the license is correct” every time. Two games which had a less negligible difference in performance when Denuvo was altered was Rime and Syberia 3.
I was talking about games that were officially updated to remove Denuvo by the developers. NieR Automata on PC, most notably, on the 21st of June, 2021, received an update that fixed performance issues with the game:
Removed 3rd - Party DRM - Denuvo Anti-tamper
You can verify this on SteamDB, the change is U:24088901.
The performance gain was immediate, and everyone that had the game could tell the difference. Just for reference, when the game had Denuvo, the executable was ~100MB. After Denuvo was removed, the new filesize was just ~17MB. Thats ~83MB of bloated cancerware removed. Gone. And with it, the stuttering issues that plagued the game when it launched ~5 years prior.
This isnt a made up horror story. I never said Denuvo killed any children. This isnt made up for dramatic effect. This is how Denuvo works, and why I say it is cancerware. It only harms real paying consumers and should be removed for their benefit. Businesses that sell games are forgetting that the only thing that keeps them alive is being slightly more convenient than piracy.
If you don’t like it, I don’t know what else to tell you. This is the way it is.
the CPU is rarely ever a bottleneck in modern games
GPUs are often idle waiting for instructions from the CPU in modern games. If you were familiar with hardware benchmarks you would know about this.
Your description for how things work with Denuvo is way off. It has real performance impact on games and it literally costs paying customers electricity to run the garbage.
I’m not in favor of it, however, denuvo doesn’t impact my gaming experience in the slightest. It’s like a crash tracker running in the background, monitoring if shit goes wrong and if it does, gives me a prompt to ask me to report it. It doesn’t have any special privileges (unlike something like vanguard, for example), it doesn’t start with my PC but starts and stops with the game and it has no impact on performance (lots of videos about it on youtube).
I get that people don’t like the thought of “I’m not fully owning my game” which is reasonable, but in that case, your reason for not playing pargmata shouldn’t be denuvo, but steam itself.
I get that people don’t like the thought of “I’m not fully owning my game” which is reasonable, but in that case, your reason for not playing pargmata shouldn’t be denuvo, but steam itself.
This is whataboutism. They’re both DRM, they’re both bad. I should point out though that it is up to the developer/publisher whether they use Steam DRM. There are games on Steam that you can play the game without Steam (Cyberpunk 2077 for example).
As far as your comments about anti-cheats… at least those are actually trying to do something for the gameplay experience. Where people disagree with them is how it is going about it or whether different multiplayer models might negate the need for it.
DRM though exists solely for the publishers/developers, is very debatable whether it has much real benefits for them and is always a negative for customers. IMO DRM is the far more important issue in gaming.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted for asking a legit question, but I believe the hate comes exactly from the fact that its annoying, unnecessary and a drain on resources. And even if others are worse we shouldn’t be normalizing it. Personally I avoid it also because until recently it was borderline uncrackable and thus prevented me from keeping my games through posterity.
True, but I just don’t think most people care about that a lot. Because if you look closely at how much shit is running on your PC at any given time, denuvo is probably just a small drop of water in the atlantic ocean.
drain on resources
That has mostly been debunked by today.
Personally I avoid it also because until recently it was borderline uncrackable and thus prevented me from keeping my games through posterity.
That is the only reason I can absolutely understand. Not “owning” your game is a shitty feeling, but we also lost that battle like 25 years ago with steam. I think it’s silly to be mad about denuvo but still use steam for your games if DRM is such a problem.
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I was gonna buy it until I saw it has Denuvo malware in it. So close, Capcom. So close.
Never really understood the hate against denuvo. Yes, it’s annoying and unnecessary, but it’s no vanguard or ricochet that requires full access to the system. Especially on linux this is honestly a complete no-issue since it runs as a user-process within the prefix.
There’s other battles that should be fought, especially against vanguard, ricochet or EAC.
Denuvo, and in fact ALL anti-piracy countermeasures (including kernel level anti-cheat like nGuard Protect, or Vanguard) added to computer software, is cancerware. It does not do anything to prevent piracy beyond maybe a month depending on cracking scene interest. But it does severely negatively affect game performance. In some cases, games with Denuvo removed have seen +40 fps and more for end users with absolutely no change to game settings or hardware.
Denuvo runs game functions within a VM, and uses the game license, your machine HWID, and magic numbers to make calculations so it can decrypt the partially encrypted by Denuvo game code. It does this EVERY FRAME. Computers have become fast enough that people like you might say you dont notice the difference because your copy of the game runs at 60fps “most of the time” with dips into the 30s or 40s. But without that literal circus of cancerware your game could be running at 90+ fps with absolutely no change from you. Now why, exactly, does Denuvo need to do these checks with your license and HWID every single frame? Well, you silly wallet, your license might expire or be revoked inbetween frames.
Denuvo, and all DRM, only harms genuine paying customers. Its only a minor inconvenience to game cracking groups and pirates.
Just because kernel level anti-cheat is bad doesn’t mean that Denuvo is somehow good. They are both equally bad.
I mean, did we all forget SecuROM? It is malware, defined by most operating systems and anti-virus software as malware. Thats what all DRM is.
This part I can agree with.
Never seen that myself so idk. However, I’ve checked youtube for “denuvo vs no denuvo fps”, and I’ve quickly skipped through around ~20 videos, and the FPS loss is in all cases either minimal or nonexistent. The only game that was seriously affected was hogwarts legacy with a ~25 FPS difference between cracked and non-cracked which is obviously huge, however, that could be due to a wrong implementation or other factors. No other game displayed that behavior, leading me to believe it’s not necessarily denuvo that’s the problem in hogwarts legacy.
You make it sound like that’s a huge deal, but this is running in parallel, not in sequence. Meaning denuvo would only be a bottleneck if the game renders it’s frames faster than denuvo takes to finish it’s next step. This is unlikely as denuvo isn’t utilizing the GPU as the game mostly does, but the CPU, and the CPU is rarely ever a bottleneck in modern games. So, at worst, it consumes a few more CPU cycles and therefore a teensie tiny amount of power, which is quite frankly negligible.
Well, the reality shows that this isn’t the case and those numbers sound like you made them up for dramatic effect like some supplements tiktoker telling me that costco rotisserie chicken is literally poison.
Once you boot a denuvo game, it (usually) connects to a server and receives a ticket. Now, how long that ticket is, depens on the game. The ticket lifespan is configurable by the developer/publisher, it could be days, weeks or even months. Less than a day? Very unlikely. Afaik, the ticket is only checked on game startup anyways, so the license will never expire inbetween frames. Only a restart of the game could do that, in which case the game would probably request a new ticket.
SecuROM, Starforce or vanguard install themselves as an application on your system, requiring root access (or whatever the pendant on windows is. Admin?) on your system, enabling it to do all kind of things and literally being an open security risk on kernel level.
Denuvo doesn’t. It runs in userspace and doesn’t have any more privileges than the game itself. That’s why denuvo doesn’t really cause any problems on linux - because it’s a userspace process that runs in the prefix. That’s it.
I get you don’t like denuvo, but your dislike of it seems to be founded on either:
I would prefer if you’d just say: “I hate the thought of not fully owning my game” which is a perfectly legitimate claim. But making up these horror stories like “DENUVO IS LITERALLY EATING YOUR CHILDREN !!!” is just not a good way to argue against something. It makes you unbelievable.
Ok, well you obviously don’t understand how Denuvo actually works, so let me give you the simple TLDR version. Maybe if you understand how it works, you can see why it is so bad.
When a developer compiles their game with Denuvo, Denuvo adds itself to various functions of the game (set by the developer but has defaults as well). Usually this includes at least the main game loop which runs every frame, but also to other functions in the game as well. I cannot remember if Denuvo is added to every function of the game by default or just a lot of functions of the game, but it is added in multiple places and not just one. Anyway, by doing this, Denuvo basically partially encrypts the functions it adds itself to. Then, when the game is running in Denuvos virtual machine, it uses a magic number set during development and does a math calculation using a formula with parameters that include your HWID and your game license. It then compares the math calculation result to the magic number, and if those both match then everything is good and the game can keep running. Again, it does this in every function it is added, and since it is usually at least in the main game loop that runs every frame, you often can have Denuvo checking your license multiple times each frame, which is at the very least, wasteful. This is the only actual function that Denuvo accomplishes, by the way.
Denuvo ALSO adds a bunch of other unnecessary “dead end code” to these partially encrypted functions, which either loop on themselves or do nothing, in order to throw off cracking groups. This dead end code contains calculations that the CPU actually processes. They are not just there for looks, they do take up compute power even though functionally they do nothing important. Again, wasteful. The ticket can certainly expire between frames and cause issues.
When you said you watched videos comparing cracked games and non-cracked games and saw minimal gain, this is where I knew you didn’t really know how Denuvo works, because I wasn’t even talking about cracked Denuvo games.
Cracked Denuvo games still run Denuvo. Yes, thats right.
The way that Denuvo games get cracked is simple, but it is tedious and takes time. A hacker has to sift through the game code to find every Denuvo infected function. Then, they have to find where Denuvo checks the results of the magic number and the math calculation which is not always at the end of the function. The hacker then alters the check to always pass even if the numbers don’t match. Sometimes, they can catch the function before it does the math and it just instantly passes the check, but other times it has to be done later in the function depending on what the function does in the game and where it performs the check in the code. Regardless, this is why it generally results in a negligible performance gain: its still running Denuvo. Denuvo is just modified to always say “yes, the license is correct” every time. Two games which had a less negligible difference in performance when Denuvo was altered was Rime and Syberia 3.
I was talking about games that were officially updated to remove Denuvo by the developers. NieR Automata on PC, most notably, on the 21st of June, 2021, received an update that fixed performance issues with the game:
You can verify this on SteamDB, the change is U:24088901.
The performance gain was immediate, and everyone that had the game could tell the difference. Just for reference, when the game had Denuvo, the executable was ~100MB. After Denuvo was removed, the new filesize was just ~17MB. Thats ~83MB of bloated cancerware removed. Gone. And with it, the stuttering issues that plagued the game when it launched ~5 years prior.
This isnt a made up horror story. I never said Denuvo killed any children. This isnt made up for dramatic effect. This is how Denuvo works, and why I say it is cancerware. It only harms real paying consumers and should be removed for their benefit. Businesses that sell games are forgetting that the only thing that keeps them alive is being slightly more convenient than piracy.
If you don’t like it, I don’t know what else to tell you. This is the way it is.
Excellent explanation, thanks for typing that all out!
GPUs are often idle waiting for instructions from the CPU in modern games. If you were familiar with hardware benchmarks you would know about this.
Your description for how things work with Denuvo is way off. It has real performance impact on games and it literally costs paying customers electricity to run the garbage.
If you are in favour of any kind of DRM then you are arguing against your own interests as a purchaser of games.
I’m not in favor of it, however, denuvo doesn’t impact my gaming experience in the slightest. It’s like a crash tracker running in the background, monitoring if shit goes wrong and if it does, gives me a prompt to ask me to report it. It doesn’t have any special privileges (unlike something like vanguard, for example), it doesn’t start with my PC but starts and stops with the game and it has no impact on performance (lots of videos about it on youtube).
I get that people don’t like the thought of “I’m not fully owning my game” which is reasonable, but in that case, your reason for not playing pargmata shouldn’t be denuvo, but steam itself.
This is whataboutism. They’re both DRM, they’re both bad. I should point out though that it is up to the developer/publisher whether they use Steam DRM. There are games on Steam that you can play the game without Steam (Cyberpunk 2077 for example).
As far as your comments about anti-cheats… at least those are actually trying to do something for the gameplay experience. Where people disagree with them is how it is going about it or whether different multiplayer models might negate the need for it.
DRM though exists solely for the publishers/developers, is very debatable whether it has much real benefits for them and is always a negative for customers. IMO DRM is the far more important issue in gaming.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted for asking a legit question, but I believe the hate comes exactly from the fact that its annoying, unnecessary and a drain on resources. And even if others are worse we shouldn’t be normalizing it. Personally I avoid it also because until recently it was borderline uncrackable and thus prevented me from keeping my games through posterity.
How so? You usually don’t even notice it’s there.
True, but I just don’t think most people care about that a lot. Because if you look closely at how much shit is running on your PC at any given time, denuvo is probably just a small drop of water in the atlantic ocean.
That has mostly been debunked by today.
That is the only reason I can absolutely understand. Not “owning” your game is a shitty feeling, but we also lost that battle like 25 years ago with steam. I think it’s silly to be mad about denuvo but still use steam for your games if DRM is such a problem.
Developers wouldn’t share their profit with Denuvo if not for pirates.