Thanks for the explanation! Didn’t know most of that. Especially the part with the cracked games.
However, my point does still stand. GPU’s rarely have to wait for CPUs these days. So while the CPU utilization would increase with denuvo, it wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on performance.
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
That might be true, but I’m also gonna be very honest, 83MB is irrelevant in a timeline where we have terabytes of storage. Two assets left in the game and never removed would take up more than that. It’s more a question of bad optimization in that case. Also, filesize has nothing to do with performance (unless the filesize is really absurd).
And with it, the stuttering issues that plagued the game when it launched ~5 years prior.
I bought the game a few weeks after release back then and didn’t notice any performance issues, even tho I gotta admit my PC back then was top-of-the-line. So that’s probably not going to be true for everyone.
So, I did some digging regarding that because that’s honestly pretty interesting. So I’ve dug up the patch file list from steam DB for that time, which is https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/7020666/ and to me, this looks like a bunch of optimizations. The performance improvement could’ve just as well been a result of that instead of the removal of Denuvo.
For me personally, it’s just difficult to pinpoint. The way you describe denuvo and how I read about it online doesn’t really lead me to believe that the way it works has any particular impact on performance, unless you have a VERY weird setup, like a RTX 50 series GPU but an ancient CPU. CPU bottlenecking just hasn’t been a thing for over 10 years at this point. So it’s just not that believable. However, at the same time, don’t know enough about the inner workings of denuvo to debunk what you’re saying either.
I never said Denuvo killed any children
Well I obviously never claimed you did, I was just making a funsies.
Businesses that sell games are forgetting that the only thing that keeps them alive is being slightly more convenient than piracy.
I think that’s a pretty stupid stance. If there’s no businesses making games, there’s nothing to pirate. It’s a bit like the AI discussion. If Wikipedia or StackOverflow die, AI will have nothing to learn from.
Thank you for the writeup. Even if theres downvotes piling from people (I mean I guess they think you’re in favor of DRM when you’re mostly indifferent and see its use). Between the back and forth I learned quite a bit about Denuvo and how DRMs work. And while it doesn’t make me like DRM any more its interesting to see how and why things work the way they do. I don’t see a reason why games shouldn’t just patch out DRM after the launch window. I think if you want to avoid a simple copy paste way where friends just send each other a copy of the game there can be a lot more primitive options later on. And the pirate copy is mostly already out there later on
Tbf, most people probably haven’t even read my post in it’s entirety. So I don’t really care about the downvotes. Just tell me I poked into another lemmy hornets nest lol.
I don’t see a reason why games shouldn’t just patch out DRM after the launch window.
Sure, that’s a fine option. I think some games even did that after a while because there’s just no need for it at that point.
I definitely recall part of the setup of Denuvo involves the developer having to call into it on many phases of the game running. But I specifically remember there was a contention where one dev decided to call it every frame, which thrashed some part of the computer, and even Denuvo engineers themselves said that’s a bad idea. It’s more likely something like a common event, something like a player getting a kill, or even loading between levels.
We’re all going to be competing on data about exactly how much Denuvo affects performance, when even common accessibility technologies and other modern game features have effects too. To me, it’s a simple question of whether it’s smooth and playable, and especially in Capcom’s case I can say performance has generally been good.
involves the developer having to call into it on many phases of the game running
Absolutely, I’m not doubting that. That’s how denuvo works from what I understand. My point is that I am doubting that these calls would stall the system hard enough to cause any significant framedrops to be mad about.
If denuvo would result in like 20% performance loss, I’d be mad about it aswell, but everything I’ve seen so far points to a shitty implementation of denuvo that causes the performance loss, not denuvo itself.
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Thanks for the explanation! Didn’t know most of that. Especially the part with the cracked games.
However, my point does still stand. GPU’s rarely have to wait for CPUs these days. So while the CPU utilization would increase with denuvo, it wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on performance.
That might be true, but I’m also gonna be very honest, 83MB is irrelevant in a timeline where we have terabytes of storage. Two assets left in the game and never removed would take up more than that. It’s more a question of bad optimization in that case. Also, filesize has nothing to do with performance (unless the filesize is really absurd).
I bought the game a few weeks after release back then and didn’t notice any performance issues, even tho I gotta admit my PC back then was top-of-the-line. So that’s probably not going to be true for everyone.
So, I did some digging regarding that because that’s honestly pretty interesting. So I’ve dug up the patch file list from steam DB for that time, which is https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/7020666/ and to me, this looks like a bunch of optimizations. The performance improvement could’ve just as well been a result of that instead of the removal of Denuvo.
I also found https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/a-version-of-resident-evil-village-which-reportedly-removes-drm-runs-better-analysis-shows/ which claims that RE:Village runs better without denuvo, and https://www.vg247.com/resident-evil-village-patch-denuvo-drm which says that “adjustments” to how denuvo was used were made. That in turn also leads me to believe that denuvo is only a problem if it’s utilized incorrectly - something that almost any application that interfaces with a game does and can’t be blamed on denuvo, but the dev team.
For me personally, it’s just difficult to pinpoint. The way you describe denuvo and how I read about it online doesn’t really lead me to believe that the way it works has any particular impact on performance, unless you have a VERY weird setup, like a RTX 50 series GPU but an ancient CPU. CPU bottlenecking just hasn’t been a thing for over 10 years at this point. So it’s just not that believable. However, at the same time, don’t know enough about the inner workings of denuvo to debunk what you’re saying either.
Well I obviously never claimed you did, I was just making a funsies.
I think that’s a pretty stupid stance. If there’s no businesses making games, there’s nothing to pirate. It’s a bit like the AI discussion. If Wikipedia or StackOverflow die, AI will have nothing to learn from.
Thank you for the writeup. Even if theres downvotes piling from people (I mean I guess they think you’re in favor of DRM when you’re mostly indifferent and see its use). Between the back and forth I learned quite a bit about Denuvo and how DRMs work. And while it doesn’t make me like DRM any more its interesting to see how and why things work the way they do. I don’t see a reason why games shouldn’t just patch out DRM after the launch window. I think if you want to avoid a simple copy paste way where friends just send each other a copy of the game there can be a lot more primitive options later on. And the pirate copy is mostly already out there later on
Tbf, most people probably haven’t even read my post in it’s entirety. So I don’t really care about the downvotes. Just tell me I poked into another lemmy hornets nest lol.
Sure, that’s a fine option. I think some games even did that after a while because there’s just no need for it at that point.
I definitely recall part of the setup of Denuvo involves the developer having to call into it on many phases of the game running. But I specifically remember there was a contention where one dev decided to call it every frame, which thrashed some part of the computer, and even Denuvo engineers themselves said that’s a bad idea. It’s more likely something like a common event, something like a player getting a kill, or even loading between levels.
We’re all going to be competing on data about exactly how much Denuvo affects performance, when even common accessibility technologies and other modern game features have effects too. To me, it’s a simple question of whether it’s smooth and playable, and especially in Capcom’s case I can say performance has generally been good.
Absolutely, I’m not doubting that. That’s how denuvo works from what I understand. My point is that I am doubting that these calls would stall the system hard enough to cause any significant framedrops to be mad about.
If denuvo would result in like 20% performance loss, I’d be mad about it aswell, but everything I’ve seen so far points to a shitty implementation of denuvo that causes the performance loss, not denuvo itself.