Denuvo Wants To Convince Gamers That DRM Won’t Impact Game Performance

Denuvo Wants To Convince Gamers That DRM Won’t Impact Game Performance

Image: Irdeto (YouTube)

Gamers knows the name “Denuvo” better than anyone else: the anti-piracy DRM (Digital rights management) that gained notoriety among players due to many alleged, and even verified cases of performance losses due to DRM interfering with gameplay. This often manifests itself as frame stuttering, which crack groups – who specializes in cracking DRMs – use to justify their causes in providing cracked copies of the game.

Denuvo’s current owner since 2018, Irdeto, has decided to clear things up courtesy of an interview by Ars Technica. Irdeto COO of Video Games, Steeve Huin, has came up and defend the company claiming that the DRM technology helps preserving the gaming industry. “Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher’s] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game,” he said.

The company is aiming to publish a benchmark to prove that DRM won’t hurt performance. He says Irdeto is currently working on a program that sets to provide two versions of the same game – one with DRM and one without, to trusted media outlets. He hopes that tech press can “see for yourself that the performance is comparable, identical… and that would provide something that would hopefully be trusted by the community.”

However, depending on who you ask, the impact of Denuvo on DRM-protected games differ. Ars’s own test proved no difference; whereas YouTube channels such as Overlord Gaming has found significant difference in performance when comparing the DRM and DRM-less version of the game. Cracked copies of Resident Evil Village also claimed to solve stuttering issues caused by Denuvo’s DRM protection (which the developers has later removed in an update).

GOG.com (a subsidiary of CD Projekt RED) sells only the games without DRM attached.

Matter of fact, some publishers even distance themselves from Denuvo due to its notoriety – and that includes CD Projekt RED, who prided themselves with games that come DRM-free, and argued that those who pirate games “were never going to purchase a legitimate copy”, meaning no sale is lost effectively. He further added that the best way forward is to simply deliver a good game, and players will be incentivized to purchase official copies of the game to support the developers.

Denuvo is also looking beyond anti-piracy tools. They’re also developing anti-cheat which works on “some of the same principles” as their DRM, but promises minimal performance impact. “Less than one percent is the metric we use for validating,” he said. In any case, if Denuvo is looking to change their perception by proving it won’t hurt gaming performance, they have got a long way to go.

Pokdepinion: We’ll see how it turns out, they’ve got plenty to prove in order for the public to regain trust.