Piracy on PC is dying

Major Publishers are using Denuvo on AAA games (Which taking Hackers months to years to not able to to crack also ).

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Thats a good thing, people will buy more n more games off steam, origin,uplay and devs/publishers ( including small time devs) will make more PC games. Discuss :)

Good, I hope they're successful.

Too bad Denuvo costs too much for smaller companys

or games are just becoming more accessible?

Denuvo seems to ruin games in terms of performance ....i've heard this somewhere , dunno if it's true or not.

Wonder what the devs are going to blame from now on when their hyped-up games tank.

Its a fallacy to assume that less piracy means more sales, thats assuming the pirates are willing to spend money or that they would given no choice.

Also sales on the PC are increasing year on year across the board even with piracy and more developers are making more games than ever before so thats a moot point.

Ever since Valve launched Steam, and offered people an amazing service for the price, piracy has been on the decline.

Valve's appraoch has always been not to include draconian DRM (Dunovo, install restrictions, old Ubisoft DRM that can't even connect to the bloody server) but to offer an amazing service.

Indeed. This is how you combat piracy without being an assface.

Was never into piracy. Too much effort half the time. I have a job. It pays well enough for me to afford a nice computer. I can afford to buy some games.

I assume Denuvo games aren't on GOG then?

That's alright I will just borrow those games later and buy games with less restrictive DRM.

Not a big fan of online only DRM (which this is as it's combined with other DRM) that isn't easily circumventable.

Consoles are less restrictive, which is a joke. Looks like a PC nobs are just going to roll over as usual.

Greenmangaming.com with its 25% discounts for launch games is more responsible in killing piracy than denuvo actually. I buy games nowadays not because I can't pirate them , but because of achievements, cloud saving and automatic patching. And great pricing for launch days on pc sweets the deal.

They usually have older games. Exceptions are TW3 and SOMA (which I just bought at GoG an hour ago). Most GoG games are three years old and older which is fine. No disc. No DRM.

Yeah, I often tell pirates this:

"Why would I pirate when a game often needs 10 patches (and gets free updates) that make the game better. You're in for such a bad trip trying to get all updates for a pirated copy"

Many aspects are killing piracy.

But on the other hand, crappy ports like Mortal Kombat X, Arkham Knight, Tales of ..., and others are leading to people getting burnt and looking to pirate again.

They get a lot of newer games now(Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Prison Architect, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Hong Kong, etc) and recently starting offering early access titles.

Who was it again argued piracy was due to accessibility and not price? Killing piracy will have little effect on sales me thinks.

Not this Denuvo advertisement again. It's not necessary to have thread about Denuvo every week.

Piracy is a none issue if the game is good and marketed well. What matters are actual sale numbers and not number of copies pirated.

Piracy will always be here. Bad games won't sell, no matter how good the DRM is. At the end of the day, it just hurts legal customers. Witcher 3 sold best on GOG, an anti DRM platform.

And as others have said,,, DRM haven't done shit. Sale numbers go up due to better customer service and sales on digital distribution platforms.

What is price if not financial accessibility?

Piracy has no affect on sales but they both have the same underlying mechanism.

If you make a product desirable and accessible people will buy it.

If you make a product desirable but difficult to access few people will buy it.

Piracy is a weild third kingdom metric that can only be measured on virtual products. It is a count of people who are interested in the product but not enough to buy it.

As long as the DRM isn't intrusive I'm okay with it and it can stop some piracy. But I don't think Denuvo will stop piracy whole sale. As long as there are people who have currency with terrible exchange rates, Piracy will probably exist.

That statement is utter nonsense. The notion that piracy actually hurts publishers, or anyone, is an absurd idea invented by the makers of DRM to justify their existence. One part of it is the myth of the lost sale. The assumption goes that a game pirated is a sale lost. There's no evidence of that. Another myth is that sales would be higher were it not for pirates. It's an extension of the first and it's also nonsensical for two reasons. First it's an hypothesis contrary to fact. Second there's no evidence to support such a belief at any rate. In point of fact the only available evidence suggests the opposite - piracy seems to increase sales rather than decrease them. Cracking down on piracy for that reason is as dumb as trying to take a slice of a Youtube video maker's ad revenue when they feature a game on a channel. It's completely counter-productive. A third myth, or really a lie, is that the methods to combat piracy are themselves of a neutral quality and either impose trivial costs or low enough costs that the methods overall turn a profit. The first part is obviously false (implementing DRM costs money, for the DRM and the additional burdens it imposes on the development team and software support, for the burdens it imposes on potential users, for damage to image done if the DRM is particularly onerous, plus it fundamentally sours the relationship between consumer and producer; it presumptuously treats the buyer of a product like a criminal while the criminal incurs no such penalties) while the second is just an iterative further step on the previous fallacies and pyramided atop them.

"It's a problem that has re-shaped the industry as we know it, promoting micro-transactions and DRM in more games than not."

Ironically these elements encourage the problem though DRM makers might be doing so intentionally. By designing their DRM in such a way as to make legitimate use inconvenient those who might consider illicit or cracked copies just for the convenience of not having to, say, put up with a rootkit on their system (SecuROM) or serious performance hits (Denuvo) become 'marginal' pirates. They wouldn't do it otherwise but the abuse from the publisher inclines them to torrent a game (even if they already bought it) and effectively support piracy they might otherwise oppose.

How does GOG work? Can you just pay and download any game for any PC? Or is it locked to a launcher app like Steam?

Seems like the amount of users on torrents is about the same to me. The only point to make is if your game is good, people will buy it. You'll never stop piracy completely.

It will probably stop the pirates who never plan on buying games in the first place

It is being blamed for Tomb Raider's stutters, but that is the first and only thing I've heard about Denuvo.

Apparently it has been installed on quite a few major titles, and if this is the first I am hearing about it, maybe we have our first non-intrusive, player-friendly DRM. One can only hope.

*My only fear is that if this DOES work, it will pave the way for greedier publishers to try something even more, like "Hey, Denuvo works, but it is not good enough! Let's try this" and then the next thing you know, a decade has gone by, and you have to sign a waiver handing over remote access of your PC to play a video game.

Right. It's important to remember the people that actually crack the game do it for the challenge, for fun, or out of some weird sense of social justice (i.e. robbing the rich to give to the poor...more like robbing from the rich publisher, the hardworking and likely now-bankrupt developer, and in some sense the people too.

Piracy will always be around, it just won't be as accessible or as casual as it has been.

True. They don't quite have the pomp and hype of blockbuster titles (AAA). But, a good game is a good game.

I'm not against piracy just buy the indie games at least

You download the install files and patches from GoG. It's up to you to install or update the game. No DRM client. No disc. You can have all networking shut off and the game will still play.

Unfortunately, the list of brand new games for GoG is still short. Blockbusters such as GTA V are even rarer or non-existent.

well said

I dunno, for every security measure, there will be people finding a way to get around it...

Piracy doesn't always equal lost sales. Just look at Just Cause 3, uses denuvo but hasn't done too great in terms of sales.

Just Cause 3 didn't sell well?

pretty sure this isn't true, I think this myth started with Lords of the Fallen which had optimization issues people incorrectly attributed to Denuvo.

I've heard it does bad things to SSD's but I haven't seen much evidence to back this up

@indzman:Not terribly, but according to steamspy, JC3 has sold 464,699 copies. Certainly expected more sales considering the quality of JC2.

Denuvo helps with some games against Piracy, there's no doubt about that but it it'll likely have no impact on actual sales.

Steam sales help but the emergence of legit key resellers, such GMG, and the selling of games at bargain prices will bring a lot of people who would like to buy games but can't afford them away from the piracy option.

You'll never win over the "why buy when I can get for free" attitude pirates though.

Why? Why God?

Uh god, doesn't that leave it open for anyone to rar the game folder and just pirate it? I can see why many devs won't go near it.

This. The best part is, Steam is not DRM. Steamworks is, and it is up to the developer if they want to use that or their own DRM. I have loads of games on steam that I can run without steam going.

Proven false quite early on, and the original Ukraine source that every other site on the internet fancied to cite was taken down.

Still, doesn't stop people from spreading misinformation.

The hope is that a cheaper alternative or a competitor to Denuvo surfaces. Then again, we don't actually know how much Denuvo costs. It may actually be quite affordable. The more definite reason is that indies these days prize high number of distribution channels over tight security. If it's a choice between Denuvo and distribution from GOG (in addition to other sources), then most will prefer and benefit more from the latter.

AAA games on the other hand don't care nearly as much. Some are also becoming increasingly willing to abandon Steam entirely.

Also a fallacy to assume that less piracy doesn't mean more sales.

If it can't be proven either way, then piracy should still die as a matter of right.

Here's how you prevent PC piracy. Avoid releasing your game on the pirate machine. Simple easy fix. Easier than DRM.

True. It's probably why many GoG games tend to be older games, three years old and older. They're past that predetermined point at which the game can earn the most money for the developer.

@with_teeth26: @GhoX Thanks, i wanted to be sure about that.

Except it doesn't. Pretending console piracy doesn't exist is not going to make it go away.

For example, right now the Denuvo-protected titles are pirated entirely on consoles. I think the logical next-step for the AAA publishers are probably protecting console titles with Denuvo as well, but that's more of a firmware-related issue so they may have to get Sony/Microsoft to protect the firmware against tampering with Denuvo instead.

I'm a little confused, good to hear that they have a good anti-piracy system, and indeed the piracy community seems to be sweating bullets given their perpetuating fear that this anti-piracy system will ruin your HDD; seems to validate its effectiveness. But how's it work that if they figure out how to crack one game that they won't discover the trick to get the rest with little effort?

Well, at the very least it works in the present which is good enough.

The lengths some go in mental gymnastics to justify piracy always amuses me. You can't prove a negative, yea, so this defense is predicated on a fallacy in itself. How to see evidence? But don't shovel me this horseshit that we'd not see one more sale had people no other alternative to attain software only through legitimate means. Give me a break. Just cut through the bullshit and say you pirate, it's at least a position I'd find far more respectable than posting essays in a desperate attempt to sleep well at night.

What's really laughable is to attempt to argue piracy is somehow morally acceptable. Hopefully one day these people will actually work to no ultimate recompense from those who would gain enjoyment from it under the rationale of, "well, they wouldn't have bought it anyway". So. Fucking. WHAT?? You have it. That demonstrates interest, desire. That you wouldn't have bought it in the first place is completely irrelevant once you are using it. That "fact" (prove it?) does not somehow give you an inherent right. I'd love to be able to walk around the world, going into stores, and pulling shit off the shelves and walking out of the store with the reasoning I'd never have bought it in the first place when confronted by police. See how far that gets me.

But hey, I'm not entitled. I'm just stating the facts.

Ehhh, I think you will see an increase in sales, but not to the same amount that was being pirated.

The false rumour was that it damages SSD, and it was quickly disproven. Even the original rumour didn't claim it affected HDD!

Cracking Denuvo on one game does not make it easier to crack other games running Denuvo. At the moment, Denuvo games probably take between 3-12 months per game. And so when multiple big releases with Denuvo come out around the same time (e.g. Just Cause 3 & Rise of the Tomb Raider), the crackers get completely rekt.

@naz99: Sales increase on PC is total revenue mainly from Free to play it has nothing to do with actual game sales.