Denuvo DRM Pricing Structure Specific to Crysis Remastered Leaked, over $100k for a Year

erek

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"A leaked contract document signed by Denuvo and Crytek CEO dug up by FCKDRM reveals what Crytek paid for Denuvo, and what the DRM's typical pricing structure looks like. It calls for a flat protection fee of 126,000-140,000 Euros for the first 12 months, 2,000 Euros each month following the first 12 months, an additional 60,000€ flat fee in case the game sees more than 500,000 activations in 30 days, a 0.40€ surcharge on activations on the WeGame platform, and 10,000€ for each additional storefront (if the game is being sold in more than one online storefront platform)."

https://www.techpowerup.com/275158/...is-remastered-leaked-over-usd-100k-for-a-year
 
That's pretty crazy. There are definitely more cost effective (and less intrusive) ways to combat piracy.
 
Huh, that’s much lower than I would have thought. (Given the cost of skilled software engineering labor, I routinely have to spend more to get less.)
 
Honestly that is not a lot to a publisher when a game can sell millions of copies. I prefer not to have it in my games but I really never had a issue with games that use.
 
Once the licensing term runs-out and a publisher isn't paying the $2000 Euros it costs to keep Denuvo in a game, do they have to remove it from their games that they've already published on platforms like GoG, EGS, and Steam? Or does it just prevent the publisher from being able to update the version of Denuvo that is used in an already-released game?
 
That's pretty crazy. There are definitely more cost effective (and less intrusive) ways to combat piracy.
The solution is to not fight piracy. The more you fight the less likely you'll win. The only true solution to piracy is better products with cheaper prices. You have to give people a better reason to buy than to pirate. With micro-transactions, DLC's, exclusivity, and $70 priced games, those seem to give piracy more legitimacy than ever. When the customer is the enemy then they have no reason to support you by buying your games. Witcher 3 is proof that games don't need DRM to profit.
 
All this for mostly nothing. There is no revolving door between piracy and purchases. If someone can't pirate a game, they'll not buy it, they'll pirate another game instead.

It has never been proven that uncracked games sell more copies.
 
There's no mention of whether the cost of Denuvo will be refunded if it's cracked within a certain time-frame?
 
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All this for mostly nothing. There is no revolving door between piracy and purchases. If someone can't pirate a game, they'll not buy it, they'll pirate another game instead.

Incorrect. If someone can't pirate a game, some will not buy it, some will buy it -- the "I got tired of waiting for crack & caved" types are the revenue that the protection measures capture. If it takes a week, or a month+ to get cracked, that's still additional sales. The people just pirate everything aren't the concern, or even part of the discussion, and aren't entitled to anything.

It has never been proven that uncracked games sell more copies.

It doesn't require complex brainmath to understand RDR2 sold more copies by being uncrackable for more than a year, versus had it been cracked on day one.
 
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And yet, in a year RDR2's value has plummetted so much they are going to sell the online only version for $5. All in hopes of getting people to buy in game gold for money like in gta online. Oh, and RDR2 online is full of hackers like gta online too.
 
And yet, in a year RDR2's value has plummetted so much they are going to sell the online only version for $5. All in hopes of getting people to buy in game gold for money like in gta online. Oh, and RDR2 online is full of hackers like gta online too.
This has nothing to do with the topic.
 
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The solution is to not fight piracy. The more you fight the less likely you'll win. The only true solution to piracy is better products with cheaper prices. You have to give people a better reason to buy than to pirate. With micro-transactions, DLC's, exclusivity, and $70 priced games, those seem to give piracy more legitimacy than ever. When the customer is the enemy then they have no reason to support you by buying your games. Witcher 3 is proof that games don't need DRM to profit.
All this for mostly nothing. There is no revolving door between piracy and purchases. If someone can't pirate a game, they'll not buy it, they'll pirate another game instead.

It has never been proven that uncracked games sell more copies.
The success of games on gaming consoles (with very low piracy) and game with online game account a la World of Warcraft and GTA 5 online do seem to tell otherwise.

Cheaper price and free to enter is certainly a solution to piracy, but it is easy to end up under that model with Fornite model.

The make it harder to pirate model like the play station 5, nintendo's and Xbox Series with a focus on multiplayer do seem to be an excellent way to fight piracy (but maybe that what you mean by a better product than a PC)
 
Now if only they used some of that money to port to a game engine that used more than 2 friggen CPU threads. Shit port.
 
Incorrect. If someone can't pirate a game, some will not buy it, some will buy it -- the "I got tired of waiting for crack & caved" types are the revenue that the protection measures capture. If it takes a week, or a month+ to get cracked, that's still additional sales. The people just pirate everything aren't the concern, or even part of the discussion, and aren't entitled to anything.

Pretty much. The cost is pretty cheap. They'd only need a net gain of a few thousand sales to make up the cost of Denuvo. I don't like it at all in the slightest, but it is probably cost effective.
 
Real pirates will wait until some sketchy site posts the cracked version with god only knows what other things bundled with it and they won't care. Casual pirates are deterred and they will either bite the bullet and buy it or they will wait until it's up on GoG or Steam sales a few months from now and the Denuvo will likely be removed by then because it's served its purpose, and people who were going to buy it will buy it regardless and this was never an issue for them.
Who Denuvo mostly appeasers is publishers and their insurance companies and investors and blah blah blah, release a game and you don't have it or some protection and things go bad those people look for who's to blame, have it and you are at least covered from blame because you have done the bare minimum to combat it.
 
Incorrect. If someone can't pirate a game, some will not buy it, some will buy it -- the "I got tired of waiting for crack & caved" types are the revenue that the protection measures capture. If it takes a week, or a month+ to get cracked, that's still additional sales. The people just pirate everything aren't the concern, or even part of the discussion, and aren't entitled to anything.
Do you have a single fact to back that up? That's the same type of wishful thinking the companies engage in when paying for this bs. Most who pirate games do it on principle, they will not buy the game even if it doesn't get cracked. I have a relatively rich friend, neighbor who knows I'm an IT guy, once he asked me to find a crack for a game he likes, because the one he had was giving him trouble. When I suggested to him to buy the game if he likes it so much, he looked at me like I just admitted to raping a schoolbus. I also have a rich (lives in a mansion with 8 car garage in one of the richest neighborhoods) relative, who I also helped with computer troubles. When I told him that he should buy a legitimate copy of windows for his work PC to avoid trouble (and then bothering me) the reaction was similar.

There are two types of pirates, ones that are like this do it on principle (90% of those I know fall into this category) and there are those who pirate games because they can't afford to buy them. They won't buy the game, even if it never gets cracked. One cannot, the other'd rather play something else then. Of course NOTALL, there are outliers, but I live in a country where software piracy was a way of life for the longest time, and was done in the open. I've seen it all. The pirates who buy games that can't be pirated were as common as yetis, or chupacabras. I certainly haven't met a single one who bought a game because there was no crack for it. But I met those who use piracy as a substitute to demos. They'll pirate the game, and when they like it that much they buy it. Of course this phenomenon never gets mentioned by the companies. The music industry has quitely started to embrace it however. now I see it more and more often that they themselves upload their entire albums to youtube. Wonder why is that...
It doesn't require complex brainmath to understand RDR2 sold more copies by being uncrackable for more than a year, versus had it been cracked on day one.
Of course there are a few sales that can be attributed to that. But is it really worth it? To subject all your legitimate customers to a software that eats resources, wastes their time, and often is the cause of issues with games. It also makes it harder to release patches, makes it impossible to mod games, and so on. How many customers do they loose? I see not one, not two, but many who only buy games from gog with no drm. At least that's what they say.
 
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The success of games on gaming consoles (with very low piracy) and game with online game account a la World of Warcraft and GTA 5 online do seem to tell otherwise.
So you are saying those games are only popular because they can't be pirated? That's some strange backwards logic. And piracy on consoles were almost as common as on PC. I always had a hard time selling my previous gen consoles because mine was never modded to accept pirated games.
Cheaper price and free to enter is certainly a solution to piracy, but it is easy to end up under that model with Fornite model.

The make it harder to pirate model like the play station 5, nintendo's and Xbox Series with a focus on multiplayer do seem to be an excellent way to fight piracy (but maybe that what you mean by a better product than a PC)
Well they are shit out of luck with me then, because I'm not interested in multiplayer.
 
Has denuvo ever actually worked? All I've seen about them is getting cracked before game realease...
 
Has denuvo ever actually worked? All I've seen about them is getting cracked before game realease...
When it does it does, and when it doesn't they get refunded. Pirates are going to pirate so its only really there to deter the casual pirates and appease investors and insurance companies.
 
So you are saying those games are only popular because they can't be pirated? That's some strange backwards logic. And piracy on consoles were almost as common as on PC. I always had a hard time selling my previous gen consoles because mine was never modded to accept pirated games.
Well no, easy to pirate would help popularity I would imagine or at least really unsure how it would hurt the popularity of a title in any way.

Those games and platform got the most attention from game dev because it was harder and less common to pirate, I am not sure for the almost as common as PC, source ?, Ubisoft claimed piracy rate on their title was around 93%-95% on the PC side, I doubt it ever got near that on the consoles specially for those that buy them at the store.

Well they are shit out of luck with me then, because I'm not interested in multiplayer.
That 2 way street, when was the large budget only for PC non multiplayer game (or quite connected a la Flight Simulator) we got ? Or just not console in mind first.
 
Do you have a single fact to back that up? That's the same type of wishful thinking the companies engage in when paying for this bs. Most who pirate games do it on principle, they will not buy the game even if it doesn't get cracked. I have a relatively rich friend, neighbor who knows I'm an IT guy, once he asked me to find a crack for a game he likes, because the one he had was giving him trouble. When I suggested to him to buy the game if he likes it so much, he looked at me like I just admitted to raping a schoolbus. I also have a rich (lives in a mansion with 8 car garage in one of the richest neighborhoods) relative, who I also helped with computer troubles. When I told him that he should buy a legitimate copy of windows for his work PC to avoid trouble (and then bothering me) the reaction was similar.

There are two types of pirates, ones that are like this do it on principle (90% of those I know fall into this category) and there are those who pirate games because they can't afford to buy them. They won't buy the game, even if it never gets cracked. One cannot, the other'd rather play something else then. Of course NOTALL, there are outliers, but I live in a country where software piracy was a way of life for the longest time, and was done in the open. I've seen it all. The pirates who buy games that can't be pirated were as common as yetis, or chupacabras. I certainly haven't met a single one who bought a game because there was no crack for it. But I met those who use piracy as a substitute to demos. They'll pirate the game, and when they like it that much they buy it. Of course this phenomenon never gets mentioned by the companies. The music industry has quitely started to embrace it however. now I see it more and more often that they themselves upload their entire albums to youtube. Wonder why is that...

That may be true in less developed countries. And we will obviously never have full statistics, but I'm thinking the majority of pirates in the US/UK/AUS/CAN aren't doing it out of principal or because they absolutely cannot afford it. Obviously it will vary. If someone cannot pirate games they may be forced to buy everything. So instead of playing 10 games a year, they will play 6, because they can only afford 6. So each pirated copy doesn't automatically = lost sale as you said. But it is hard to know exactly how much things would change in terms of buying practices overall.

In any case, the price is fairly low all things considered. Which is probably why Denuvo is so popular. Even if 90% of pirates don't end up buying the game it looks like the publishers will still come out on top. Unless, of course, the games are consistently cracked within a few days of release long term. But it seems like each time the crackers get on a roll they take a half year or more break.
 
There's no mention of whether the cost of Denuvo will be refunded if it's cracked within a certain time-frame?
I can hear it from Denuvo to the complaining client: "Tough luck! it got cracked early because your developers didn't implement it correctly!"
 
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The solution is to not fight piracy. The more you fight the less likely you'll win. The only true solution to piracy is better products with cheaper prices. You have to give people a better reason to buy than to pirate. With micro-transactions, DLC's, exclusivity, and $70 priced games, those seem to give piracy more legitimacy than ever. When the customer is the enemy then they have no reason to support you by buying your games. Witcher 3 is proof that games don't need DRM to profit.
I'm going to disagree here, this is another argument of the end users should get to dictate how much ENTERTAINMENT of a particular nature costs as to whether or not they decide they'll take it illegally. It's entertainment, not food or other essential services, and if the argument goes that "entertainment is essential" then fine... entertain yourself with the free or cheaper stuff that does exist, it's well within your rights to do so. Bottom line is a game company makes a product, markets a product, and ultimately puts a price tag on that product, if you don't like anything about that then don't use that product. Not every game that goes out will be Witcher 3, so making that comparison of "that was successful with no DRM why can't every game be successful" kind of falls flat.

But to stay with you, and say I agree with what you're saying, again it's entertainment you don't need that particular game "right fucking now" to go along with your model of whether or not it's good. I love GTA4 & 5, but I wasn't willing to pay $60 for it... so I waited a year or 2 and it was about 60% off or something like that, sure I'll bite at that price and I happily enjoyed my experience well after most people did I mean hell I was already waiting from the console people who played the crap out of it. So ultimately that's what super annoying shit like Denuvo does, it stops the "I have to have it right fucking now" crowd, the same crowd that will pay 2x the price for a CPU, GPU or console and fuels the industry of scalping.

Ultimately fighting piracy does make money ... for some games. How many people would have pirated GTA5 or RDR2 when it came for PC if there was no copy protection at all? Now I'm not sure what copy protection they use, some in house stuff I guess, but they most definitely would have lost quite a bit of money, and this isn't hypothetical every download = lost sales level of money, some people who paid for it would definitely have not paid for it if the option was "free", now how much does that translate to? I wouldn't even attempt to hazard a guess, because that's all it would be is a guess. And sure maybe there would be some sweet spot of pricing that would actually maximize profits for the company... hell maybe that research has already been done and what we see is the actual sweet spot. Bottom line is the creator of an object whether physical or digital should have the right to decide how much that it costs to have/use that ESPECIALLY when it's something non-essential like a game, or a movie.
 
The success of games on gaming consoles (with very low piracy) and game with online game account a la World of Warcraft and GTA 5 online do seem to tell otherwise.
Piracy in general is very low overall. Piracy on game consoles is now worse than on PC. Modded PS4's could have enjoyed RDR2 a year before it was cracked on PC. World of Warcraft has rampant piracy, thanks to private servers. GTA 5 online I do not know but it's been pirated, like a lot. We're talking about a game that came out on the PS3 and 360. GTA 5 is like super old. It's been pirated 10 ways.
Cheaper price and free to enter is certainly a solution to piracy, but it is easy to end up under that model with Fornite model.
Be more worried about making a good game and offer it for a reasonable price so people will buy it. There aren't a lot of bad games today, but there is a lot of mediocre games. Look at that new Marvel's Avengers video game and how badly it did because they focused less on the game being fun and more on making sure all the check boxes were checked off. Micro-transactions killed it. For the love or god just stop with DLC. The effort put into DLC is better off in a new game.
The make it harder to pirate model like the play station 5, nintendo's and Xbox Series with a focus on multiplayer do seem to be an excellent way to fight piracy (but maybe that what you mean by a better product than a PC)
Don't know about the PS5 since it was just released, but the PS4 and Switch are totally pirated. The Xbox One isn't but then again why would anyone pirate games on that console when you have PC? The industry also tries to push people into multiplayer games but it's clear the audience has a limit to how much multiplayer they can play. You can't make all the games multiplayer since that will have diminishing returns.
 
I notice how only the Warez monkeys are whining about drm here... Interesting.
If you are addressing someone, then have the balls to quote them directly. Of course your baseless accusation wouldn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny. And it remains an ad hominem and a very crude attempt at poisoning the well.
 
soo .. when they say "We're Losing Money to Pirates!" .. they really mean Denuvo..? o_O
 
If you are addressing someone, then have the balls to quote them directly. Of course your baseless accusation wouldn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny. And it remains an ad hominem and a very crude attempt at poisoning the well.
It's true, too.

Nice job outing yourself?
 
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I notice how only the Warez monkeys are whining about drm here... Interesting.
hmm .. and who exactly are these "Warez Monkeys" ..?

I'd always look for cracks to my games so I didn't have to use the disc ..back when I bought games on a disc for PC .. Now it's Steam for any new stuff I might buy .. or free games off of Epic or Steam .. ie .. Destiny, Fortnite, TF2 ..etc.

Hunt:Showdown is the latest game I've bought off of Steam (a year or so ago).. Doom 2016 before that ..

DRM crap just seems to wreck games for legit users/purchaser's .. are they the "Warez Monkeys"?

Oh .. wait a minute .. I get it now .. you're just trolling us .. or the 'sarcasm' font isn't quite working correctly on your keyboard .. right? (y)
 
That may be true in less developed countries. And we will obviously never have full statistics, but I'm thinking the majority of pirates in the US/UK/AUS/CAN aren't doing it out of principal or because they absolutely cannot afford it. Obviously it will vary. If someone cannot pirate games they may be forced to buy everything. So instead of playing 10 games a year, they will play 6, because they can only afford 6. So each pirated copy doesn't automatically = lost sale as you said. But it is hard to know exactly how much things would change in terms of buying practices overall.
This is like when CBS says ST:D is a resounding success while refusing to release any kind of viewership figures. If the numbers would back them up they couldn't stop showing them off in public (to attract investors).
They have telemetry in most of their games so it is very easy for them to tell how many legitimate and how many pirated copies are being played.
In any case, the price is fairly low all things considered. Which is probably why Denuvo is so popular. Even if 90% of pirates don't end up buying the game it looks like the publishers will still come out on top. Unless, of course, the games are consistently cracked within a few days of release long term. But it seems like each time the crackers get on a roll they take a half year or more break.
The legitimate customers certainly aren't coming out on top. And even if they do come out on top in terms of the bottom line, that would still not justify using countermeasures that often hurt the customers. Of course denuvo might not be as bad as some of the other stuff we had previously like where you can't install certain games because the activation servers no longer function, and you need a crack / unofficial launcher to run the game you actually own.
 
The legitimate customers certainly aren't coming out on top.

Clearly the publishers don't care. I'd prefer if Denuvo never existed personally but that isn't changing anytime soon. Only thing that will kill it are constant near release cracks, continuously for years.
 
Nice job outing yourself?
I'll just watch as you dig that hole even deeper.

Imagine being so foolish that when being called out on your failure instead of changing your tactics you double down on the same BS.

I'm starting to wonder whether all this projection is coming from you trying to deflect attention from yourself. Perhaps you are the warez monkey?

After all, it is often the male feminist who cry loudest about female empowerment who privately treat women the worst. Perhaps it applies to this too.
 
I dislike DRM like most other folks. However, I really only had legit issues with 3-4 games, Spore, Asssassin’s Creed, and Silent Hunter 3+. Spore was not even the worst out of those three, AC and SH always online caused me the most problems, especially when I could lose 2-3 hours of progress in SH when I lost connectivity to the server. Or, when I couldn’t play AC at all when the servers were unreachable.

I stopped buying UBI games after that, well untill FC5 I think? Gotta go back and look.
 
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