Denuvo/Irdeto "TraceMark for Gaming" Introduced at GDC 2024

[Lakados]

They should try playing catchup with the performance they suck out of titles with every iteration of their cancerous programing.

I'm not certain it's that bad, I am pretty sure it just gets attached to titles that are shit to begin with.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

Research into other DRM methods out there Tracemark is Denuvo playing catchup to the functionality found in most of the other lesser known DRM solutions from their competitors.

Interesting that the most notorious DRM today is playing catch-up. That shouldn't be hilarious but it is

I'm not certain it's that bad, I am pretty sure it just gets attached to titles that are shit to begin with.

I'm certain there is a degree of overlap of it being poorly implemented or on titles that are shit, so you're not wrong lol

 

[Lakados]

Interesting that the most widely used and notorious DRM today is playing catch-up. That shouldn't be hilarious but it is

Hardly the most widely used, just the most famous.

 

[Flogger23m]

Village is still listed on steam as containing denuvo, there seems to be no clear pattern to what they are doing.

I'm not seeing it anymore on the Steam page. May I am missing it.

That is no excuse especially for outright spying proposed by the tech here.

I don't disagree, I was just clearing up the performance issues with Village. It was related to their own DRM.

Denuvo can still increase loading time slightly and possibly impact lower end CPUs. IMO that is too much of a downside for it to be considered okay.

 

[M76]

Not a specific DRM, but DRM in some form, that is why there are so many different DRM companies and platforms that offer basic anti-tamper to full-on content and sales protection going after fake domains and online accounts.
It's why Microsoft bought PlayFab and later teamed up with Adobes Magneto so they could roll out the Azure Media Services (It's a DRM platform), Apple and Google operate a joint mobile DRM platform Google calls it Widevine and Apple calls it FairPlay, but its the same thing, Amazon was running one but shuttered it and went to Microsoft, then there is Denuvo, Redpoints, Steamworks, long list.

Yet we never heard of most of them, except for the really bad ones, which means the problem is not DRM per see, but invasive, performance killing, or otherwise bad DRM, like starforce, securom, denuvo...
So the question remains why do they keep using trash like denuvo then? That's a rhetorical question, I know they do it due to the lobbying of said companies and because of gamer shills who even support this garbage.

Furthermore, numerous scholarly articles going back as far as 2005 comparing digital media sales and DRM and how it impacted estimated or known piracy, show it at the very least doesn't hurt game sales and does hinder piracy in developed countries while doing a lot in developing countries where they have seen an almost 100% increase in sales going from 1 in 5 being pirated games to 1 in 10. It also has a strong impact on in-game stores and serves well in protecting them from 3'rd party unlocks.

If they are numerous why not cite at least one relevant article? Of course DRM hinders privacy (Freudian slip, but accurate, I meant piracy) especially in developing countries, but that is meaningless, what matters is the number of pirates that are converted to paying customers, and the paying customers who are alienated in the process. Simply going from 1 in 5 being pirated games to 1 in 10 doesn't mean sales increased 100%, it can mean half as many people play pirated games, with no change in sales, or sales could even have dropped.

Research is usually done or sponsored by the DRM companies themselves, they are not seeking to show the truth, they are seeking to justify their existence. Just as when denuvo proposed that they will create a benchmark to show they have absolutely no impact on performance. "We investigated ourselves and found absolutely no issues"

And for every "sales fell short" or "sales exceeded" expectations there are numerous "sold exactly as expected", they are accurate when the product is as expected, games that are utter garbage though like Dragons Dogma 2 should land in the fell short category (greatly exceeding though), has absolutely nothing to do with DRM however and everything to do with how much of a steaming pile the game is.

Success and failure are not monoliths, there is granularity between being an absolute failure and a blowout success. I don't believe there is any way to even approximately show the impact of DRM on sales, because it is a moving target.

Since you are not referencing any source I can't help but conclude that your statements are simply your head canon. Which doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong, but I need something concrete to be convinced.

 

[M76]

I'm not seeing it anymore on the Steam page. May I am missing it.

I could've sworn it was there yesterday when I checked, I can't find it today either. Maybe I looked at something else. I still see it on RE4.

I don't disagree, I was just clearing up the performance issues with Village. It was related to their own DRM.

Denuvo can still increase loading time slightly and possibly impact lower end CPUs. IMO that is too much of a downside for it to be considered okay.

There were more than one case where games tested after cracking has shown a significant increase in performance and reduction in micro-stuttering.
Village was an extreme case, but it doesn't mean denuvo is free otherwise or would only affect lower end cpus.

 

[Lakados]

Yet we never heard of most of them, except for the really bad ones, which means the problem is not DRM per see, but invasive, performance killing, or otherwise bad DRM, like starforce, securom, denuvo...
So the question remains why do they keep using trash like denuvo then? That's a rhetorical question, I know they do it due to the lobbying of said companies and because of gamer shills who even support this garbage.

If they are numerous why not cite at least one relevant article? Of course DRM hinders privacy (Freudian slip, but accurate, I meant piracy) especially in developing countries, but that is meaningless, what matters is the number of pirates that are converted to paying customers, and the paying customers who are alienated in the process. Simply going from 1 in 5 being pirated games to 1 in 10 doesn't mean sales increased 100%, it can mean half as many people play pirated games, with no change in sales, or sales could even have dropped.

Research is usually done or sponsored by the DRM companies themselves, they are not seeking to show the truth, they are seeking to justify their existence. Just as when denuvo proposed that they will create a benchmark to show they have absolutely no impact on performance. "We investigated ourselves and found absolutely no issues"

Success and failure are not monoliths, there is granularity between being an absolute failure and a blowout success. I don't believe there is any way to even approximately show the impact of DRM on sales, because it is a moving target.

Since you are not referencing any source I can't help but conclude that your statements are simply your head canon. Which doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong, but I need something concrete to be convinced.

Denuvo isn’t that bad, when done correctly but what it is, is easy to implement (not necessarily well). But it has issues with UE4 if you don’t manage threads well (it can scratch the hell out of your storage), I believe they fixed this in UE5 in that it’s easier to manage threads. But it’s easier to implement other less intrusive DRM models there.

This is a more recent paper than the ones I was working off of.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w19150
It studies if it’s better to block piracy sites than implement restrictive DRM schemes. And it generally finds that the answer there is yes.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...Consumer_Intention_to_Pirate_Digital_Products
This one here from 2011 found that it works but needs follow up with explaining why piracy is wrong and that DRM alone isn’t enough.
https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=2456551
And this one here finds that heavy handed DRM is counter productive that that using lighter DRM and features is better so you ensure that the legal product is always superior to the illegal one works best.


https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/674020
This one breaks down a lot of different papers and finds that Piracy has a large impact on legal sales. But also finds that most heavy handed DRM schemes are counter to consumer desire and they need to be balanced or you drive away customers.
Which is relevant to the current streaming services because there is correlation to the increase in the number of streaming services with exclusive content and the increase in piracy surrounding that content. But thats adjacent to this topic.

But all of them show correlation between successful DRM efforts and increased revenue, but similarly shown that DRM can be done poorly and have at best no positive impacts.

But unfortunately it comes down to requirements on protecting monetary investments from 3’rd parties. They want some form of reasonable assurance that you are protecting their investment from thieves it’s actual effectiveness is irrelevant. Can be equated to a locked door, and its value as a deterrent to break ins.

Denuvo thought is controversial, because it is extremely hard to tell where its actual performance penalties end and the games poor programming begins. It also seems to be added more frequently to games that review poorly for reasons other than performance, which points back to some of the findings above on how adding DRM to a lesser product might increases sales.
However given current pricing of games it also spits in the face of those findings that basically says nobody is going to pay large sums of money for garbage regardless of DRM schemes.

Basically at $70 piracy is going to increase regardless and sales will decrease.

Denuvo though is popular with big banks and investment firms as they view it as a “good” deterrent to pirates. So if you are seeking external funding or are publicly traded and don’t run your own DRM then it’s almost considered a requirement if you want to secure funding.

But now I’m rambling.

 

[Flogger23m]

There were more than one case where games tested after cracking has shown a significant increase in performance and reduction in micro-stuttering.
Village was an extreme case, but it doesn't mean denuvo is free otherwise or would only affect lower end cpus.

Yeah like I said, at the minimum even when implemented properly, it does impact lower end CPUs and increases loading time slightly. It essentially raises the minimum specifications slightly. That is too much of an impact. And when you have multiple other types of DRM, like Ubisoft and Capcom likes, chances are there may be an even bigger performance hit with all three running. Ubisoft typically uses three DRM schemes at once.

Denuvo often triggers on certain gameplay aspects. For example in Village, it was tied to things like blocking, or certain animations playing. That may be where microstutters come from.