The dreaded Denuvo debate - or, fighting against your right to pi-rate

*to the tune of The Beastie Boys' (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)

Within the medium of video games, there is no term greater in its inherent horror than inventory management; a close second, however, is Digital Rights Management, or DRM. Through the binary magic of technology, DRM allows copyright holders to regulate access to their product, preventing measures of illicit distribution and modification. As the United States are known to use their vassal state of Hollywood to retain their monopoly on entertainment, it is only natural that their philosophy extends to preventing active piracy of their content. Evidently, the U.S. government are more active in preventing capital losses from Tinseltown’s studios at their creative debt-ceiling than … well, most civic and cosmopolitan issues. Regardless, DRM is an effective tool in limiting instances of online piracy engagement to a nominal 141 billion visits, revealing a mere 730,000 film and television titles.

Indeed, DRM is a band-aid remedy to a surgical problem: that of distribution. Gabe Newell, the Rick Rubin of the gaming industry, famously noted “piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem”. Granted, this was nearly thirteen years ago; licences certainly did not invariably require $124.95 AUD for entry. In the time since, this conundrum has evolved: when a service indexes a title, the price represents an irreconcilable barrier. However, did you dare underestimate the wiles of these sagacious buisnesses? Instead of providing consumers with a direct path to tenuous ownership, they employ subscription services to tether their credit card to their platform - thanks Netflix! This illustrates the ongoing deception plaguing the industry, wherein players believe they are receiving broader means of autonomy in relation to their library; rather, their degrees of volition are becoming increasingly acute.

Xbox Games Pass, for instance, asks for a tender $19.99 a month, or $239 a year. In my local currency, the figure becomes $275.88 - two and a bit Spider-Man 2’s! Oh boy, I can access upwards of one hundred titles! If only my time on Earth was unlimited, and my professional commitments were meagre. Adding this figure atop general amenities and other entertainment subscriptions illuminates the horror of this atrophied era of consumption: everything is permitted, not given. Therefore, given gaming’s standing as our most important frivolity, pirates are raise their sails to steal from the rich and give to the poor - via virus-laden, seedy portals.

Resident Evil: Village, along with its intrinsic biohazards, was plagued by Denuvo’s antics.

Nevertheless, with respect to DRM’s paramount significance in ensuring universal security, publishers that depend upon reaping profits without the shackles of subscription need their initial weeks to be as fruitful as imagined. Enter: Denuvo. An anti-tamper software, Denuvo works through assigning a unique ‘token’ to every single copy of a game, accounting for the consumer’s own hardware. Consequently, this prevents the game from being cracked, as it imprints upon the licence a series of contingencies inexorable to the computer it originated from. This is a thoroughly successful measure in principle - publishers can track sales with ease, safe in the knowledge that this symbiotic bind prevents piracy on the most base level. However, due to a dependency upon CPU verification, games bearing Denuvo - if optimised incorrectly - can drastically impact performance compared its cracked kin.

A report from William M. Volckmann II analyised the commercial benefit of Denuvo implementation, particularly against its evident side effects. In short, Volckmann discerned Denuvo shields revenue from piracy to a mean tally of 15% and a median of 20%. However, it does not yield material benefit after a period of three months, due to its influence on hardware and its anti-consumer stigma. Crucially, Denuvo becomes one with the very code of the game, adding unnecessary wear to one’s equipment. If it were left active in perpetuity, engagement with a title bearing its mark could dampen broader performance. Yes, this percentage could be the saving grace of an independent studio. raising the possibility of swifter profitability. Furthermore, the onus is placed upon the studio to implement Denuvo in an appropriate manner; Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s drastically improved performance following its removal of the software cannot entirely be attributed to its excision. If a game is poorly optimised with regard to CPU capacity, Denuvo will likely suffer in kind.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s disasturous PC debut choked on its ambition.

Curiously, in November of 2021, titles that bore Denuvo experienced severe incompatibilities with Intel’s Alder Lake hybrid CPU. Therefore, condemnation cannot entirely be reserved for development teams. Though the issue would later be resolved - save for a select few titles, my sympathies for the perseverant souls still flying around in Anthem - it encapsulates the serpentining nature of the DRM debate. Certainly, Denuvo is effective in its execution; the software is typically cracked after Volckmann’s identified window of vulnerability - if at all. However, it is worth drawing consumer ire to protect less than a fifth of your revenue on a single title? Scrutiny must be paid in either direction, ensuring titles imbued with the software perform to an identical standard to those without. Remember, CD Projekt Red launched Cyberpunk: 2077 on their DRM-free platform, relying on active DMCA notices - though pirates may have heard it was best to wait a while.