Comment by lesuorac
21 hours ago
> For a long time now I've found it weird that people who like single player games on PC (and to a lesser extent older consoles which had piracy enabling mods) didn't acknowledge the long game consequences of their actions
Isn't historically piracy positive for sales [1]?
That said, I'm pretty sure the real issue is that single / local coop games are just not appealing and so they get weaker sales. Like wtf was with Pikmen 2 not letting player 2 control louie? And then when local games start to sell poorly they get divestment but I'm pretty sure it was just lousey games and not piracy.
[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira...
>Isn't historically piracy positive for sales [1]?
if it was for the companies who use Denuvo and it added negative value then Denuvo wouldn't exist as a business and game publishers would happily post their games to pirate sites themselves.
The level of copium involved in piracy debates is always a sight to behold. I'm no saint, I've pirated stuff too but I did so because I was cheap, not because I'm doing the company a favor. That's a level of rationalization you expect from a drug addict
> if it was for the companies who use Denuvo and it added negative value then Denuvo wouldn't exist as a business and game publishers would happily post their games to pirate sites themselves.
Efficient market fallacy strikes again.
No, is is absolutely possible that use of Denuvo results in a net loss and it is still used. Executives don't always behave rational and it is not like you can AB Test that thing or even easily measure its impact.
How are the game companies supposed to determine that it adds negative value? Speak to the alternative universe where the same game wasn't bundled with it?
>How are the game companies supposed to determine that it adds negative value?
Look at their own/industry data of comparable games that have been published with or without protection. I worked in the game industry, for AAA studios it's a no brainer. Denuvo for a big title that sells millions of copies runs about high six or low seven figures in costs, so about 1-3% of the budget, whereas preventing piracy in the first 12 weeks meant something like a 10-20% increase (tens of millions) in sales.
The use of Denuvo has nothing to do with whether piracy hurts sales, only whether executives think piracy hurts sales. As we just saw, actual research on this topic has been suppressed because the results were wrongthink.
>if it was for the companies who use Denuvo and it added negative value then Denuvo wouldn't exist as a business and game publishers
If everyone colludes, then the game publishers wouldn't need to suffer for including Denuvo. And the nature of the collusion doesn't require some literal conspiracy, it just requires that the personalities at the top of the pyramids (of which there are but a few) are assholes who have an ideological bent. We are all aware of the type: they would spend themselves into the poorhouse making certain no one can "steal" from them, and what they consider theirs isn't entirely congruent with what the law says.
>The level of copium involved in piracy debates is always a sight to behold. I'm no saint, I've pirated stuff too b
I've never pirated anything. I don't hijack ships at sea. I have infringed copyright, but when copyright laws are bought and paid for my lobbyist slush funds, I don't feel any reason to give a shit about those laws. They were only ever utilitarian anyway, not some moral principle, and right now they're not even utilitarian.
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> Is this really the most likely scenario or is it perhaps the one you’d like to believe the most?
You mean the companies that have an unnecessary 5 min file load wait in GTA5 are also the same companies that insert the same files into a binary multiple times to speed up load times by having sequential reads for all art assets?
The world is irrational.
I like how condescending the tone is in this post about how data can’t be right if it doesn’t really line up with somebody’s sort of general feelings about how smart game developers are, especially given that it’s usually publishers that make the call about things like Denuvo, not the developers.
Vast majority of developers/studios don't use any DRM at all.