Well this is an interesting news post for a couple of reasons. Personally, I dislike DRM. A lot. It’s software that reduces end-user rights, as both consumers and potentially even as members of society after copyright expires (depending on how judges, and the Librarian of Congress, interpret whether fair use or expiration will override the DMCA’s felony clauses). It’s especially annoying when you see DRM on content that was pirated prior to the official launch, because ticking off your customers and screwing with archivists will really help you if you can’t even secure your own supply chain.
–deep exhale—
As for today’s story, id Software has officially removed the Denuvo DRM package from their game. On the one hand, it’s good that AAA developers sometimes remove copy-protection after some initial launch window, to limit long-term damage. It’s not DRM-free like you would see on GOG, though, so there is still the possibility that games could artificially die in 10, 40, 100, or 400 years, even if Windows and the other, technical platforms it requires are still around.
On the other hand, because the removal of DRM aligns with DOOM being cracked, that's all the dozens of tech news sites are now reporting. Personally, I hope that this coverage increases sales, especially since the Steam Winter Sale is rumored to start in about two weeks, and DOOM has already been discounted to 50%-off before (I believe during QuakeCon). Still, you can't help but gawk at the Streisand effect as it unfolds before you.
Anywho, Steam is currently in the middle of pushing a 12 GB patch for the title at the moment. While the sites reporting on the removal of Denuvo aren’t clear, and the release notes don’t say, I’m guessing that it was rolled in with Free Update 5.
This is great news! I
This is great news! I actually bought it hour and a half ago because of this.
I’ll include the part why I dislike Denuvo and why I put those games on my “free or never” list – it’s a list of games that I will play, but will never pay for them. Already have 4 Denuvo games in my collection – Mad Max, MGSV and Tomb Raider were acquired near their launch from people who didn’t want them and they were recently joined by Batman:AK.
The problem for me is two fold:
1. It’s made by the same sacks of sh?t who made SecuROM. Everybody remembers that monstrosity.
2. It has caused me issues in games that I own. Not performance issues, but I’ve been unable to play my games after spending a while offline. The most annoying one, and the one that solidified my hatred towards Denuvo was with Rise of the Tomb Raider. I was playing my game when my ISP suddenly went down and I was booted to desktop. The game wouldn’t launch. Even after restart. I was forced to wait hours until my ISP sorted the problem out. All those games are single player games and I think that adding online dependencies on singleplayer games is inexcusable.
Doom now is the second game to get removed from the list. First being Inside, which I bought the second it hit GoG. I hope more follow suit.
Oh man, before I moved I had
Oh man, before I moved I had a WISP and the connection was not stable enough for the DRM to play Spinter Cell Blacklist for more than a couple of seconds before it would pause and tell me I had to wait for an Internet connection to their servers before I coudl continue playing my single player game. Drove me crazy. I was never able to get past the first mission heh. After I moved I got Uverse I think and was able to finally play the game I bought like a year before at full price.
Never again.
The worst part? the fucking pirates got to play the game sans internet connection a couple months after release if not sooner. Since then I've not bought a Ubisoft game unless it was dirt cheap during a steam sale heh.
Granted I should have just joined the pirates, cracked it and played my game but Ubisoft pissed me off so much for awhle I didn't even want to play it for free lol.
i wonder why aaa games sold
i wonder why aaa games sold at 50 or more. most with budget constraint would wait, for a sale maybe, if they value morality. but gamers in developing countries, considering their currency against dollar, would definitely pirate it first.
target market based on us and
target market based on us and euro I guess
“It’s not DRM-free like you
“It’s not DRM-free like you would see on GOG”
No problem. I have patience.
Copy protection hurts the
Copy protection hurts the paying consumer the most.
In Denuvo’s case, it prohibits mods and Linux builds of a game using Denuvo.
All in all, I’d give denuvo a “fuck your greed” of 10.
What’s worse? Copy
What’s worse? Copy protection or cheats in multiplayer?
o.o Dedicated servers with
o.o Dedicated servers with admins?
I don’t believe Denuvo has
I don’t believe Denuvo has done anything to stop cheating in Battlefield 1, as they are still using FairFight to detect cheats.
It has 100% no impact on
It has 100% no impact on cheats, as the working memory isn’t encrypted.
Even a basic memory editor will work on single player.
They’re unrelated. Denuvo
They’re unrelated. Denuvo does nothing to stop cheats.
Not being able to play my
Not being able to play my single player game for the storyline. That's the worst heh.
So just steam online DRM now?
So just steam online DRM now? Yeah, forgive me if I contain my excitement.
I’ve never had an issue with
I’ve never had an issue with DRM. I’ve had plenty of issues with buggy games on the other hand.
DRM is very near the bottom of my list of concerns when it comes to buying a game.
Exactly.
99% of the people
Exactly.
99% of the people who complain about DRM are pirates. The other 1% are a mix of extreme idealists, hysterical nonsensicals, and unfortunate people with bad hardware or internet.
Not even remotely true. DRM
Not even remotely true. DRM like this is bullshit. I bought Doom and the DRM hasn’t impacted my life in the slightest, but there are people whose ability to play the game will be impacted on a game that they paid for, and thats not right. Its not even just people with crap internet, sometimes this stuff just doesn’t work right for other reasons and people suffer trying to fix it. I don’t think I’ve pirated a game in 10 years so it has nothing to do with that, but everything to do with the fact that you’re impacting the experience of legitimate paying customers for no reason. They all get cracked eventually.
In the words of Total
In the words of Total Biscuit, “there is no world hunger, because I have a sandwich”.
If the DRM does anything to inconvenience the paying customers, then it has failed.
There are far more people who have had DRM issues, than have not had them. They do not all have to be issues with the game simply never working, they can be issues with the game experiencing performance issues due to the DRM, such as with low end systems playing the initial release of Alice madness returns, or it can be issues with overloaded DRM servers being unable to verify each play session, thus some users are stuck without their game for a while. It can even be as simple as you finding out that you can’t play a game while offline. In each case, the paying customers got a worst experience than the people who pirated the game, as not only did they get it for free, but they also received an objectively better product.
As a Linux user it bummed me
As a Linux user it bummed me I couldn’t even play Doom on wine with the DRM being the main blocker.
However there seems to be a separate issue right now preventing the game from working on wine, I hope it gets fixed soon as I’m eager to play the game after waiting so long.