I still can't understand why they feel it necessary to add a handful of layers of protection and if the game is any good it will sell itself.

xIcarus:

Really now? And you actually think people started buying games because of DRM? Not because most of us used-to-be-young gamers matured and started purchasing games because we can now afford them and actually respect the developers and their hard work? Not because we saw what happens when we abuse piracy? DRM did absolutely nothing but garner the hatred of gamers everywhere, pal. This DRM shitshow has merely been going on for a few years, long after PC was back on track with regards to game sales. And like the person above me said, one who does not have money for your game WILL NOT BUY YOUR GAME ANYWAY. Most game developers don't give 2 shits about whether you like the game, what they care about is your money. That's why there are no more free trials, no more demos. They are scared of people pirating their games in order to demo them, and because of this they resort to DRM. Open your eyes.

100% Exactly

Octopuss:

Just how much peformance impact can such complicated protection system have?

If you are talking about Windows store, using cppwinrt you can avoid most of the windows runtime overhead (compared to C++\Cx and .Net languages).

Clawedge:

Only 5 layers? n00bs. i would have put in atleast 9 layers

The first 3 should be pretty easy to bypass, the windows SDK and cppwinrt should be enough. Not sure about XLive and Arxan (this last is a 3rd party library..).

Fur4x:

DRM is a good thing and it is actually protecting the PC gaming industry. Not so long ago piracy got so bad on pc, the market completly shifted to consoles. NO MORE GAMES RELEASED ON PC. Why ? Not enought money to be made. And it was pissing me off. Right now if you are not carefull history is gona repeat itself. Also, do you prefer hypothetically losing performance with DRM or no longer having games released? Choice is easy to make.

Somebody needs to develop these DRM solutions. It means people are paid for it continuously and they probably also want to make profit out of it. That increases the price of the game for no benefit of the customer whatsoever. Let me ask you: Would you rather have a larger game to play or a DRM component in it? The DRM brings me no joy but a larger game would. Alternatively the developer can of course drop some part of the game away from the basic packet and sell it as a DLC, to fund the DRM system. Hooray!

I really don't understand the reasoning behind Microsoft's actions lately. It feels like every single step they take is a mistake, or maybe I'm just seeing the bad news but there are a lot of them.

>>

Reqruiz:

This is crazy. Soon we gonna need whole discrete DPU (DRM Processing Unit) to handle all of these layers.

I am surpised that hasnt been tried yet, at this point I rather have a "DPU" deal with all this DRM crap they keep stacking, then my CPU

Kaarme:

Good thing Intel moved to 6 cores mainstream as well. Soon 2 cores will be spent 100% purely to keep the DRM running, while the 4 remaining cores can be used by the game itself. With my 4 cores CPU I'd probably be limited to 1080p 30Hz with occasional stutters after the DRM has taken its obligatory share of resources.

NO DRM should be using more then 1% to do it job, and none of them have done there job anyway they all been cracked and recently they are just eating up way to much cpu usage instead of the game have those resources. I said it before and I will say it again this DRM crap needs to stop not even stacking DRM works, in the end it is crack and, if they make game worth damn they will get sales if they make trash they wont, either way it gona be pirated the customer is one that pays the price for all these DRM and one that tend to be first to complain about DRM is hammpering game performance, cause the ones that pirated it dont care cause it already been cracked removed etc etc This DRM crap is anothe reason why alot PC game i have, have not been installed yet, like DX:MD i waiting for them to remove denuvo crap, i still have nightmare from remove the DRM crap from my pc back in 90's some which where pain other that crippled optical drives speeds.

xIcarus:

Really now? And you actually think people started buying games because of DRM? Not because most of us used-to-be-young gamers matured and started purchasing games because we can now afford them and actually respect the developers and their hard work? Not because we saw what happens when we abuse piracy? DRM did absolutely nothing but garner the hatred of gamers everywhere, pal. This DRM shitshow has merely been going on for a few years, long after PC was back on track with regards to game sales. And like the person above me said, one who does not have money for your game WILL NOT BUY YOUR GAME ANYWAY. Most game developers don't give 2 shits about whether you like the game, what they care about is your money. That's why there are no more free trials, no more demos. They are scared of people pirating their games in order to demo them, and because of this they resort to DRM. Open your eyes.

Lets be honest here, if the games were easy to get free, the majority of people that would normally buy them would take them for free. The music industry proved this: https://images.complex.com/complex/image/upload/c_fill,g_faces,w_1100/fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/zldgpy7qz89knsq4nbuu.jpg So yeah, I am sure that you would have some white knights who would pay anyway, the majority would not. You will also have the occasional game that gamers will get behind because of them being marketed as the "good guy who doesn't use DRM" aka CDProject Red. But on the whole most games wouold get pirated to death. Don't kid yourself with "studies" that say otherwise, those studies do not rely on hard data from sales, because "surprise!" they do not have the hard sales data, companies generally do not expose hard data. The companies on the other hand do have the hard sales data and guess what? Companies also do not care about morals, they care about their bottom line period. They dont care about punishing thieves, only about maximizing sales. They would not pay to implement DRM just to keep you from stealing their games if they did not have hard sales data to back up the fact that it does indeed end up making them way more money because more people buy instead of steal that way. If you were a company and you were like I hate theives, they dont cost us any money, but we should pay money and have bad press to implement DRM just to punish them, you would be the worlds dumbest company...NO they implement DRM to increase sales period. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is the truth.

I would love to see that chart but about the introduction of legal digital music sales and also the existence of youtube.

I don't pirate so it's existence doesn't affect me. However, I too want to know whether there's any performance improvement.

@xIcarus Totally agree with you ! I for one have pirated ! When I was a little kid and only had 10 euro for two weeks ! But after jobs and jobs right now , even thou I purchase only 2 - 3 games per year . It's with my money ! Also , it will help a lot if the prices were lower and no more stupid DLC ( for 30 euro ) . A game should be released as FULL GAME , why pay 10 euro for a skin or a map

Alessio1989:

If you are talking about Windows store, using cppwinrt you can avoid most of the windows runtime overhead (compared to C++\Cx and .Net languages). The first 3 should be pretty easy to bypass, the windows SDK and cppwinrt should be enough. Not sure about XLive and Arxan (this last is a 3rd party library..).

i was actually joking

Reqruiz:

This is crazy. Soon we gonna need whole discrete DPU (DRM Processing Unit) to handle all of these layers.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/latest-denuvo-protections-seems-to-hold-and-hasn%E2%80%99t-been-cracked.418692/page-2#post-5505413 I will plead once more... Please! For our sake, don't... :P

5 layers. Not enough. 6 is the magic number noobs!

the9quad:

Lets be honest here, if the games were easy to get free, the majority of people that would normally buy them would take them for free. The music industry proved this: https://images.complex.com/complex/image/upload/c_fill,g_faces,w_1100/fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/zldgpy7qz89knsq4nbuu.jpg So yeah, I am sure that you would have some white knights who would pay anyway, the majority would not. You will also have the occasional game that gamers will get behind because of them being marketed as the "good guy who doesn't use DRM" aka CDProject Red. But on the whole most games wouold get pirated to death. Don't kid yourself with "studies" that say otherwise, those studies do not rely on hard data from sales, because "surprise!" they do not have the hard sales data, companies generally do not expose hard data. The companies on the other hand do have the hard sales data and guess what? Companies also do not care about morals, they care about their bottom line period. They dont care about punishing thieves, only about maximizing sales. They would not pay to implement DRM just to keep you from stealing their games if they did not have hard sales data to back up the fact that it does indeed end up making them way more money because more people buy instead of steal that way. If you were a company and you were like I hate theives, they dont cost us any money, but we should pay money and have bad press to implement DRM just to punish them, you would be the worlds dumbest company...NO they implement DRM to increase sales period. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is the truth.

__________________________________________________ You are absolutely wrong. Low price combat piracy. DRM protections not. Who does not have money will not buy, will download pirate, or simply will not play (or would you stop paying the light bill to play BF or DOOM?). Who has money and likes games, will want to collect and will pay, and will buy 10x more games if the games cost half the price. That simple. It would be enough for the studios to try to lower AAA gaming prices by half or one-third, and they would sell MILLIONS. Your absolute truth in defending corporations bad policies does not convince me.

So many layers, it can cut through tanks.

StewieTech:

5 layers. Not enough. 6 is the magic number noobs!

Five and Six layer Cakes are lies. Proper cake needs 13 layers. Except on Fridays, then you need 14.

no, no NOOOO.... the magic number is 69! So it can go f**c itself!

KissSh0t:

I would love to see that chart but about the introduction of legal digital music sales and also the existence of youtube.

And introduction of legal streaming services like Spotify - I can’t be bothered to buy a whole album, because of crappy audio setup at the moment(will start changing this next year, when I move to a place I own) and doubt, that the majority of people give a flying f*** for sound quality...

the9quad:

Lets be honest here, if the games were easy to get free, the majority of people that would normally buy them would take them for free. The music industry proved this: https://images.complex.com/complex/image/upload/c_fill,g_faces,w_1100/fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/zldgpy7qz89knsq4nbuu.jpg So yeah, I am sure that you would have some white knights who would pay anyway, the majority would not. You will also have the occasional game that gamers will get behind because of them being marketed as the "good guy who doesn't use DRM" aka CDProject Red. But on the whole most games wouold get pirated to death.

You just based your anti video game piracy argument on music piracy facts. Do you understand the phenomena behind streaming services like youtube or spotify, and behind digital purchasing platforms for music? The music industry has seen a huge shift in the way it monetizes its products, making your comparison shoddy at best. Read this: https://ids.uni.edu/loudsoundlogic/how-do-artists-make-money-on-spotify-soundcloud/ As everyone here knows, games are largely monetized through hard sales - something which is absolutely NOT true when it comes to music.

the9quad:

Don't kid yourself with "studies" that say otherwise, those studies do not rely on hard data from sales, because "surprise!" they do not have the hard sales data, companies generally do not expose hard data. The companies on the other hand do have the hard sales data and guess what? Companies also do not care about morals, they care about their bottom line period. They dont care about punishing thieves, only about maximizing sales. They would not pay to implement DRM just to keep you from stealing their games if they did not have hard sales data to back up the fact that it does indeed end up making them way more money because more people buy instead of steal that way. If you were a company and you were like I hate theives, they dont cost us any money, but we should pay money and have bad press to implement DRM just to punish them, you would be the worlds dumbest company...NO they implement DRM to increase sales period. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is the truth.

I can't even begin to describe what a fallacious argument that was. If these companies have so many hard facts and statistics about how piracy adversely affects sales (and how heavy DRM helps alleviate the lost sales) then why aren't they sharing them with everyone? Why don't they prove once and for all what a big bad thing piracy is, so that companies like CDPR can take note and implement DRM as well? You're actually assuming that the upper management in these companies is competent, which is a very gullible thing to believe. See Apple as an example of piss poor upper management. If you think Apple is successful in 2018 because of the great decisions they've made in the past years you're very gullible. Apple is successful because it has a loyal fanbase that tends to gouge up any crap they throw out. EA on the other hand has a lot of titles which people love. You see, it's not so different, people buy the games out of loyalty and love with regards to the title. If EA started out today, without the titles and with the same business practices they wouldn't last a year. Also, those studies you discredit are based on official sales figures, which have absolutely failed to find a notable causal link between DRM and higher sales. There's no way you can argue against that without hard counter-facts, which you failed to deliver. In conclusion, you have presented nothing of worth in terms of arguments. That 'truth' you're speaking about is your own skewed interpretation of piracy, resulted from what the media and big corporations have spoon fed you. It's your fault for believing them without actually informing yourself.

The old ways are best. Go back to code wheels or paper manuals with page/paragraph keys. Let the hackers dare to defeat Enigma: :P http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-n2-fEvpF3PU/UVUkL6QefYI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/u9sE6iZiPcU/s1600/Pool+of+Radiance+Code+Wheel.jpg