Civ7 now includes Denuvo

[KayAU]

Steam is different from most DRM in that it actually provides some pretty solid advantages and functionality for the user. Like letting me effortlessly move my giant games library to a new system.

 

[bladex1200]

I think the comparisons between Steam DRM and Denuvo DRM that I've seen on this thread are a little ridiculous and muddy the waters. Denuvo DRM offers nothing except copy protection; Steam offers an online sales platform, integrated forum communities and serving for mods via the Workshop, social media features in the form of Steam groups and integration with other media platforms, etc.

I'm not saying people shouldn't have a problem with Steam as DRM, if you're mad that Steam is removing Windows 7 support that's a legitimate beef even if you are a small percentage of the customer base. But to imply that "people had a problem with Steam, they got used to it" implies the same of Denuvo misunderstands the two beasts entirely.

Denuvo exclusively is offering copy protection, it doesn't serve the consumer at all, and that's why I think purchasing Civ VII at full price while it has Denuvo is a bad practice. Say what you will about Steam or DLC and season passes, at least those offer direct benefits to consumers as well as offering benefits to shareholders.

 

[Kwami]

Steam is different from most DRM in that it actually provides some pretty solid advantages and functionality for the user. Like letting me effortlessly move my giant games library to a new system.

But GOG can do the same thing without the DRM.

 

[bladex1200]

That being said I also think people bandying about like switching to Ara or Millenia (the latter of which I own and quite enjoy, and the former of which I might buy if the reviews are good) is going to make Firaxis change their mind are being ridiculous. It is true what others have said, that people who post on forums are 1 - 5% of the customer base for any given product. Us forum-posters are no more the heart and soul of Firaxis' decision making as some fans with season passes are the heart and soul of an NFL team. Shareholders and owners will make decisions that break your heart, you turn away because you can't stomach them. That's fine. But don't live under this delusion that you're gonna break their heart in return, the math doesn't support it.

 

[bladex1200]

But GOG can do the same thing without the DRM.

Sure, the argument isn't that Steam DRM is somehow benevolent. It's that Steam isn't reducible to DRM, you take the DRM in exchange for some benefits provided by Valve who profit from the DRM and have other features on their platform. Denuvo DRM is literally reducible to just the DRM, there's no added value for the consumer.

 

[KayAU]

But GOG can do the same thing without the DRM.

Yeah, GOG is great. I've got a sizeable library there as well.

 

[Kwami]

Sure, the argument isn't that Steam DRM is somehow benevolent. It's that Steam isn't reducible to DRM, you take the DRM in exchange for some benefits provided by Valve who profit from the DRM and have other features on their platform. Denuvo DRM is literally reducible to just the DRM, there's no added value for the consumer.

Right. Denuvo provides no benefits to paying customers and definitely introduces limitations and uncertainly. It's bad news and it's entirely unnecessary.

 

[Dale]

That being said I also think people bandying about like switching to Ara or Millenia (the latter of which I own and quite enjoy, and the former of which I might buy if the reviews are good) is going to make Firaxis change their mind are being ridiculous. It is true what others have said, that people who post on forums are 1 - 5% of the customer base for any given product. Us forum-posters are no more the heart and soul of Firaxis' decision making as some fans with season passes are the heart and soul of an NFL team. Shareholders and owners will make decisions that break your heart, you turn away because you can't stomach them. That's fine. But don't live under this delusion that you're gonna break their heart in return, the math doesn't support it.

Current CFC members: 300,000 (give or take a couple thousand)
Civ6 sales: 12,000,000 (that we know of)

CFC amounts to 2.5% of all Civ6 sales. And that's ONLY true if every single CFC member owns Civ6. A lot don't.

Yeah, even if every member of CFC refused to purchase Civ7 due to Denuvo, we would alter the line within the error of margin of estimated sales.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Current CFC members: 300,000 (give or take a couple thousand)
Civ6 sales: 12,000,000 (that we know of)

CFC amounts to 2.5% of all Civ6 sales. And that's ONLY true if every single CFC member owns Civ6. A lot don't.

Yeah, even if every member of CFC refused to purchase Civ7 due to Denuvo, we would alter the line within the error of margin of estimated sales.

Although some of us bought multiple copies of Civ 6 on launch and gave them away as gifts to family and friends.

And I didn't even end up enjoying Civ 6!

 

[Dale]

Although some of us bought multiple copies of Civ 6 on launch and gave them away as gifts to family and friends.

And I didn't even end up enjoying Civ 6!

Your extra 6 copies would get lost in decimal point truncation. Not even margin of error there.

 

[Fippy]

There are ~238k user reviews of Civ6 on Steam.

On average, Carless found that games get one review for every 63 sales, with a median of one review per 58 sales. There’s quite a range, however: some games saw extremely high review rates, while others in the data set only saw a review once every 200 sales

So i would assume most game sales are via Steam these days, that doesn't seem to have changed yet.

CFC irrelevant for numbers? Probably.
Steam? Nope..and Civ7 Denuvo is a topic there, i looked.

I think you could be wrong with assuming this will just be swept under a carpet.

 

[Dale]

There are ~238k user reviews of Civ6 on Steam.

So i would assume most game sales are via Steam these days, that doesn't seem to have changed yet.

CFC irrelevant for numbers? Probably.
Steam? Nope..and Civ7 Denuvo is a topic there, i looked.

I think you could be wrong with assuming this will just be swept under a carpet.

The steam Denuvo thread has 284 comments (as per right now). I would guess only half of those are actually people saying they'd boycott it. Even if every single post was a separate person saying they won't buy it, that's a completely irrelevant almost lost in accounting rounding amount.

The region pricing thread has twice as many comments BTW.

Even this thread has twice as many comments as the steam Denuvo thread.

 

[Fippy]

There are readers who just won't comment (here as well).
The word will spread at least a bit..i am likely to tell ~2-3 friends about why i will prolly not buy Civ7.

Reputation works mostly long-term and imo this doesn't do them any good.
Things are not ending for them with Civ7.

But i will drop this topic now, thanks for reading Dale.

 

[Linklite]

The thing is, even if, for every post on that thread there are 100 people that are so angry about it that they're willing to boycott CivVII (and won't cave in after a while) but apparently aren't bothered about posting on that thread as well as being guaranteed to have bought it otherwise, and each of those persuades 10 more to do so (let's be honest, I'm being very generous in all of those numbers), that's only 300,000 copies. I'm sure 2K would love an extra 300k copies sold...but they're not even going to notice the difference. You'd also have to offset all of that by the number of copies they'd sell due to piracy prevention.

Essentially, in terms of getting anything done, really what you're hoping for is that someone with decision-making power sees the discussion, realised that what they're doing is scummy*, and decides actually, they really shouldn't do this.

Personally, I'm here to learn more and understand what's happening. I did give the pre-order as a suggestion to my wife for an Xmas present, but I've since told her not to. After my experience with Civ VI, I was already very sensitive about the franchise (love the idea and playing it, but too many issues with the game breaking etc), anything about anti-tamper has spooked me (could it mean that if there's another Science bug, we might not be able to just fix it like we could with PC Civ 6?). If a big wig sees my posts and decides to assuage my concerns, brilliant. If not, well, I still got what I wanted - the warning that they could end up accidentally breaking my game again without recourse.

ETA asterisked note which got forgotten: I'm not saying it is scummy, I'm writing from the perspective of someone who does think it is - I'm undecided.

 

[Riconatic]

The thing is, even if, for every post on that thread there are 100 people that are so angry about it that they're willing to boycott CivVII (and won't cave in after a while) but apparently aren't bothered about posting on that thread as well as being guaranteed to have bought it otherwise, and each of those persuades 10 more to do so (let's be honest, I'm being very generous in all of those numbers), that's only 300,000 copies. I'm sure 2K would love an extra 300k copies sold...but they're not even going to notice the difference. You'd also have to offset all of that by the number of copies they'd sell due to piracy prevention.

Essentially, in terms of getting anything done, really what you're hoping for is that someone with decision-making power sees the discussion, realised that what they're doing is scummy*, and decides actually, they really shouldn't do this.

Personally, I'm here to learn more and understand what's happening. I did give the pre-order as a suggestion to my wife for an Xmas present, but I've since told her not to. After my experience with Civ VI, I was already very sensitive about the franchise (love the idea and playing it, but too many issues with the game breaking etc), anything about anti-tamper has spooked me (could it mean that if there's another Science bug, we might not be able to just fix it like we could with PC Civ 6?). If a big wig sees my posts and decides to assuage my concerns, brilliant. If not, well, I still got what I wanted - the warning that they could end up accidentally breaking my game again without recourse.

Did your civ 6 science fix need modifying binary files? ”Hacking the game”?. If yes anti-tamper will affect.

If no, anti-tamper plays no role.

More detailed view of modding in post
Post in thread 'Civ7 now includes Denuvo'
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ7-now-includes-denuvo.691715/post-16664696

 

[Leyrann]

The thing is, even if, for every post on that thread there are 100 people that are so angry about it that they're willing to boycott CivVII (and won't cave in after a while) but apparently aren't bothered about posting on that thread as well as being guaranteed to have bought it otherwise, and each of those persuades 10 more to do so (let's be honest, I'm being very generous in all of those numbers), that's only 300,000 copies. I'm sure 2K would love an extra 300k copies sold...but they're not even going to notice the difference. You'd also have to offset all of that by the number of copies they'd sell due to piracy prevention.

Essentially, in terms of getting anything done, really what you're hoping for is that someone with decision-making power sees the discussion, realised that what they're doing is scummy*, and decides actually, they really shouldn't do this.

Personally, I'm here to learn more and understand what's happening. I did give the pre-order as a suggestion to my wife for an Xmas present, but I've since told her not to. After my experience with Civ VI, I was already very sensitive about the franchise (love the idea and playing it, but too many issues with the game breaking etc), anything about anti-tamper has spooked me (could it mean that if there's another Science bug, we might not be able to just fix it like we could with PC Civ 6?). If a big wig sees my posts and decides to assuage my concerns, brilliant. If not, well, I still got what I wanted - the warning that they could end up accidentally breaking my game again without recourse.

From what I understand, it is only Denuvo anti-cheat that might interfere with mods, while anti-tamper wont.

Also, I don't remember the exact context, but Ed did mention modding at some point. That's enough to derive that modding will be a thing, which means fixing bugs shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

You'd also have to offset all of that by the number of copies they'd sell due to piracy prevention.

This is the data I'd be most curious about. We've done a reasonable job of estimating that the number of people who won't buy CIv7 at full price on launch because of Denuvo is likely to be small. I'd love to see reasonable estimates of the number of extra full price sales they will get on launch because of a reduction in piracy.

My personal view is that the number of additional sales will be close to zero, for reasons I've articulated earlier (that most people who pirate games don't buy games at any price, they just play what they can get for free, while others skip the convenience of a Steam purchase for the hassle and risk of seeking out a pirated-copy only because they can't afford the Steam price). But I have no data for this, and I wonder if anybody does?

The vast majority of games are released without Denuvo-style DRM, so most studios must estimate the potential lost sales from piracy as being small. I just wonder how small?

 

[AtlanteanLord]

2K often removes Denuvo ~6 months after release, so if you refuse to install it, you may be able to out-wait it.

Given the way Civ works, thats unlikely tho. Hard pass for me

Denuvo appears to be beneficial, as it helps combat piracy

The grand grand majority of pirates weren’t going to buy the game regardless

 

[pokiehl]

The grand grand majority of pirates weren’t going to buy the game regardless

Is there a source for this claim? I don’t think there’s any public data on this.

 

[KayAU]

My hunch is that the numbers will be small in both directions. I just don't see large numbers of pirates forking out the (quite high) asking price because they were unable to pirate the game. For Denuvo to make sense financially, there would at least have to be enough additional sales to offset:
* The cost of Denuvo
* The lost sales from people who will not buy the game either directly because of Denuvo, or due to accumulated negative buzz surrounding the game exacerbated by Denuvo

For it to make sense, I think it wouldn't just have to balance out, it would have to make a decent profit. There is also the question of what it does to long term goodwill and brand strength. Civ 7 will probably dominate the genre like Civ 6 did. But the consumer unfriendliness of 2K may start to chip away at this, and with more sympathetic companies offering better and better alternatives, things could look different for future entries in the series.