Civ7 now includes Denuvo

[Dale]

And 2K thinks otherwise if they are willing to pay apparently not small amount of money for Denuvo license. No offence, but in case of how to make more money I'll take a word of maniacal cash grabbing corporation than random person on the Internet.

They might be protecting what I call "bad sales". Bad sale is me currently having many doubts if I would like this game, buying it, not liking it and leaving in my account hoping it gets better in the future. But bad sale is still profit which is the goal. I haven't pirated game for decades now, but here I would consider it for one reason. To treat it as demo. To check if all those community dividing changes land with me. Because currently I'm full of doubts. And 2 hour return policy is nothing with game that takes me up to 20 to go through single playthrough and 1k+ consumed during its lifetime. And before you point it out. I know I'm actually giving example of piracy giving positive result on sales. But again - we have no data to know which scenario is affecting sales how much.

And to add to this. It also depends on publisher/developer relation with its audience. BG3 mentioned earlier - Larian Studios have great relationship with customers. So they trust them. I was buying BG3 without plans to play it for at least a month or two more, because I didn't have time. But I wanted them to succeed as much as possible. I even started it during second weekend after release despite having different plans because it felt good to be part of this hype of growing concurrent players numbers. 2K doesn't have good track record so they have to continue to treat their customers as necessary evil. Sad thing is that Firaxis probably would like to build good relation and I think they actively trying, but being under 2K umbrella diminishes any improvements in that area.

I don't know. And you don't know. That's the point Not enough data.

There was a study recently, that implied that revenue dropped 19% on average week by week on an analysis of denuvo protected games that got cracked within the first 12 weeks. Once the crack was available, sales for the next X weeks (up to 12) would be on average 19% less than the sales trend before the crack.

The true cost of game piracy: 20 percent of revenue, according to a new study

Analysis of Denuvo DRM cracking shows significant impacts on publishers’ bottom lines.

arstechnica.com

Whilst it's not a true and accurate study of how many sales are lost to piracy, the fact the sales trend of denuvo cracked games dropped on average 19% after the crack was available, shows that there is a real financial loss that is not insignificant. If you expect 500,000 sales in the first 12 weeks, it could mean somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 of those will be lost to piracy. If your game is $50 USD, that's a $5 mill gross revenue loss (based on average game takings of 47% of revenue after POS, taxes, publisher costs, a net $2.35 mill loss).

 

[Nerzmus]

There was a study recently, that implied that revenue dropped 19% on average week by week on an analysis of denuvo protected games that got cracked within the first 12 weeks.

Even more reason to not be implementing things like Denuvo, which are the main reasons why people do piracy.
Losing so much revenue for flashy brand... utterly crazy.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Moderator Action: Discussing piracy is not allowed on this forum, please stop now --NZ
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

And 2K thinks otherwise if they are willing to pay apparently not small amount of money for Denuvo license. No offence, but in case of how to make more money I'll take a word of maniacal cash grabbing corporation than random person on the Internet.

If you're going to trust the financial acumen of corporations, I'd suggest you look towards financially successful corporations. 2k and its parent company Take-Two are pretty much the only corporation using Denuvo. Something like 90% of games launch without embedded DRM software like Denuvo.

Take-Two lost $3.7 billion in fiscal 2024 after losing $1.1 billion in fiscal 2023. Which may explain why they are worried about piracy, but doesn't scream "these guys are really smart financial operators".

 

[Kwami]

Whilst it's not a true and accurate study of how many sales are lost to piracy, the fact the sales trend of denuvo cracked games dropped on average 19% after the crack was available, shows that there is a real financial loss that is not insignificant. If you expect 500,000 sales in the first 12 weeks, it could mean somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 of those will be lost to piracy. If your game is $50 USD, that's a $5 mill gross revenue loss (based on average game takings of 47% of revenue after POS, taxes, publisher costs, a net $2.35 mill loss).

That article doesn't seem to support that you wrote here.

"Just how much money a publisher can expect to lose from a Denuvo crack, though, depends heavily on how quickly the game is cracked, Volckmann finds. A Denuvo-protected game cracked in the first week after release can expect to make about 20 percent less revenue than if the DRM had remained in place, according to the study, while a crack six weeks after a game's release only costs an estimated 5 percent of theoretical total revenue. After 12 weeks, new sales are so negligible that "developers could eventually remove unpopular DRM schemes with minimal losses (and possible gains from strongly DRM-averse consumers)," Volckmann suggests"

So, it's only a 20% theoretical loss if the game is cracked in the very first week. Every week after that is a lot less. And, anyway, massive hits like Baldur's Gate 3 prove that you can sell lots of games without any DRM.

That article also links to a page on reddit which shows that many Denuvo games have indeed been cracked in the last two years, contrary to what many here have claimed.

 

[Dale]

That article doesn't seem to support that you wrote here.

"Just how much money a publisher can expect to lose from a Denuvo crack, though, depends heavily on how quickly the game is cracked, Volckmann finds. A Denuvo-protected game cracked in the first week after release can expect to make about 20 percent less revenue than if the DRM had remained in place, according to the study, while a crack six weeks after a game's release only costs an estimated 5 percent of theoretical total revenue. After 12 weeks, new sales are so negligible that "developers could eventually remove unpopular DRM schemes with minimal losses (and possible gains from strongly DRM-averse consumers)," Volckmann suggests"

So, it's only a 20% theoretical loss if the game is cracked in the very first week. Every week after that is a lot less. And, anyway, massive hits like Baldur's Gate 3 prove that you can sell lots of games without any DRM.

That article also links to a page on reddit which shows that many Denuvo games have indeed been cracked in the last two years, contrary to what many here have claimed.

I should've said "If you expect 500,000 sales in the first 12 weeks and your game is cracked week 1......"

The 19% is true week on week after the crack appears, not a "total" revenue loss. So if cracked in week 4, the loss is on average 19% from that moment on. Their table is in that same article.

 

[pokiehl]

If you're going to trust the financial acumen of corporations, I'd suggest you look towards financially successful corporations. 2k and its parent company Take-Two are pretty much the only corporation using Denuvo.

Not true at all. Nearly every major publisher uses Denuvo constantly for most or all of their games. SEGA, 2K, Square-Enix, Bandai Namco, Ubisoft, EA...

2K is not unique in this regard at all.

Something like 90% of games launch without embedded DRM software like Denuvo.

The vast majority of game releases aren't AAA titles under gigantic publishing corps, so yeah that makes sense that most games cannot afford to launch with Denuvo. Denuvo costs a lot of money.

Take-Two lost $3.7 billion in fiscal 2024 after losing $1.1 billion in fiscal 2023. Which may explain why they are worried about piracy, but doesn't scream "these guys are really smart financial operators".

Corporate financial statements aren't black-and-white like this. Their billions in losses are on paper (and desirable) primarily as a result of the costs they spent on acquiring other companies and IPs.

Take-Two stock is up almost 50% in the last 6 months and it has outperformed the S&P 500 year-over-year to date from 2024. Shareholders are happy. The company is doing great, the opinions of we gamers on the internet aside.

 

[VGT]

2k and its parent company Take-Two are pretty much the only corporation using Denuvo

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First three games that comes to my mind immediately. Most likely many more I don't recall currently.

 

[VGT]

@Dale I'm curious at this point. You were original poster of this thread in August saying that denuvo is a hard pass for you. This research is from October. Are you at this point more forgiving for inclusion of denuvo seeing this data, especially because you're game developer yourself? Or maybe because you're in this industry, you were already more or less aware of scale how piracy is affecting sales numbers and while you're ok with fighting piracy (I would assume), "not like this" still stands?

Moderator Action: This is a legitimate question, please ask via Direct Message. leif

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: This thread has run its course. By this point, players have either purchased the game or not based upon their personal decision about Denuvo.