Denuvo wants to publish benchmarks to prove its DRM doesn't affect performance of games

Irdeto, the company behind the Denuvo Anti-Tamper technology wants to publish benchmarks to show that its anti-piracy software does not impact the performance of PC games. If you listen closely, you may hear the laughter of pirates.

When a game runs badly, it is either due to bad optimization by the developer, and/or its DRM. Gamers are well aware of this. Denuvo has often been at the center of controversy of games that run poorly, and we are not just talking about a few frame drops. Resident Evil Village, for example, had a disastrous launch, with many reviewers pointing out that a cracked version of the game ran significantly better than the DRM-crippled version on Steam that had massive stuttering issues. Of course, Capcom had placed its own DRM in addition to Denuvo, which was honestly not a very sensible thing to do. Here's a video by Digital Foundry that compared the performance of the original vs cracked version of the game.

Tekken 7's Director had explicitly mentioned (read blamed) that the game's Anti-tamper 3rd party middleware (Denuvo) was the reason why people were experiencing frame drops. It's not surprising to find the anti-piracy technology in most AAA games these days. Sega and Square Enix are particularly crazy about slapping Denuvo on every game that they release, including obscure ones that eventually flop.

Let's understand something first. Anti-cheat and Anti-tamper are two very different things. Anti-cheating technologies are always welcome to prevent cheaters and griefers in online games. Anti-tamper on the other hand, is just straight up a nuisance. Denuvo's DRM often has online requirement to verify the computer's authenticity. So it is possible that you may not be able to play the game that you paid for, isn't that fun? It's no real wonder why most people dislike Denuvo, and that's exactly what Irdeto wants to address.

Denuvo wants to publish benchmarks to prove its DRM doesn't affect performance of games

Ars Technica interviewed Irdeto's Chief Operating Officer of Video Games Steeve Huin, who said that Denuvo wants to get into the good books of gamers. He defended Denuvo as not being an evil thing, because it prevents piracy of games, and ensures game studios get their money. The company intends to improve its public image with its new program, which will provide reviewers from media outlets with 2 nearly identical versions of a game, one with Denuvo's anti-tamper, and one without. Irdeto hopes that independent benchmarks that are published by the press will help gamers understand that Denuvo does not affect the performance of games.

I beg to differ. There have been multiple instances where it has already been proved that the DRM does impact how well a game can run. Besides, reviewers usually have high-end computers with varying specs than what normal gamers may have access to. Denuvo's impact on a powerful computer may not be the same as that on a regular gaming rig. Benchmarks can be altered, and never deliver accurate results that you may find in day-to-day usage.

My personal experience with Denuvo games

I've played most of Ubisoft's open world games, including every single game in the Assassins Creed series, most of the Far Cry titles (3 to 6), and the recent games in the Ghost Recon single-player franchises. I easily have over 2000 hours across these games, they are my jam.

Unlike other AAA games, where I usually just have to lower a couple of graphics settings to get a game running smoothly on my computer, I've always had to resort to some specific steps to get games with Denuvo's DRM to run efficiently. Primarily, this involves capping the frame rate of the game to somewhere between 30 and 45 fps using the Nvidia Control Panel, disabling V-Sync, and a couple of other modifications which may sometimes involve editing a game's setting file. Unless I do this, the games may have significant frame drops or lag spikes. These workarounds helped me get a somewhat stable experience in most of the games.

I found Far Cry 5 (Dunia engine) to have the best performance in Ubisoft's games, and to some extent, Immortals Fenyx Rising (Anvil engine) as well. On the other hand, Assassin's Creed Valhalla was probably more demanding to run, I had to cap it at 30 fps. If these games did not have Denuvo running in the background doing its checks, I'm fairly certain that I would have been able to play them at a higher frame rate. In other words, I feel that the DRM cheapens the experience. This causes the games to become very CPU intensive, which can also cause the thermal levels to rise above normal levels.

I know my computer's limitations, but for context, it can run games like Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and other top non-Denuvo titles at medium-high settings at 1080p without a hiccup.

Note: Red Dead Redemption 2 does have a DRM, but it's not Denuvo.

Ars Technica's article says that according to r/crackwatch, about half of the games out of 120, since the launch of Denuvo, have been cracked. And some of these were only cracked after the DRM had been removed from the game. That might be good from a publisher or game developer's perspective, but the technology could negatively impact a gamer's experience.

As far as I know, these cracked games bypass the DRM's restrictions that may prevent you from running a game on an unauthorized machine. They may offer better performance than a legit copy like the Resident Evil example that I mentioned earlier. Aren't these proof enough of the fact that a version of a game that does not have Denuvo does indeed perform better? Games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Death Stranding (which I had bought earlier) seemed to perform better after the publisher had removed Denuvo from them. I also noticed something similar in the Epic Games version of Batman: Arkham Knight (which is DRM-free), it ran flawlessly as opposed to the Steam version. It hurts as a buyer, when you get terrible performance for a game that you paid for, while pirates get a better experience for free.

While browsing Steam's catalog, I have (jokingly) wondered whether a game's minimum system requirements are for the Denuvo-based version of it, or the DRM-free version. Denuvo may claim that its anti-piracy software has boosted the sales of many games. Personally, it has had the opposite effect on me as a consumer, it changed my spending habits, and I no longer buy games that ship with the DRM because I know I won't have an enjoyable experience with them. On the other hand, I have no problem with day one purchases of DRM-free games and Indies, plus these games are usually more affordable. If a game has Denuvo, it may be worth waiting it out until the anti-tamper DRM is removed and then buy it.

Huin says that publishers license Denuvo technology for a certain amount of time, which could range from six months or a year, to protect the initial sales. Many publishers decline to renew the lease and opt to release an updated version of the game without the DRM. Speaking of which, I find it quite strange that my Steam copies of Batman: Arkham Knight, Mad Max, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Lords of the Fallen (2014) still have Denuvo, while the GOG versions of the same games do not have the DRM. How hard can it be to publish the same build of the game on Steam? And then there are games that have an always-online requirement, which developers claim offer a better experience, while in reality they don't want people to get the items that they sell via in-app purchases for free.

Game developers need to stop using DRM as an excuse to protect their sales. If your game is good, people will buy it, and yes, pirates who fall in love with the game may buy it too. Stop looking at the cool trailers that may tempt you to buy the game, and instead vote with your wallets, hit them where it hurts, show the publishers you are not willing to put up with this nonsense.

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