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Both LiS: Before the Storm and Sonic Mania had highly successful launch on PC
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
paperspace
Member
Last edited:
In short giving negative reviews not because game is bad but because you didn't like move that dev/publiher made.
Phoenix RISING
Banned
Granted, it is much more acceptable to digitally download games these days.
Denuvo might get a pass because it has never ruined anyone's disk drive to my knowledge, unlike some of the DRM you have mentioned.
I can't remember what game it was, like Crisis or the Gears of War PC port, but my optical drive was never the same after installing one of those games.
The only DRM that really concerns me are games like Diablo 3 which require you to phone home to log in. Of course, Activision and blizzard are too large to fail... we just have not seen a popular game straight up die yet outside of MMORPGs which require phoning home..
CecilRousso
Member
It had that, but the one credit you could give to that was that neither they or the publisher tried to hide what they were doing, and being more tangible then Denuvo made the gaming press discuss it.
Denuvo manages to stay in the shadows much more, with the good help of publishers and the ignorance of the gaming press, to the point where it seems normalized that an almost unknown third party company have the authority over the access to a larger and larger portion of our PC games purchases today.
Alexander DeLarge
Member
Because it's tied to an AWS Auth server so when they don't pay the bill, my legitimately acquired games become unplayable. Keep in mind Denuvo was created by the people behind SecuROM, which was abandoned after 6 years. No thanks.
I'm sick of cracking games I paid $50-$60 for not even ten years ago. The number of people who are outspoken against Denuvo are a vocal minority but they're entirely justified in being against it considering those servers shutting down will be the most destructive thing to happen to PC gaming in a long time and frankly, I'm getting tired of the mentality that we should wait for them to shit the bed before anything is said about these poor business practices as if we don't have tons of precedent as to why online authentication and DRM is bad. As always, some games will get removals, many won't.
I love how it's subtly implied in the OP that Denuvo is the reason why these games had successful launches on PC, as if the lack of DRM would have meant they would have been pirated to hell and back.
Denuvo, or any other form of DRM, produces no form of benefit for the legal user. If anything, it tries to combat piracy by putting hoop through which the legal user has to go through. It limits the option you have with the content you purchased and, unbeliavably, some people are totally OK with this.
Denuvo, or any other form of DRM, produces no form of benefit for the legal user. If anything, it tries to combat piracy by putting hoop through which the legal user has to go through. It limits the option you have with the content you purchased and, unbeliavably, some people are totally OK with this.
Human Trashcan
Banned
I for one am shocked that the majority of consumers doesn't know or care about an un-intrusive anti-piracy measure
I'm not saying Denuvo could not be a problem down the line, mind you. But it's really not surprising most people don't know or care.
I'm not saying Denuvo could not be a problem down the line, mind you. But it's really not surprising most people don't know or care.
masterkajo
Member
Could you with absolute certainty say that the PC delay of 2 weeks due to the implementation of Denuvo? Couldn't it just as likely be the same strategy puplishers use so that people do buy the console version or double dip?
GhostTrick
Banned
Both. Sonic Mania devs implied they're not responsible for the delay. Which means no game breaking crap or whatsoever.
En what do i don't get?
TeamLeftMatch
Member
Of course consumers won't care about this. In Mania's case they didn't mention this untill after everyone bought it. People don't care about something they don't know exist and they won't untill we get a Sim City situation again. To me, this is an awful situation where I like sonic Mania but can't support this shitty practise (can't get a refund because I bought it of humble store and already redeemed the key. I haven't played the game on my PC and won't until something happens, in the meantime I'll just use my brother's switch with the game).
Yeah, millions of pirates bought Before the Storm, they simply couldn't wait the whole 8 hour that it took to get cracked
TeamLeftMatch
Member
You don't understand why people got upset over this mess. I'm not speaking for LiS but for Sonic Mania, we got the game delayed for "optimization" issues where the Devs themselves said they didn't do this, added Denuvo without telling anyone and then saying "Oops sorry we forgot to mention it" (the steam page still doesn't mention Denuvo except for the message they sent) and even then fuck the game up where you couldn't even launch the game offline at all, always online DRM for a single player game. People getting mad is not some sort of "fake" outrage where people wanted the game to fail or something, they just wanted to play their game offline and not have some DRM shoved in without telling us. This makes me wonder if people didn't complain about the always online DRM Sega wouldn't have fixed the problem.
Also for LiS the game already got cracked so Denuvo is effectively useless and pirates would get the better version of that game.
Yeah those are great numbers and they are not final. It takes up to 7 days for SteamSpy to have stable numbers.
Alexander DeLarge
Member
It's not like pirates are known for being some of the most patient people on the planet or anything :^)
IAmAnAgnostic
Member
120k now.
http://steamspy.com/app/554620
http://steamspy.com/app/554620
Acerac
Banned
Is this happening to Sonic Mania?
That's what I thought, but it doesn't seem to apply in this case. People are giving negative reviews because of a problem they have with the game.
Offline issue wasn't caused by Denuvo i think and it was fixed in first 24 hours but people are still leaving negative reviews.
Acerac
Banned
Fair enough, I thought that people's issue with the game was that it included Denuvo, but perhaps I was mistaken?
*edit*
There does seem to be a major thread about it on this site.
Factually, it did affect sales. Not sure why you think this proves otherwise. What a hilarious jump of logic.
Both games use Denuvo as way of protection and both games run fine without major issues caused by Denuvo, and yet you only see it mentioned in sonic reviews
So i really don't know what is the issue anymore
Acerac
Banned
Both games use Denuvo as way of protection and both games run fine without major issues caused by Denuvo, and yet you only see it mentioned in sonic reviews
Given how many people say it is an issue, but only do so in games in which they are aware of it, perhaps a safe conclusion would be people only say it is an issue if they are aware of it? I know correlation doesn't equal causation, but I feel it's a fairly safe assumption.
People are giving negative reviews for everything all the time.
You should check Amazon consumer reviews ...
"I gave CasaBlanca 1/5 because it is Black and White, this is not acceptable in 2017"
"I bought a movie here, this is a BluRay disc, but i have only a DVD player. Does not run. 0/5"
Both games use Denuvo as way of protection and both games run fine without major issues caused by Denuvo, and yet you only see it mentioned in sonic reviews
Sonic Mania only had Denuvo revealed after release (so fucking over everyone who preordered it) and it was 100% unplayable offline on release. LiS at least they warned of Denuvo before release (though still a bit too late imo)
The main issue with Denuvo requiring online activation is what may happen to these games when you try to play them several years from now, not anything which affects them today.
That's not to say Denuvo isn't currently an inconvenience for many people for a number of other reasons, and it's also potentially preventing things like modifications to support ultrawide displays. (can't hex-edit the executable)
Isolated bad reviews don't mean anything, especially when you did not have to purchase the product to review it - which is something that Steam requires.
Steam prominently displays the aggregate review score as something like "mostly positive" or "mostly negative" on the store page.
If your game's reviews are "overwhelmingly negative" on launch day based on hundreds or thousands of reviews, and you're seeing a significant number of people refunding the game, publishers are going to take notice.
SEGA clearly took notice, with them publishing a statement regarding DRM - though they treated this as though the main issue was the inability to play the game offline, rather than fundamental issues that people had with them delaying the game two weeks solely to implement Denuvo.
Sonic fans seemed more concerned about being able to play the game right now, and hoping that Mania does well enough to warrant a sequel, than being concerned about the long-term future of the game. For every negative review regarding DRM, I saw a positive review either criticizing the DRM but praising the game, or one saying that they don't care at all. I never saw the aggregate opinion drop below "mixed", and it's now at "mostly positive".
Alexander DeLarge
Member
It did affect sales. I'm not going to overstate the anti-DRM sentiment but lets not act like there's a vocal minority of enthusiast-level customers that will avoid Denuvo titles like the plague. I'm one of them, many of my friends are too.
Life is Strange and Sonic sold well, am I supposed to be shocked by this? I'm not. It just didn't sell as well as it could have otherwise. Getting the "millions of lost sales as a result of piracy" is a pipe dream that no one should buy into and they're losing sales while chasing it.
entremet
Member
I doubt most even know what Denuvo is. GAF isnt the best sample size. Way too niche.
