Piracy and sales

Smokey Deza said:
Piracy has really taken a beating this last decade. It's almost non-existent in the triple AAA scene thanks to Denuvo pretty much eradicating it.

Sad times.
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Surely it's also almost non-existent due to there being hardly any games that aren't always online, and even fewer that are actually good enough for someone to waste time cracking :D
 
malachi said:
Isnt that a good thing?
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No. There is a lot of controversy surrounding its anti-tamper checks causing SSD degradation and decreased FPS. Needing an online connection. Okay, that's given these days but some implementations need a periodic, even permanent one, regardless if you want to play multiplayer or not. Not to mention the 50 or so games people found themselves unable to play (see Alderlake).

It also prevents many forms of modding. This is probably why Bethesda didn't include it on Starfield. Much more profitable in the long run to have the modding community enhance and advertise their game for free over the years, just as they have done with Skyrim. Not to mention it's so much more convenient modding through steam workshop than without it.

But I digress. So it is a bad thing, that many gamers see as technology implemented by the greedy EAs of the world, to prioritise profit instead of a quality gaming experience.

TNA said:
Not for him, as he now has to pay for the games he plays :p
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Sorry to be a bore but I'd be hard-pressed to name anything that's tainted with Denuvo that I would even want to play. I really just wanted to see what the dead space remake would look like and didn't realise just how infected the AAA scene had become at the time.

Is it not better though to have a game in an ISO format that you can do as you please with? Where it's not run dependent on a company's operation due to its integration into their distribution service, accompanied by the developers' launcher you're usually required to wade through nowadays. Nope, skip all that. Doesn't even need an internet connection, nor are ISOs ever 'removed from sale'. Clean and independent like the old days, when they came in a box :)


Armageus said:
Surely it's also almost non-existent due to there being hardly any games that aren't always online, and even fewer that are actually good enough for someone to waste time cracking :D
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Unless you're some sort of computing prodigy mastermind, it's just become too difficult and unenjoyable from what I understand. I'm pretty sure all groups have given up or sold out and solo superstars like Voksi just got taken down by Denuvo personally. There will be a few others at it, but last time I checked there was only one person with any renown left still consistently working on Denuvo games now.
 
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Smokey Deza said:
Sorry to be a bore but I'd be hard-pressed to name anything that's tainted with Denuvo that I would even want to play. I really just wanted to see what the dead space remake would look like and didn't realise just how infected the AAA scene had become at the time.

Is it not better though to have a game in an ISO format that you can do as you please with? Where it's not run dependent on a company's operation due to its integration into their distribution service, accompanied by the developers' launcher you're usually required to wade through nowadays. Nope, skip all that. Doesn't even need an internet connection, nor are ISOs ever 'removed from sale'. Clean and independent like the old days, when they came in a box :)
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I think gog do something like this.

In the past I may have agreed with you. But these days I get all my games on steam. Can't see them going anywhere anytime soon.

I did like games when they came in boxes. But with the 600+ I have on steam I would need to dedicate a lot of space for them :cry:
 
It's still very much around. Denuvo hasn't really done much to stop it despite what they claim, games still get cracked within days most of the time. But if a game is good people will buy it even if it has no real copy protection (Witcher 3, Skyrim), which prooves it's pretty pointless.

But with most recent AAA games there just hasn't been much motivation to even bother pirating them, most are rubbish. Indie games are where the good stuff is now and they are usually cheap. Also if a game is online (most are now), pirated copies never worked online.
 
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Nasher said:
Also most AAA games over the past decade have just been awful and people can't be bothered even to pirate them. So not even a demand for it for free. The good stuff has been mainly indi games and they are usually cheap.
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Thats basically it, if the game is crap then the crackers wont waste their time. For example, the recent Sonic games.

Diablo 4 and the recent COD games wont get cracked as they need to be online and very few people play COD for the single player campaign.
 
Smokey Deza said:
Piracy has really taken a beating this last decade. It's almost non-existent in the triple AAA scene thanks to Denuvo pretty much eradicating it.

Sad times.
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Not really
I know a site that has Forza,starfield,cyberpunk,alan wake 2 etc.Not tried any of them but they claim to all be working
I get the few games i regularly play on steam now,back in the day i had LOADS of 5 inch floppys full of games C64
 
ANDARIAL said:
Not really
I know a site that has Forza,starfield,cyberpunk,alan wake 2 etc.Not tried any of them but they claim to all be working
I get the few games i regularly play on steam now,back in the day i had LOADS of 5 inch floppys full of games C64
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I don't pirate games, I stopped doing that when I was in my teens to be honest.

But yes, as somebody who does use NZB's to occasionally download some things, I can confirm it's very easy to get every AAA and AA title going.
 
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malachi said:
Same but with GamePass and PSN Plus Premium even less reason to pirate games now (after 100's of patches).
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Yea I agree. It's a lot like films and TV, with reasonably priced streaming type services, there's less reason to do it these days. Plus I'm not a broke student anymore either.

I did go though a phase of getting games to try them out before buying them (as Demos aren't a thing anymore), but the Steam refund for low playtime games killed the need for that too!
 
Nasher said:
It's still very much around. Denuvo hasn't really done much to stop it despite what they claim, games still get cracked within days most of the time. But if a game is good people will buy it even if it has no real copy protection (Witcher 3, Skyrim), which prooves it's pretty pointless.

But with most recent AAA games there just hasn't been much motivation to even bother pirating them, most are rubbish. Indie games are where the good stuff is now and they are usually cheap. Also if a game is online (most are now), pirated copies never worked online.
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That is correct it is very much indeed still around for anything that uses the likes of steam protection (if you can even call it that) which can be done in mere minutes. However, there must be getting on to around 100 games now that have not been cracked/bypassed simply because they have Denuvo. If this abomination hadn't been implemented into these games, they would have been made available to pirate regardless of whether they're crap or not. Everything used to get ripped.

So there's no question Denuvo has had an impact, and a pretty big one when it took a whopping two years for Anno 1800 to become available. TWW3? 623 days and no one has circumvented the protection. Well, they sure got it right this time lol. And me saying it was 'non-existent' was a vast overstatement just because there's now a long list of games still walled up, when say at least 95% of games out there are available to pirate.


ANDARIAL said:
Not really
I know a site that has Forza,starfield,cyberpunk,alan wake 2 etc.Not tried any of them but they claim to all be working
I get the few games i regularly play on steam now,back in the day i had LOADS of 5 inch floppys full of games C64
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Again true, although to note, none of these have any decent protection. Piracy has taken a beating though. Once there was a time when you could pretty much 100% play a pirated game on its release, and on occasion, before it even hit the shelves thanks to an inside man at Game. Whilst the former still exists with many releases, all groups have given up the fight against Denuvo so if a game has it, you might get unlucky and wind up waiting a year or two, if at all.
 
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TNA said:
I think gog do something like this.

In the past I may have agreed with you. But these days I get all my games on steam. Can't see them going anywhere anytime soon.

I did like games when they came in boxes. But with the 600+ I have on steam I would need to dedicate a lot of space for them :cry:
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They might not be going anywhere but what happens when there's a new president of Valve, and decides to start charging a fee to Steam users every month for their accounts? I bet they can do it, detailed in the T&Cs that nobody reads. Of course, a foolhardy thought no doubt, but I bet no one thought they would end up paying for Youtube. And like Steam but I've always had my reservations about not having full control over my games. I mean you probably don't even own it, just paying for Steam's licence to play it. And with all this subscription stuff on the rise, this just feels too far into the realm of you'll own nothing etc.
 
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Smokey Deza said:
They might not be going anywhere but what happens when there's a new president of Valve, and decides to start charging a fee to Steam users every month for their accounts? I bet they can do it, detailed in the T&Cs that nobody reads. Of course, a foolhardy thought no doubt, but I bet no one thought they would end up paying for Youtube. And like Steam but I've always had my reservations about not having full control over my games. I mean you probably don't even own it, just paying for Steam's licence to play it. And with all this subscription stuff on the rise, this just feels too far into the realm of you'll own nothing etc.
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That would never work. They could try it. Would probably mean the end of Steam though. Life is to short to be worried up such things that will likely never happen. Steam has added lots of value for me. Been using it for almost two decades now.

I do appreciate what you are saying though. As I said, you can always use gog. What's your problem with them?
 
Back in the days of Commodore 64 and Amiga, getting copied games was pretty easy. These days, I'm happy to wait for games to come down in price, and don't want any hidden things getting installed. Been many, many years now that I've not used a game or software that's not legitimate. I do pay each month for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, which is one thing that irks me. I'd be happy to buy the photo software in a one time purchase.
 
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