Denuvo is garbage. Jedi Survivor and Resident Evil have shown that. New Denuvo is beyond shit as it hammers performance when performance is critical. For example if a game can hit 55-60 barely due to scene complexity, Denuvo makes it worse. More like 45-50 and then it's a big fucking problem. If there is stutter due to optimization bottleneck guess what Denuvo will amplify that. Fuck Denuvo.
It adds zero value to the customer and in some cases reduces the value. But it is certainly likely that it causes some would be pirates to buy. I hate it, but I can't fault publishers for using it. I just wish there was something better that didn't
I am not sure the data is there to really back this guy's study up. Denuvo cracks are not really random. If a big game is cracked early, the competing games released at the same time are likely not, this means people might pirate the cracked game and possibly buy a competing game, or just play the pirated one. Also who the fuck knows what will happen in several years? If an 8-10 year old game is still selling for 30 bucks maybe piracy is more likely.
The thing that strikes me as not believable is that somehow 15% of people are waiting for a game and will pirate OR buy and somehow informed of the crack status. When do they actually decide to buy in the first week? I would expect this distribution to be different than the actual buy curve but in this guy's model its just a time based reduction to the same trend. Most Denuvo games do not get cracked early and if these people really were going to buy, where is the point where most of them give up waiting for a crack and jump in?
Another thing to doubt here is that denuvo has been around for the past decade and it went from being cracked more often to being not cracked and maybe removed. It also went from being in some games to being in most games. So the overall behavior of pirates has changed because things are very different now. How can you use past data to infer anything about now behaviors?
Does anyone have a pirated copy of this paywalled article so I can see what assumptions this person made.