Complete nothingburger of a study, which itself is locked behind a $25 paywall to access it. And the author of the article obviously didn’t cause there’s 0 mention in the article itself about the methodology used to determine the 20% revenue lost (nice round number might I add). The only thing that even alludes to the methodology used in the abstract is
When Denuvo is cracked very early on, piracy leads to an estimated 20 percent fall in total revenue on average relative to an uncracked counterfactual
Which really doesn’t tell us much, how are these counterfactuals selected in the first place? What is the cirteria? How are you determining that the differences between revenue of a game that was cracked and that went uncracked are due to one game being cracked? How can anyone even confidently claim that they’ve normalazied the data set enoguh that these differences in revenue are mainly caused by a game being cracked, especially with how rare early denuvo cracks have been in the past few years. Statistically this sounds dubious at best, especially when we have fully open studies (like the one funded by the EU a few years back) that have found no statistical proof that piracy has any impact on revenue ( with the exception of box office revenue of big new movies being leaked and pirated while still in theaters). Surely they wouldn’t have missed a 20% meadian difference in revenue.
Lastly you have major tech news outlets all reporting on a study less than a month after it was made available online. For context the journal containing this study will only be published in jan of 2025.
Me: Publishers face 20% game revenue increase, if denuvo DRM wasn’t implemented day 1.
Interesting. Wonder how much Denuvo costs to offset that 20%. I also wonder if there is a way to control for people that won’t buy a game with Denuvo at all.
Crytek paid €140,000 for one year and one game. Denuvo is very cheap.
Hard to tell what percentage of year one revenue that would be.
Huh, interesting. I thought that the primary reason game devs use DRM these days is to specifically keep the first week’s sales as high as possible (since that’s the most easily available metric to judge a game’s success, and also the biggest moment of profit, as it’s usually only downhill from there). To see researchers actively suggest removing DRM after three months seems to confirm this idea further.
I’m still pissed that Capcom added Denuvo months after release to Street Fighter 6
Wow that’s a pretty damning indictement of the product.
To be able to go from “pirated games tend to sell more” all the way to “pirated games with this added not only negate that effect but go so far as to sell fewer copies” is an impressive feat
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Only if that 20% loss in revenue is 100% of people that pirate the game.
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People that would not buy the game that will pirate it once it is cracked vs people that could not wait and just bought instead of pirating it. The people that would wait until it is cracked would pirate it immediately if it was cracked before the 3 months but will also wait to pirate it if it is not cracked in that 3 months.
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No, you said:
I guess that puts to rest the “I wasn’t going to buy that game anyway…” nonsense.
My point is that there are still people that were never going to buy the game outside that 20% of lost revenue.
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Sure, but it doesn’t blow the statement out of the water. You would have to find out how many times a game was pirated, then compare that to the extra copies sold that make up that 20%. Plus, not everyone who pirates games says that.
It’s probably because people want to buy the game without Denuvo DRM. And if the official way has it and the cracked version, then there is no reason to buy the official version. They should analyze how much the game sales go up, once the official version drops the Denuvo DRM. That’s when I consider it buying or many others as well.
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