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Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

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Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#41

Post by mehlmao »

On the subject of piracy / DRM, I always think back to Lar's Doucet's piece Piracy and the Four Currencies: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/piracy-and-the-four-c...

Lars argues that when people make the decision to buy or pirate something, they're spending four 'currencies' which each person values differently:

* Money-dollars

* Time-dollars

* Pain-in-the-butt-dollars

* Integrity-dollars

As a teenager, I had near-infinite time dollars, and very few money dollars. That reversed when I got a real job. Implementing Denuvo (or other DRM malware) increases a product's cost in Pain-in-the-butt dollars significantly because the pirated version without it is better.

I own a Switch, have purchased several games for it, and most of my playtime is on my PC in an emulator now. I can use a better controller, run games at higher framerates and resolution, and use mods. The Switch is still nice on the go, but anything beyond casual games using an anti-emulation solution become less appealing to me.

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#42

Post by elipsey »

ryandrake wrote: post #31
thot_experiment wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really makes me sad that people are even willing to create these systems. It would haunt me forever if I took part in writing something like this.

One sad lesson I learned early on in my software career is, for every ethical stand you are willing to take as a developer, there's always some other developer who is willing set aside ethics or has a different set of ethics. Software needs some kind of baseline ethical standard, like a Hippocratic Oath. A line that we "shall not cross." I remember my first job out of college, I was asked to write code that caused ou…

>> https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

It is worthwhile for us to read and reflect on the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.*

* https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#43

Post by tomgp »

edgyquant wrote: post #29
meibo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require them to give refunds at all, the eShop currently does not do that and no one fought them on it yet. Realistically Nintendo can do whatever they want, they could take a dump in times square and people would flock to it. They've been selling broken controllers for 6 years.

I’ve always found this an interesting criticism. Switch controllers might break more often but I’ve never had a game system controller that didn’t end up with drift in the course of a year or two (and I don’t play games often.)

I’m on the other end of the spectrum, play quite a lot of games have never experienced drift. Our switch controllers are a good 5yrs old at this point and seem fine. That said I suspect I’m an outlier, when we took our PS2 to tradein after 10+yrs of use the shop assistant remarked that the controlers looked barely used (definitely not the case), guess I just use controllers gently?

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#44

Post by Vespasian »

thot_experiment wrote: post #13
alexb_ wrote: post #8

The normalization of Denuvo, as well as "anti-cheat" protection that involves constant monitoring of your environment, is a fucking travesty for privacy and games. The worst part about Denuvo is that cracking it is game-specific, and there's ~1 person who is willing and able to do it (and currently isn't touching denuvo due to not being donated enough money)

It really makes me sad that people are even willing to create these systems. It would haunt me forever if I took part in writing something like this.

Well, someone develops software for nukes, citizen surveillance systems, fraud schemes and technologies for scamming people out of their retirement savings.

If you consider mechanical and chemical engineering there are also people who develop nerve gas agents (usually deployed against civilians), butterfly mines, cluster munitions and incendiary artillery rounds ready to burn your enemies cities to the ground.

Some anti cheating / piracy software that "arguably works" is pretty tame compared to that.

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#45

Post by eps »

fefe23 wrote: post #10

Denuvo "copy protection" is so universally loathed by PC gamers that several publishers have ended up removing it in updates to their games, for example Mass Effect Legendary Edition. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/mass-effect-legendary-e... Note how getting rid of Denuvo also saved about one gigabyte (!!) of disk space. Denuvo slowed some games down so much that playing online with a cracked version is conside…

At some point Denuvo was basically a repack of VMProtect [0] (made by a small Russian software company) as the core of their protection "technology". This would've not been not a big deal if they weren't using a SINGLE retail license of that software, a license explicitly prohibiting this sort of white-labelling. And prior to that they were in negotiations with the VMPSoft to develop a custom solution for them. The negotiations didn't go anywhere due to the quoted project cost, so Denuvo bought a license and went ahead anyway [1].

Talk about irony. Ethics, piracy and all.

They got sued for that and eventually settled.

[0] https://vmpsoft.com/

[1] http://rsdn.org/forum/shareware/6733058 (in Russian)

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#46

Post by pizza234 »

TwoNineA wrote: post #4

Kiss your battery life goodbye since it will be siphoning more CPU cycles. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://youtu.be/1VpWKwIjwLk?t=394

That's not a rigorous test; it actually seems very sketchy. In the last game, the performance is better before the Denuvo removal, which doesn't make much sense. In another game, they're testing the manual run of a game, as the game (it seems ) doesn't provide an automated benchmark.

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#47

Post by bilekas »

fefe23 wrote: post #10

Denuvo "copy protection" is so universally loathed by PC gamers that several publishers have ended up removing it in updates to their games, for example Mass Effect Legendary Edition. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/mass-effect-legendary-e... Note how getting rid of Denuvo also saved about one gigabyte (!!) of disk space. Denuvo slowed some games down so much that playing online with a cracked version is conside…

> I am baffled they are still on the market.

If we have learnt anything, its that Nintendo couldn't care less about customers experience and solely on their IP protection. So Denuvo will have a client for life now.

I don't even see Nintendo removing this protection in later updates after the big sales peak.

Re: Denuvo Launches Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection

#49

Post by sarsway »

Lots of Anti-DRM sentiment here, understandably. However, I think the big issue is the Steamdeck becoming a popular platform for Switch emulation. That's simply not ok. It's wild Valve can get away with this. I would think Nintendo would sue, but its probably fruitless.
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