The thing is, this DRM stuff causes a lot of problems, like performance loss and even crashes. Therefore even honest buyers use the cracks, to get rid of it.
Some people even wait until the game appears DRM-free on GOG, because of this.
Some people even wait until the game appears DRM-free on GOG, because of this.
PC Gaming may be mainstream now but in its nerdier days awareness of cracking was quite high... and I imagine it still is among demographics that cannot afford to plunk down $60 for the latest whatever-they-want
You'd be surprised how many people with iPhones shoplift clothes worth much less than $60
A lot of young people (or people in middle-income countries) can scrape together a few hundred bucks for an entry-level gaming PC, but would find a $60 game to be prohibitively expensive. IMO the move away from demo versions and physical media has substantially incentivised piracy - if you can't try before you buy and can't resell your game, you're less inclined to hand over your hard-earned cash for a game that you might hate.
When I was younger I could barely afford a gaming PC and certainly didn't have very much money for games, and I knew a lot of other people in my boat. I lived for the bargain bin (and later, Steam Sales) and it was still not enough
Technically Denuvo is not a DRM, it's an anti-tampering system. This is not just a matter of wording - nobody complains about Steam's DRM, so it's not about DRMs, it's about a specific product.
Having said that, Denuvo performance loss is minor. It's quite amusing that in one case, a patch which also included its removal, decreased the performance: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/rage-2-patch-removes-denuvo-but-p....
Regarding the crashes, there's much hearsay around. However, in absence of rigorous examinations, there's the benefit of doubt. In my opinion, it's not buggy in itself (I've played several games with Denuvo, and they were working fine), rather as the general bug risk of adding extra functionality to software. As the article above points, "[...] that would imply Denuvo checks constantly running within the main game loop, which would make no sense.".
All in all, defining Denuvo as "this DRM stuff causes a lot of problems" is definitely a mischaracterization, although it's not clear if "this DRM" refers to Denuvo, or DRMs in general.
I have seen evidence that heavy DRM (Denuvo I think, specifically) caused increased loading times.
Apart from that, every time someone tries to prove there is any other difference with any measure of scientific rigour they find no statistically differences.
Loading times obviously varied per game, but the differences for most games were pretty significant.
But for DRM overall and Denuvo there are numerous issues, and thanks to the "make a game and forget it", principle they games continue to suffer from bad implementation. In particular games with the older iterations of Denuvo continue to have performance issues.
To expand upon this, the older a game continues to have DRM the more problems become apparent. For example just recently in December, where Disney's decision not to renew Securom caused legal owners Tron:Evolution to have their game stop working.[0]
Who knows what fate all those expensive Denuvo titles have in store for them, but we probably have a fair idea. Due to the resources needed to bypass more difficult DRM, often the updated version of the game will remain uncracked and that could make it possibly unplayable for the average consumer if things go south.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191204/09531743504/disne...
How many of these cracks actually fully get rid of denuvo? I'm not familiar enough with current developments, but most DRM patches I've seen didn't actually get rid of the DRM.