Following an unsuccessful attempt to contact gamers on Discord, Denuvo anti-piracy management contacted Rock Paper Shotgun to explain their position.
Image Source: Steam (DemonBlade Husky)
According to product manager Andreas Ullmann, Denuvo does not want to leave attacks on it unanswered: the manager called the Steam forums, in particular, a “very toxic and hostile” environment.
Denuvo’s negative reputation among players is reflected on both a business and personal level: “It just hurts to see what is being written about us, even if these allegations have been refuted thousands of times.”
Denuvo is looking to establish a presence on platforms like Reddit and Steam (image source: Steam)
Ullman believes that Denuvo has such a bad reputation for two reasons: “our solution just works,” and the benefits of anti-piracy protection (as opposed to anti-cheat) are not obvious to gamers, of whom the leader counts himself.
«The more successful a game is, the longer it receives updates, additional content, and the greater the chance of a sequel. This is the benefit we offer to the average player,” said Ullman.
According to a recent study, piracy takes away about 20% of a game’s potential revenue from developers (image source: Irdeto)
The company does not publish its own results comparing the performance of games with and without Denuvo, since “no one will believe us, because we are villains,” but it allows independent experts (like Digital Foundry) to be invited to its office.
Finally, Ullman does not deny that Denuvo can affect the performance of games (see Tekken 7), but rejects the technical superiority of hacked versions over protected ones, because in the former, “pirated” code functions in addition to Denuvo.