Comment on Silent Hill f, now on GOG
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoYeah, it’s a pretty easy conclusion to come to from the outside looking in, but BG3 can launch on GOG day and date, and KC:D2 can communicate the GOG release ahead of time and still sell multiple millions of copies, so…it’s a practice I’d like to see change regardless.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That is a conclusion made in hindsight, the easiest place to make predictions. Not every studio has the same forms of public popularity and good will they can bank on.
Also, selling millions of copies is not an indicator of a studio’s upper bounds. Publishers - even indie-oriented ones - need the lightning in bottle releases to pay for games that didn’t do well. We can’t do an experiment where KC:D2 releases on two planet Earths, one with a DRM-free release and one with DRM, and say for certain that the second wouldn’t let them additionally fund another studio’s pet project.
Basically, given how many failed releases happen that we never hear about, it can be misrepresentative to point to some good games and say “See? Studios are able to pay their mortgage.” Denuvo is able to sell to studios, costing those studios money, in part by showing raw data (that we might not ever see) explaining how it promotes early sales.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No, I get that. But likewise, Denuvo doesn’t have access to a second Earth either, and their pitch meeting will never include data of customers you’ve convinced not to buy the game due to the presence of their product. At some point, I don’t think those pirated copies are moving the needle, and that it’s just a cost of doing business like some units of physical goods breaking during shipping. The games that are most pirated are the ones that also sell the best. The anti-piracy case for the consumer is made pretty well these days by being downloaded faster, getting bug fix patches instantly, and keeping cloud saves.
Ashtear@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Irdeto’s been on a PR push lately. If they actually had robust studies backing their product, we would have seen them. Considering how they’ve got their hooks into the major Japanese PC port publishers (Sega, Capcom, and Square Enix), part of a segment of the industry that has long had specific stereotypes and prejudice surrounding PC gaming, I highly doubt the sales pitch for Denuvo amounts to much more than FUD and snake oil.