Speaking to GamesIndustry during Gamescom 2018, Denuvo Sales Director Elmar Fischer admitted that the goal for their anti-piracy DRM software is to protect the initial sales of a game since no title can be guaranteed to remain uncracked indefinitely.
It’s a competition. For them, it’s really a sport and they are idolised. There is no manual effort needed [for games without Denuvo-like protection), they have more or less generic ways to crack it.
Our goal, and it’s still the goal, is to protect initial sales. Of course we would like to have it uncracked forever, but that just doesn’t happen in the games industry.
At the same time, Fischer couldn’t provide an estimate on how much of a positive impact on revenue their anti-piracy DRM had for the developer/publisher.
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It’s a really tough one for us to answer straight. For the games we protect, I think we have a huge impact, especially if we secure the initial sales window then we see a dramatic on the game and also the revenue when you compare it to other games that have been cracked immediately, but for the industry as a whole, it’s very tough to answer.
You can see the piracy of the games, but it’s really tough to tell how many of these would have bought the game. We can estimate, and even if you take a small percentage of this number then the revenue would increase dramatically.
Lastly, Fischer commented on Denuvo becoming part of Irdeto. According to him, this will provide them with more knowledge and resources.
Correct, we did have a bit of a rough patch in Autumn last year especially with some quick cracks. I think that’s also the timing when we had the idea to work together with Irdeto.
Seeking to strengthen our tech actually came from the acquisition with the complimentary tech; a lot of help from their engineering side… they have nearly unlimited resources compared to our 45 people.
