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I'm sure that Denuvo has some effect on performance, but before someone releases accurate benchmark reports of a game I refuse to speculate how much.
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African_wildlife: The performance tests unfortunately are meaningless, because there is no way to compare identical builds with and without Denuvo.
Indeed, not to mention the game does not appear to have a benchmark mode so any FPS monitoring is at best anecdotal and subject to human eyes seeing whatever random numbers they see and judgment bias etc.

Using Vulkan instead of OpenGL on AMD hardware does yield a pretty reliable 50% FPS boost though, or somewhere around 5-10% on nVidia.
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African_wildlife: I'm sure that Denuvo has some effect on performance, but before someone releases accurate benchmark reports of a game I refuse to speculate how much.
At least do you accept gog.com calling Denuvo Digital Rights Management (DRM)?

Judaliscariot said in one of the Denuvo topics that it is.
Pro-tip: Denuvo has been scientifically proven to have zero effect on frame rate if one refuses to purchase titles that contain it. Free to play games, demos and other free games notwithstanding.

:)
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skeletonbow: Pro-tip: Denuvo has been scientifically proven to have zero effect on frame rate if one refuses to purchase titles that contain it. Free to play games, demos and other free games notwithstanding.

:)
You know while some of you don't believe Denuvo causes performance loss.

I wonder if gog.com whenever they get a PC version of a video game that has Denuvo to remove Denuvo from it before selling it on gog.com if they will try some benchmarks on the Steam version and the 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free version to see what the performance loss is.

All gog.com employees have a Steam account I'm sure.

I bet Judaliscariot is the gog.com employee who tests this stuff.

He probably did with Inside before it got released for sale on gog.com.

Maybe.

Anyways I fully expect gog.com to use it as a means for them selling 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free video games in the future against Denuvo.
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Johnathanamz: You know while some of you don't believe Denuvo causes performance loss.
I don't necessarily disbelieve it, but I certainly look upon anecdotal 'proof' with a jaundiced eye.

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Johnathanamz: I wonder if gog.com whenever they get a PC version of a video game that has Denuvo to remove Denuvo from it before selling it on gog.com if they will try some benchmarks on the Steam version and the 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free version to see what the performance loss is.
I doubt if they'd bother. That would be a lot of time invested for little gain. Basically a waste of time and resources.
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Johnathanamz: You know while some of you don't believe Denuvo causes performance loss.

I wonder if gog.com whenever they get a PC version of a video game that has Denuvo to remove Denuvo from it before selling it on gog.com if they will try some benchmarks on the Steam version and the 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free version to see what the performance loss is.

All gog.com employees have a Steam account I'm sure.

I bet Judaliscariot is the gog.com employee who tests this stuff.

He probably did with Inside before it got released for sale on gog.com.

Maybe.

Anyways I fully expect gog.com to use it as a means for them selling 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free video games in the future against Denuvo.
Just to be clear, don't include me in the "some of you" above as I haven't stated any opinion about that to date.

What I have read is that the modifications that game developers make to their game where they insert Denuvo are supposed to be done in places in the game code which are not performance critical, specifically so that Denuvo does not have an impact on the game's performance. It is something intended to not be used in inner loops of performance critical code paths, but in inconsequential codepaths that do not impact performance. If this is indeed the case, and it seems reasonable, then if a game developer follows the instructions of how they are told to use Denuvo, then in theory there should not be any performance impact. In other words, whether there is a performance impact or not appears to be a matter of how close the developers of a game follow instructions. This is just what I recall reading previously online somewhere of which I have no reference for and so while it seems reasonable, people should treat it with a grain of salt unless someone has direct information that can be referenced specifically.

Having said that however I can say that GOG was asked sometime in the last month or so in the forums "Does GOG consider Denuvo DRM?" to which JudasIscariot responded something to the effect of <paraphrasing> "Yes, GOG very definitely considers Denuvo to be DRM.". For practical purposes, what this means is regardless of what the Denuvo company claims Denuvo to be or not be DRM, and regardless of whether any other person or company out there thinks Denuvo is "DRM", GOG considers it to be so for the purposes of GOG's own definition of DRM which their store runs by. By extrapolation of that, GOG seeing Denuvo as DRM would mean that Denuvo is considered by GOG to not qualify as being "DRM-free" and thus by definition GOG would not permit games that contain active Denuvo software in them to be sold in the store. I'm not a GOG employee so if anyone doubts this or wants an official word, then they should 100% contact GOG directly because random opinions of people in the forums (including me) are irrelevant to what GOG decides what is what.


I think one thing people may be missing from above, is that the performance comparison is being compared between two different versions of DOOM, one with Denuvo and one without Denuvo in a manner that is not explicitly stated but which appears to assume that there are absolutely no other differences in the DOOM game between the version tested with Denuvo and the one without - other than Denuvo being removed from the game.

Has anyone seeked out a changelog or some other data between the two game versions to determine whether anything else in the game was changed? Bugfixes, performance improvements etc.? Were the performance tests performed one after the other on the same hardware using the exact same video driver version? How was the FPS measured? Was it measured via some scientifically accurate method of recording the data to hard disk at even intervals in an automated and reproduceable manner, with a scripted game sequence to ensure multiple test runs are testing the identical run? Or was it just random off the cuff human playing the game and glancing at the FPS counter from time to time and making a mental note?

If the different versions of the games contained changes other than just Denuvo being removed, then the testing can't be scientific to just testing Denuvo's performance impact. If the testing was not performed in an automated and reproduceable fashion then the results are anecdotal and not scientific either.

From what I"m saying above it may give the false impression that I am defending Denuvo in some way. I am not. I think Denuvo is a black plague of gaming and is anti-consumer software regardless of how one chooses to label it. I do not want to see it in games and want to see it die off. My comments concerning whether or not it might have a performance impact on the game are intended to ensure that anyone who is trying to do a comparison to measure it and draw any conclusions at all either way - are performed in as scientific a manner as is possible so as to not allow personal bias either way to enter into the assessment, and to exclude other factors that may result in different results which might be caused by something other than Denuvo such as different video driver version, other changes made to the game's code in addition to Denuvo being removed etc. In other words, performance testing should be accurate and apples to apples comparison.

As such, I'm not defending Denuvo, nor claiming it has no performance impact on the game, just that if someone is going to do measurements and make claims that "prove" something, then such claims should stand up to some level of standard that is typically used when doing professional performance assessment in order to remove any kind of human bias from the results. Mind you, since I hate Denuvo and want to see it die, if someone threw out bogus data due to bad testing methodology I wouldn't exactly rush to Denuvo's aide to point that out too loudly either, but it would be nice to see an accurate test done that excludes other factors from potentially being a cause for any actual performance differences, and to remove the human brain and eye from the equation. :)
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GR00T: I don't necessarily disbelieve it, but I certainly look upon anecdotal 'proof' with a jaundiced eye.

I doubt if they'd bother. That would be a lot of time invested for little gain. Basically a waste of time and resources.
The way that Denuvo actually works, would require the publisher of the game to completely remove it from the game before providing it to GOG, as Denuvo infected games are not actually usable without connecting online to a Denuvo server to download various chunks of code for the game which are custom made for the processor/system the person has installed it on. It isn't your typical copy protection scheme that can be trivially stripped from an executable or bypassed without significant effort - effort that is completely unnecessary when the game publisher has the source code and the games are less than a couple years old that use it.

The hoops that are jumped through by crackers to completely remove Denuvo from the small handful of games they've successfully done that to are a lot of effort from what it appears so far, and despite widely publicized hyped up claims that "Denuvo has been defeated and games will be cracked right away from now on" that was repeated across the web and in the forums a few months ago after a high profile game crack, the underground that did that has not lived up to the hype as only about 30% of the games that have ever had Denuvo on them have ever been cracked to date, the overwhelming majority of them not cracked yet, including some for very long periods of time now. So there is no universal crack or bypass for Denuvo and it seems like there probably never will be except in underground hype form. So while GOG can neuter various old 1990s etc. copy protection schemes on some games by hacking on them themselves, it is very highly unlikely GOG is going to employ people to do the significantly larger effort to strip Denuvo from a game to sell it here when they can just inform the publisher they need to provide Denuvo-free binaries.

One thing is certain though, a binary that does have Denuvo in it is not DRM-free, and it does require an Internet connection in order to activate, and reactivate when hardware in the computer changes etc. and none of that is compatible with GOG's business model, so we won't see Denuvo here for sure. It's not even something that could be done by accident, or with inert remnants left behind I don't believe except in a case of extreme incompetence. I don't think even GOG makes epic level screwups like that though. ;)

(Yes I'm aware several games in the catalogue have various remnant files that are inert and left over from their various copy protection schemes. Being inert they do nothing more than take up a few bytes of space however and are not actually active copy protection mechanisms. Thought I'd state that pre-emptively before someone else brought that up.)
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skeletonbow: Having said that however I can say that GOG was asked sometime in the last month or so in the forums "Does GOG consider Denuvo DRM?" to which JudasIscariot responded something to the effect of <paraphrasing> "Yes, GOG very definitely considers Denuvo to be DRM."
Actually, much more succinct: "Yes, we do." Post: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/does_gog_consider_denuvo_as_drm/post6

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skeletonbow: As such, I'm not defending Denuvo, nor claiming it has no performance impact on the game, just that if someone is going to do measurements and make claims that "prove" something, then such claims should stand up to some level of standard that is typically used when doing professional performance assessment in order to remove any kind of human bias from the results. Mind you, since I hate Denuvo and want to see it die, if someone threw out bogus data due to bad testing methodology I wouldn't exactly rush to Denuvo's aide to point that out too loudly either, but it would be nice to see an accurate test done that excludes other factors from potentially being a cause for any actual performance differences, and to remove the human brain and eye from the equation. :)
This (and the above parts I snipped) is key. Claiming to 'prove' the DRM in the game is a big bad frame-eating monster without actually doing some kind of controlled and verifiable testing, just makes one look like an anti-DRM frothing-at-the-mouth fanatic. And that does not help the anti-DRM cause much at all.
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skeletonbow: The way that Denuvo actually works, would require the publisher of the game to completely remove it from the game before providing it to GOG, as Denuvo infected games are not actually usable without connecting online to a Denuvo server to download various chunks of code for the game which are custom made for the processor/system the person has installed it on. It isn't your typical copy protection scheme that can be trivially stripped from an executable or bypassed without significant effort - effort that is completely unnecessary when the game publisher has the source code and the games are less than a couple years old that use it.
I was more commenting on the idea that GOG would run a Denuvo-laden game and test out frame rates, then run the non-Denuvo version (provided by the publisher) to test frame rates and compare the two. I see no advantage for GOG in doing that.

I know the publisher is the one that would have extract that particular DRM octopus out of the game. But I'm not sure jonathan was.
@Johnathanamz: This is interesting, thank you! Any kind of benchmarks of drm impact are always good to have.
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Johnathanamz: You know while some of you don't believe Denuvo causes performance loss.

I wonder if gog.com whenever they get a PC version of a video game that has Denuvo to remove Denuvo from it before selling it on gog.com if they will try some benchmarks on the Steam version and the 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free version to see what the performance loss is.

All gog.com employees have a Steam account I'm sure.

I bet Judaliscariot is the gog.com employee who tests this stuff.

He probably did with Inside before it got released for sale on gog.com.

Maybe.

Anyways I fully expect gog.com to use it as a means for them selling 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free video games in the future against Denuvo.
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skeletonbow: Just to be clear, don't include me in the "some of you" above as I haven't stated any opinion about that to date.

What I have read is that the modifications that game developers make to their game where they insert Denuvo are supposed to be done in places in the game code which are not performance critical, specifically so that Denuvo does not have an impact on the game's performance. It is something intended to not be used in inner loops of performance critical code paths, but in inconsequential codepaths that do not impact performance. If this is indeed the case, and it seems reasonable, then if a game developer follows the instructions of how they are told to use Denuvo, then in theory there should not be any performance impact. In other words, whether there is a performance impact or not appears to be a matter of how close the developers of a game follow instructions. This is just what I recall reading previously online somewhere of which I have no reference for and so while it seems reasonable, people should treat it with a grain of salt unless someone has direct information that can be referenced specifically.

Having said that however I can say that GOG was asked sometime in the last month or so in the forums "Does GOG consider Denuvo DRM?" to which JudasIscariot responded something to the effect of <paraphrasing> "Yes, GOG very definitely considers Denuvo to be DRM.". For practical purposes, what this means is regardless of what the Denuvo company claims Denuvo to be or not be DRM, and regardless of whether any other person or company out there thinks Denuvo is "DRM", GOG considers it to be so for the purposes of GOG's own definition of DRM which their store runs by. By extrapolation of that, GOG seeing Denuvo as DRM would mean that Denuvo is considered by GOG to not qualify as being "DRM-free" and thus by definition GOG would not permit games that contain active Denuvo software in them to be sold in the store. I'm not a GOG employee so if anyone doubts this or wants an official word, then they should 100% contact GOG directly because random opinions of people in the forums (including me) are irrelevant to what GOG decides what is what.

I think one thing people may be missing from above, is that the performance comparison is being compared between two different versions of DOOM, one with Denuvo and one without Denuvo in a manner that is not explicitly stated but which appears to assume that there are absolutely no other differences in the DOOM game between the version tested with Denuvo and the one without - other than Denuvo being removed from the game.

Has anyone seeked out a changelog or some other data between the two game versions to determine whether anything else in the game was changed? Bugfixes, performance improvements etc.? Were the performance tests performed one after the other on the same hardware using the exact same video driver version? How was the FPS measured? Was it measured via some scientifically accurate method of recording the data to hard disk at even intervals in an automated and reproduceable manner, with a scripted game sequence to ensure multiple test runs are testing the identical run? Or was it just random off the cuff human playing the game and glancing at the FPS counter from time to time and making a mental note?

If the different versions of the games contained changes other than just Denuvo being removed, then the testing can't be scientific to just testing Denuvo's performance impact. If the testing was not performed in an automated and reproduceable fashion then the results are anecdotal and not scientific either.

From what I"m saying above it may give the false impression that I am defending Denuvo in some way. I am not. I think Denuvo is a black plague of gaming and is anti-consumer software regardless of how one chooses to label it. I do not want to see it in games and want to see it die off. My comments concerning whether or not it might have a performance impact on the game are intended to ensure that anyone who is trying to do a comparison to measure it and draw any conclusions at all either way - are performed in as scientific a manner as is possible so as to not allow personal bias either way to enter into the assessment, and to exclude other factors that may result in different results which might be caused by something other than Denuvo such as different video driver version, other changes made to the game's code in addition to Denuvo being removed etc. In other words, performance testing should be accurate and apples to apples comparison.

As such, I'm not defending Denuvo, nor claiming it has no performance impact on the game, just that if someone is going to do measurements and make claims that "prove" something, then such claims should stand up to some level of standard that is typically used when doing professional performance assessment in order to remove any kind of human bias from the results. Mind you, since I hate Denuvo and want to see it die, if someone threw out bogus data due to bad testing methodology I wouldn't exactly rush to Denuvo's aide to point that out too loudly either, but it would be nice to see an accurate test done that excludes other factors from potentially being a cause for any actual performance differences, and to remove the human brain and eye from the equation. :)
Before id Software removed Denuvo from the PC version of DOOM on PC there was only once patch to fix performance issues that was around from June 2016 to August 2016 or something like that.

The ways I tested the FPS drops before id Software removed Denuvo from the PC version of DOOM on PC was with both FRAPS and Steam's FPS counter on all four of my PC set ups.

I did it on many missions where I would just go exploring around anywhere from two hours to five hours on the same mission on each of my four PC set ups.

Then I did this again after id Software removed Denuvo from the PC version of DOOM on PC and I got a lot of interesting results.

Denuvo just drops FPS anywhere from 10FPS to 30FPS or even more, depending on how the video game development company codes it. Even with very well coded Denuvo the FPS drop limit seems to be 10FPS to 30FPS though.
I am going to have to call complete BS on Johnathanamz

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_can_i_do_to_make_aaa_video_game_publishing_companies_want_my_money_on_gogcom/post15

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nightcraw1er.488: Buy games exclusively on GOG. This way you can shift the market balance a tiny little bit and give GOG more leverage in their negotiations.

Once you have bought everything from the catalogue, start buying gift codes.
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Johnathanamz: That's what I've been doing since 2012.

The last video game I purchased from Steam was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in September of 2012 that's it.

I've been purchasing video games exclusively from gog.com since 2012.

The last time I even talked on the Steam forums was also in 2012 I made a Steam forums account in 2012 and have been using Steam since November of 2004.
He hasn't bought a Steam game since 2012, buying exclusively from GoG.
Johnathanamz didn't perform such tests as he is claiming, all of this was made up by him and none of it is true.

Edited: Even in that link above he talks about how he has been a member of GoG since 2011, even though his account was created in December 2013, then it goes and claims that he has many accounts so he can buy the games more than 1 time.

Yeah, really can't believe anything this guy says
/facepalm
Post edited September 11, 2017 by eisberg77
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eisberg77: I am going to have to call complete BS on Johnathanamz

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_can_i_do_to_make_aaa_video_game_publishing_companies_want_my_money_on_gogcom/post15

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Johnathanamz: That's what I've been doing since 2012.

The last video game I purchased from Steam was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in September of 2012 that's it.

I've been purchasing video games exclusively from gog.com since 2012.

The last time I even talked on the Steam forums was also in 2012 I made a Steam forums account in 2012 and have been using Steam since November of 2004.
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eisberg77: He hasn't bought a Steam game since 2012, buying exclusively from GoG.
Johnathanamz didn't perform such tests as he is claiming, all of this was made up by him and none of it is true.

Edited: Even in that link above he talks about how he has been a member of GoG since 2011, even though his account was created in December 2013, then it goes and claims that he has many accounts so he can buy the games more than 1 time.

Yeah, really can't believe anything this guy says
/facepalm
Yes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the last video game I purchased from Steam in 2012, that doesn't mean I will abandon my Steam account if real life family members want to gift me video games, which I got gifted DOOM on 6/19/2016.

After the patch that id Software released to remove Denuvo I got a increase of about twenty or so FPS.

And to let you even know if you didn't know this yet, the gog.com employees consider Denuvo Digital Rights Management (DRM), Judaliscariot said once in a comment.

You are free to not believe me. I don't give a damn it's final. Denuvo decreases performance. End of discussion.
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Johnathanamz: Yes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the last video game I purchased from Steam in 2012, that doesn't mean I will abandon my Steam account if real life family members want to gift me video games, which I got gifted DOOM on 6/19/2016.

After the patch that id Software released to remove Denuvo I got a increase of about twenty or so FPS.

And to let you even know if you didn't know this yet, the gog.com employees consider Denuvo Digital Rights Management (DRM), Judaliscariot said once in a comment.

You are free to not believe me. I don't give a damn it's final. Denuvo decreases performance. End of discussion.
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Except you stated you purchased it June of 2016, not that it was gifted to you.
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Johnathanamz: DOOM (2016) is the only DOOM video game that has Denuvo.

The original DOOM video game never had Denuvo since Denuvo didn't exist in the 1990's.

Inside had Denuvo before it was removed and is not a graphically intense video game like DOOM (2016) is.

I want PC gamers who played DOOM (2016) before the patch that removed Denuvo to compare tests results if any of them did.

I managed to since I purchased the PC version of DOOM (2016) on Steam in June of this year.
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So yes, there is no reason to believe your "tests" and "benchmarks" are true at all, cause you have been caught in a lie.
Post edited September 11, 2017 by eisberg77