Yeah, that's the thing about it, right? It has all the pieces of the architecture of a modern console in a world where none of them make sense. Even with the 360 I was probably an outlier, and the reward you got by being able to access 720p video on a CRT PC monitor was much higher compared to a SDTV.
Specifically the VGA 480p output, which was a big deal for most use cases.
I imagine there is some regional differentiation here based on HDTV adoption and SCART vs component, but for reference VGA out was still the sole way I had to get any progressive signal for gaming all the way down to my day one Xbox 360 in 2005, which did not have an HDMI out (not that I had any displays with an HDMI in, for that matter).
Or the weirdly anachronistic mess that is the Dreamcast in general. I mean, it's not easy to visualize today because a lot of the "just a tiny underpowered PC thing" approach ended up winning the day, but the Dreamcast made no sense whatsoever at the time and produced entirely absurd looking games.
Maybe you could try to rationalize the 480p thing as an advantage today, but at the time screenshot comparisons looked a generation apart next to the PS2.
Well, brand and image are relevant, in more ways than direct sales impact (something that "voting with your wallet" often ignores).
But mostly, and this is important, it's worth remembering that Denuvo's clients aren't the people who buy their games, they are the people who sell the games. That's who Denuvo is selling to. And Denuvo, which is a very big, if not the only, name in town for effective DRM on PC, would like to keep being that.
All else being equal, if Denuvo generates negativity in forums and a similar no-name competitor doesn't a client (that's a publisher, not a buyer of the game), may choose to go with the newcomer just to remove the noise, or to prevent an impact on sales they can't verify.
But also, I imagine people working at Denuvo are kind of over being the random boogeyman of gaming du jour while other DRM providers are actively praised or ignored. I'd consider speaking up, too.
I probably wouldn't because there's very little to be gained from that, as this conversation proves, but... you know, I'd consider it.
EDIT: Oh, hey, I hadn't noticed, but the guy actually responds to this explicitly. Pretty much along these lines, actually:
RPS: A lot of companies seem happy enough with the service Denuvo provides to keep using it. Why are you so concerned about public perception? Why not just let people have their theories and carry on doing your thing?
Andreas Ullmann: Hard to answer. So maybe it's just… maybe it's even a personal thing. I'm with the company for such a long time. The guys here are like my family, because a lot of the others here are also here for ages. It just hurts to see what's posted out there about us, even though it has been claimed wrong for hundreds of times.
On the other hand, I can imagine that this reputation also has some kind of business impact. I can imagine that certain developers, probably more in the indie region or the smaller region, are not contacting us in the first place if they are looking for solutions.
Because currently, there is only two ways to protect a game against piracy, right? Either you don't, or use our protection. There is no competitor. And I can imagine that there are developers out there who are hesitant to contact us, only because of the reputation. They would probably love to prevent piracy for their game, but they fear the hate and the toxicity of the community if they do so. And maybe they even believe all the claims that are out there - unanswered from us until today - and for this reason don't contact us in the first place.
Hollow Knight is from 2017, I don't think it was out there draining business form this seven years later. Bloodstained is more recent, and that cost the same as PoP. Also the Ori games, which are priced the same.
Plus this launched half off on Steam and nobody bought it despite being cheaper than Bloodstained and Ori.
So... I mean, it could have been that, but it pretty clearly wasn't that.
I mean, there are worse areas to run based on gut checks. Ultimately you buy whatever brands make you feel warm and cozy. But just so we're clear, Steam is the granddaddy of both PC DRM and digital distribution with no ownership.
I get thinking their implementation is better, but I don't know that I get "well, this one I actively root for, that one I consider a boycott-worthy deal breaker".
Not to my knowledge, but I bet not being on Steam had more to do with it than Denuvo, by far. There is no indication that DRM software discourages sales, to my knowledge. If it does, at worst it breaks even.
I will buy the DRM-free option every time, but every piece of data out there suggests that "I will never play a game with Denuvo" people vastly overestimate how much of a practical impact that stance has.
Me, I'm just weirded out that people are so mad about some solutions they know but not about Steam DRM or any other solution that isn't known widely by name. You know, since I'm sharing all my unpopular gaming hot takes here.
Yeah, so I just checked, it brings up a Ubisoft Connect windows and then boots. It has less of a launcher than, say, Baldur's Gate 3.
I don't know if it makes you log in the first time or it creates a new thing for you by default, but I can tell you I had more account and launcher trouble running Warframe on a new PC this week than I did playing any recent Ubisoft game.
BTW, you can link up your Steam account to Warframe now and not have to log in each time and man, that only took a decade. Still didn't piss people off as much as Ubisoft being on Epic, though.
Yeah, I fully agree that they've stuck to a template far too closely for far too long. That's part of why I'm frustrated that this one went as poorly as it did, since it very much isn't that.
I think the hostility to any non-Steam platform is unwarranted, although annoyance is annoyance. That said, the Ubi launcher on Steam right now is just a pop-up, I don't think it makes you log in each time if you have everything linked.
This doesn't have anticheat, it has DRM software, though.
But hey, if there is no overlap, then how come this did so much worse than other similarly well liked metroidvanias, right? That's been my point here. People keep pointing out that it's not comparable to other Ubi titles. I disagree, because PoP is PoP, but let's roll with that. It also underperformed compared to other games in the same genre with similar review scores.
So what happened there? Either the Ubi woes are behind this, and then it doesn't make sense because this did worse than other more Ubisofty Ubisoft games, or they are not because different demos, and that doesn't make sense because this did much worse than similar games not from Ubisoft.
I think as far as this tells us anything is that the stink of negativity is not very fact-based when it comes to the core gaming community. That and Ubisoft may not have more money to make by going to middle sized, pure and simple high quality experiences like Rayman or this. Which sucks. Those are the best games they've made in recent years, as far as I'm concerned.
The point here isn't whether this game did poorly. It did. Cool.
The point here is that it did WORSE than other Ubisoft games.
Specifically, worse than Ubisoft games that include all the shitty behavior. More of the shitty behavior, in fact.
So the performance of the game is not correlated to the shitty behavior. Well, maybe more shitty behavior gets you better sales, that would fit, but I'm not going to jump to that.
You'd think if Ubisoft's shitty behavior is scaring people off this game would have done better than Mirage and Mirage better than Outcasts, but that's the opposite of what happened.