Oh, it was Sega. That's the thing about having an entrenched dominant position, you don't need to invest money to get exclusives, even when you are paying out a smaller share.
Gaben may be a libertarian, but I'm not. If you set up systemic reasons why I'm getting boned it's still your fault.
Wait, who want a monopoly? Epic? The Epic store is like a tenth of Steam's size, and most of that is down to Fortnite alone. Hard to have a monopoly when you're struggling to break double digit share.
Well, yeah, but if I was going to get pissed about that, then Epic would be way low in my list of priorities. It's Steam sucking up all the oxygen in that particular room. I own every Yakuza game they made available on GOG and they've stopped doing that. That wasn't Epic.
There are a whole bunch of games that actively removed compatibility with SteamOS, and Linux by extension. Apex Legends was the most recent and the most vocal about it.
I'm annoyed when a game isn't on GOG. Epic's issue is that I use it the least and so I'm less likely to boot up a game on it unless I'm actively seeking it out.
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".