T w e n t y S i d e d
For over a year people have been requesting that I weigh in on Denuvo, the fancy new DRM that has all the publishers excited. What is it? How does it work? How effective is it?
DRM used to be a major part of my writing. I still care about the issue, but I eventually stopped talking about it because I ran out of things to say. You can only write the “Inconveniencing your customers in an attempt to harm people who are not your customers is a stupid idea” rant so many times. I made my case. Nothing changed. End of story.
I wanted to wait to comment on Denuvo until I had something concrete to say. I figured sooner or later we’d have answers to some of the questions I posed above. But even after all this time there doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus.
What is it?
The term “Digital Rights Management” is such a deviously constructed bit of PR. It sounds like a good thing. “Digital Rights”. Those are good, right? But calling anti-copying software “Digital Rights Management” is like calling prison “Freedom Management”. It’s technically true, while also being a pretty good example of real-world doublespeak.
In the case of videogames, DRM is any system intended to “manage” (limit) what you can do (your rights) with the software through various software tricks. The argument usually goes something like this:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dumb Industry: Denuvo and the Death of Piracy”
