Themken: C2 (just as an example I have personal experience with) refused to start when I wanted to start it again after a half a year break or so. That one is from 2011.... I did pay for it but maybe I should just have pirated it seeing as how I am not allowed access to an already installed PAID for game. There are examples of games that have had DRM killing them in less than five years from original publishing date but more common is multi-player being shut down in just a few years time. Having LAN play enabled seems to increasingly vanish from newer games too.

dudalb: Hate to say it, but the number of LAN players are shrinking all the time. Newer games consider it not worthwhile to program for.

dudalb: It is funny that Denuvo has not proven to be as crackproof as it's Makers have claimed.........

Plokite_Wolf: Nothing is crack-proof, ever, the only question is the time required to understand and crack a certain copy-protection system. Denuvo was enjoying an unusually long period of having 0 games cracked, with even a known Chinese crack team reporting one of their guys being on the verge of a breakdown because of it. It wasn't until many, many months later that the first Denuvo-protected game was cracked, and then it began to spread.

Bethesda, on the other hand, removed Denuvo from Doom (2016) after its critical initial sales period, which brings the most revenue, ended, so there's that...

dudalb: If the Pentagon's highest security computer can be hacked, then anything can be hacked, given enough time.

227: There are apparently many different versions of it as each release has it tweaked, which contributes to a lack of clarity about what exactly it's doing in any given game. Denuvo was originally marketed as an "anti-tamper" that wasn't itself a DRM, but it's been since demonstrated that more recent incarnations make use of activation servers, adding yet another failure point to games. Since it's very difficult to crack, only a few games have ever had it stripped out or worked around, which poses a threat to the long-term longevity/accessibility of games that include it once the aforementioned activation servers go down. Usually legitimate owners could rest knowing that they could strip out DRM once it became a problem, but that won't be possible with many Denuvo games.

There are also rumors of it affecting performance or damaging SSDs, but those are mostly unproven or overblown. Not that most people will correct anyone who claims those things, of course. Blind rage toward a bad thing is useful, even if the angle is technically inaccurate.

The most annoying part about Denuvo, though, is that its biggest problems will come down the road instead of right after release, so some gamers will actively defend and request its usage under the pretense of it having no downsides, presumably having never seen a game become inaccessible because of activation servers going down. Some buy into the whole "we have to fight those pirates who are ruining the industry" narrative, while some just can't see any further than the tip of their own nose. Basically, imagine a DRM with the potential longevity issues of always-on DRM that reinforces publishers' ability to enforce games effectively being full-priced rentals, but with enough PR spin that some people actually go to bat for it.

dudalb: And it takes 45 Gigs of hard drive space......
Maybe it is just me, but that seems really,really, excessive for a adventure game of this type.

onarliog: Putting DRM aside for a bit, have you guys read the Steam reviews and others? It appears that the game is very poorly made in general, both the technical side and the story. What a disappointment...