tl;dr - Denuvo wrecks an SSD's lifespan.

So apparently I just found out that Dragon Age uses Denuvo, a new type of DRM solution. Shouldn't matter too much to users who paid for it right?

Unfortunately, no. The performance hit isn't a big deal, but the amount of IO the software performs is staggering. Denuvo was used for Lords of the Fallen, and according to thesesources, the third-party solution was performing its checks approximately 150,000 times per hour. That means in one second, 42 read/write operations were performed on your disk when the CPU brings the page from disk onto RAM (assuming it has moved from RAM onto swap memory). This amounts to about 30GB of IO in 40min. That is a recipe for wearing out those NAND-gates really quickly.

Of course, this could all be an exaggeration. Windows' memory manager would be pretty smart when to comes to temporal locality of frequently accessed memory blocks, right?

Regardless, tread lightly, people.

Wasn't GTAV going to use it as well?

Sounds like SecuROM 2.0 (that was made by these guys, right?). I imagine the same thing will happen. It will stop people from pirating games with it for 2-6 months, people will crack it, then they will continue to use it, fucking over the paying costumer, while the people playing it for free get the better experience. Every time somebody comes up with one of these copy protection systems, the same exact thing happens.

I believe so.

Definitely never getting the PC version then... It is terrible that DRM is still wrecking PCs. It's Starforce all over again, and again, and again.

Now that I already have it installed, is there any way for me to move it without reinstalling on a second drive?

Edit: Nevermind. Googling found a pretty simple solution. It's the same as with steam.

Denuvo has said they are not in any way involved, but I hear other news sites still reporting that it is being used so I am not sure.

Kind of insane if this stuff is true, way to screw over your paying customers. But on the companies side Lords of the Fallen has not yet been cracked, and some FIFA game also used Denuvo and is not cracked either. I suspect the pirates will be working way harder on Dragon Age though, it is a much higher profile game.

PC games, amiright? And before you pile on to DRM solutions here's what happens when you don't use DRM on PC: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-witcher-2-pirated-45-million-times-cd-projekt/1100-6346876/. The witcher 2 didn't use DRM. It sold just above a million copies. It was downloaded on torrents approximately 4.5 million times.

Even if that new DRM solution only slows down the cracked version for 6 months, 1 months or even a week some people who would've picked it up on pirate bay are going to buy it instead.

@pyrodactyl: and that's really sad. I don't know what the solution is, that is for smarter people than myself, but CD projekt trying to do the right thing still gets screwed over hardcore on what is otherwise an amazing game.

@pyrodactyl: I don't think The Witcher 2 is a good example, that game was a huge success and the people who make it (CD Projekt) not only have publicly spoken out against DRM, they run gog.com which is a whole website based on selling you games with no DRM. Even in that article the CEO of CD Projekt says DRM is dumb.

So what can one do? will putting it on a normal drive help? Not against the DRM ofcourse but will a normal harddrive suffer as much?

@jking47: That doesn't really change the fact that it was pirated exponentially more than it was purchased. Good on CD Projekt for still wanting to be anti-DRM, but you can't really blame other companies for not being so accepting of people stealing their games.

I'm not into anything that will break my PC. Having said that I want the people who make the games I like to be paid for the work they do. I hope one day we will find a solution that is ok for all parties. I did not know that about the Witcher 2, that is a shame.

The issue is that games is that producers are overvaluing protecting games. The lifespan of some of these titles is sometimes weeks and at best months where throwing on obtrusive and damaging DRM solutions like this is literally overbearing and shows little evidence it helps with sales.

This is a monster of their own creation: They make very expensive titles, blow an equally large pile of money on advertising to create a "hype train", all for a piece of software which will be abandoned in a couple of months by the buyer who enjoyed it where the cost of protecting is just another facet of the absurdity.

It seems like so far the only outlet reporting this is "GameMag.ru" and no one else. The sources you listed don't seem to be sources, but instead just other people linking back to the original Russian article. Evidently the data from that article is based around information from one of their users and not even a tech firm or something who is actually known for reliably evaluating these types of things.

So what we have right now is essentially someone on a forum (this one) linking to some other forum as a source, who in turn cited another forum as a source. Given that the PC review code for Inquisition has been out for awhile and there have been other PC games in users hands for awhile that use Denuvo and not a peep has been said about this issue at all, I'm almost not comfortable even allowing this topic to remain open. We'll see how it goes, but if anyone has a better source that can confirm any of this information, please post it.

How is it not a good example? If a pirated version wasn't available for a while after the game's release, a portion of those 4.5 million people would've bought the game. Even if less than 5% did buy the game instead of pirating it, it would've meant a rise in sales of 10 to 25%. That's huge.

I wonder how many people would have bought it if there was no pirating option though, it's definitely not 1:1. Some people might be interested but not enough to pay $60.

@kubertus said:

It shouldn't do, as it isn't possible to do it at the same speeds. My HDD IOPS is 1000x less than the SSD meaning it can only do so much in the same amount of time so there should be little wear at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't fully understand these concepts.

Edit: I'm putting it on my normal drive now just to be safe.

I am not defending DRM, but I have a hard time finding much information regarding this except for some random forum posts about it and most of them just hates the idea of a DRM made by the people behind SecuRom, aswell as writing that no games using it has been cracked. I also find it insane to think that it would only use one block for the encryption, I mean I am not in denial, but it's such a strange behavior to me. As for now I will take this as a grain of salt and try to research this from, let say, more trusted sources including solid proof. If you are caring for your solid state drives It wouldn't hurt to just put this on your regular hard drive until more information comes around it. I only have SSD's but I am not worried. And my game probably wont arrive until Friday so enough time to do some more research I guess.

Hrm, isn't Origin supposed to be the DRM solution for EA games? Why do they need another one?

Since this is a Bioware/EA game and most likely requires Origin would they not be using that as there DRM solution?

@pyrodactyl: Origin and Steam are already a form of DRM though. This is just DRM on top of other DRM.

Alright I'm closing this for now. If information about this alleged problem with Denuvo comes up from a more reputable source then feel free to either PM the mods with the updated information and we can unlock this topic, or go ahead and start a new thread. If you're going to start a new thread, please make sure your sources aren't just other sites and forums citing the original Russian article and nothing else, because right now that appears to be all there is.