We’re pretty sure that a lot of our readers were looking forward to our comparison between the pirated and the Steam version of Final Fantasy XV. And after numerous tests, we can safely say that the pirated version runs better than the Steam version.
Let’s start with the basics. For this comparison we used an Intel i7 4930K (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, Windows 10 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce drivers. Both the Steam and the pirated versions were installed on an HDD. For our testing we used the following settings on both versions (Highest settings without the NVIDIA Gameworks effects).
Right from the start, the pirated version loads faster than the Steam version. The Steam version needed 30 seconds in order to launch (for the first time) whereas the pirated version was ready in just 3 seconds. The second launch (by exiting and then re-launching the game immediately) needed 8 seconds for the Steam version, whereas the pirated version was – once again – ready in 3 seconds. The in-game maps also loads faster in the pirated version (58 seconds versus 1 minute and 40 seconds). Below you can find a video with the loading times for both the pirated and the Steam versions.
The Steam version also suffers from additional stuttering. While we did notice very minor stutters on the pirated version, things were a lot worse on the Steam version. By taking a closer look at the CPU/GPU/RAM and Disk usage, we can finally discover what is causing these additional stutters. From the looks of it, the Steam version is constantly using the hard disk drive, resulting in random stuttering. Those with SSDs may be able to brute force their way, however, this should not be an excuse or a solution as the pirated version does run better on HDDs.
But how about performance? Our initial test at 1280×720 on the Highest settings (without the NVIDIA Gameworks effects) were promising for the Steam version. Our first scene performed almost similar to the pirated version. Performance was identical in these two versions when we disabled two and then four CPU cores. For all of our comparisons, Denuvo/Steam version images are on the left and Denuvo-free/pirated version images are on the right.
However, things went downhill once we upped the resolution to 1080p and started exploring the vast environments. As we can see in the following comparisons, the pirated version was always running better than the Steam version. Moreover, these comparisons are almost at the same time of day, making them as legit as they can get.
Not only that, but the unoptimized scenes we reported in our PC Performance Analysis were nowhere to be found in the pirated version, resulting in a far better experience.
Furthermore, the Steam version seems to suffer from some performance issues that occur the longer you’re playing the game. For example, here is a scene running at 60fps after playing the game for 10 or more minutes. And here is the same scene with the exact same settings running with 75fps after simply re-loading the chapter. Do note that the pirated version does not suffer from this issue as performance remained great for longer sessions (we were able to play for more than an hour and performance did not degrade).
Square Enix released today a patch which did not fix any of the aforementioned issues.
In conclusion, the pirated version of Final Fantasy XV runs better than the Steam version. We don’t know whether this is due to the Denuvo anti-tamper tech or due to optimization issues that can be resolved via a future patch. The point is that the pirated version has significantly less stuttering, loads way faster, and runs better/faster as it is not plagued by the unoptimized scenes that we’ve witnessed in the Steam version!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Brace yourselves
What is “the pirated version”? Nowhere in the article are you actually able to define the difference between the two. How is this helpful at all? Why would you report on this for any reason but to advocate piracy if you can’t specify why one is better?
It’s not advocating piracy, it’s proving that we paying customers get a worse experience because of the anti-Tamper or DRM, it’s never been about piracy. Did you know that even cracking groups recommend you buy the games and support developers?
Exactly and it’s a damn shame too. If anything the Publisher/ Developer is promoting piracy by making the game run more poorly for those that are paying full price for it.
yup its a shame, first the pirates got to play it before us paying customers then we get the inferior version, what a lovely way for square enix to reward its loyal paying customers.
Except that Durante proved that denuvo had no impact at all on performance. So we know it isn’t the DRM making these changes.
One person claiming to prove something or disprove something doesn’t make true, it has to be debunked and tested by others. Durante is not the authority in this area.
I agree except for saying he isn’t an expert. If there was any single person I trusted to tell me how a game operates under the hood it’s him. He has proven himself the most qualified person. I am of the OPINION that he is an authority. If you don’t agree, that’s fine. Anyways I’ve got nothing else to say about it since we need more details to get a full picture. Have a good one.
It’s really not so much about trust and it’s not about the person being an expert, it’s about their evidence and others being able to debunk it or validate it. Someone you trust and claims to be an expert can make mistakes or be wrong, that’s why you should never argue from authority. We have had instances where amatures have proven professionals wrong with their evidence or data.
Durante actually knows what he’s talking about. John doesn’t. There’s a difference. But as per the typical cuckservative Trumpster mentality, sure – let’s believe you, the uneducated, unexperienced party.
Not an argument.
Maybe you should hang out with PC gamer if you trust them more
Ironically the people that are against the article are from PC gamer, they’re here to defend Durante not the evidence. Apparently Durante’s evidence is final, he is right, no one should debunk it and anyone that does is inexperienced or “uneducated”, says someone who knows nothing and is both of those things.
Erm… If I’m following this right isn’t this all about arbitrary timing? If DSOG did their tests first and then Durante did his, he would be the one debunking DSOG rather than the other way around.
You need to look at the robustness if each test, rather than when they made their conclusions.
You can’t see sarcasm there? And yes it’s a common thing that people argue from their favorite authority figure rather than the evidence.
Ok durantee argues that the demo version which is linear runs the same as the full verison that is open world. Yet he didnt use the crack. Durantee is trying to defend denuvo without doing any actual comparisons.
Didn’t he look into what Denuvo itself was doing while the game was running?
LOOK AT ME I AM DURANTE, DENUVO IS GREAT IT DOESNT AFFECT PERFOMANCE ON RIME…LET ME PROVE THAT BE COMPARING THE LINEAR DEMO OF FINAL FANTASY WITH THE FULL OPEN WORLD VERSION, I WONT USE THE CRACK, BECUASE I AM TOO BIASED TO PROVE THAT DENUVO DIDN DU NOTING THAT I WONT EVEN USE THE CRAP.
If i didnt know better i woudl say durante is an idiot but he is a massive denuvo shill.
First of all you cant be a cuckservative and a trumpser. Trump is not cucking like the cuckservatives do, he is telling it like it is, thats why he won. nderstand basic terminology idiot. Also he is playing 4d chess with guns nad videogmaes. He is pushing the issue so far that the democrats wont be able to take whatever deal he is giving them and in the end they will run out of time, just like it happened with daca. 4D CHESS.
Now on the person who “knows what he is talking about”. Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on
He didnt prove anything he took the demo which is linear and compared it with the full game which is open world. He didnt use the crack.
He was so biased in order to prove denuvo didnt do anything that he didnt actually do the comparison with the crack or in the same enviroments.
HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE
“B-but Durante says otherwise”.
Durante could be right. This may be unrelated to Denuvo, which is why the article is carefully titled ‘pirated version vs Steam version’ and not ‘Denuvo vs non-Denuvo’. It all comes down to how much time he was playing the game. Initially it appeared there was no difference to us too. However, and as soon as we started exploring the game, performance went downhill.
Yeah, true. Besides, both test environments are different, so it may produce different results as well.
Might well be a memory leak as well John, 15 seconds to load my save and I’m 13 hours in. It wouldn’t be uncommon for the game to slow down over time or saves to bloat over time and people are reporting memory leak issues.
So what is it then? There are two differences between the games, Denuvo and the Steam API. One of these is causing the issues (or both combined). According to Durante, it’s not Denuvo, so it must be Steam.
Or the game just has memory leaks and not everyone will be able to reproduce the memory leak, it’s like any bug, some people hit them, some don’t hit them
Incidentally, many people are also pointing the finger at the newest GeForce driver. With some reporting better/smoother performance when they rolled back. So there could be multiple things at work.
indeed it could, the SSR can kill performance as well when you go right next to the water, especially at 4K, I’ve done my own test, from into the low 20s when everywhere else it’s above 30fps.
Then both version would have the same problem if the driver was the one to blame to.
Hard to say, as normal people don’t by two different copies of a digital game, there may be factors compounding the driver based issue that are not common to all versions, and the range of issues are great enough that only part of them may be attributable to the driver itself.
I think there’s probably a multitude of things at fault here.
Explain in great detail as to how it could 100% be Steam’s fault then.
As i’ve written above imho is either some caching issue or maybe MP component related problem like steam VAC anti-cheat.
Then it would have to be proven via testing.
So its everything but the thing that usually causes the problem…right….right.
You cant argue whit common sense
OMG LOL, you make my day Bro. Maybe the next thing youll say we need Denuvo making their own store to not allow Steam to ruin the game experience. You funny bro.
Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on
i read that with smeagol’s voice for some reason
I wonder if similar differences exist between the three official PC releases of the game. If some of this comes down to the Steam API problem modders found then the Origin and Windows Store versions should also run better than the Steam version. The game’s known memory leak and variables in environment (time of day, exact location of the camera, what the game decides to render from moment to moment) can account for some of the difference as well.
John said “MAY BE”.
I also feel the type of CPU you use has a huge effect and with durante using a really high end cpu i feel like it kind of minimises the fps difference. I’m glad you didn’t do that.
Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on.
FAQ DRM
Pirate version isn’t running SteamAPI
Why not? Denuvo isn’t causing it according to both John and Durante, so it could well be an issue with the Steam API.
John didn’t say Denuvo isn’t coursing the issues, he said he couldn’t say for sure but he did say that there is a performance gap between the cracked and non cracked.
You can make this, Fund a new church called Durante is God on earth and you can be his pope, what do you think?
Also when John said it wasnt denuvo, he clearly said he doesnt know what exactly is causing the problem. Of I forgot, part of your work as Pope is to twist info for the zealots.
It kinda does actually try playing a pirate game without steam running. It wont run.
Lol. Maybe back in 2011.
Good luck taking a stand for DRM!
How are the graphics in the retail version versus the demo? I tested the benchmark tool and the demo and was not impressed with the graphics. They are good, but not as amazing as the people seem to be saying. Tested at 4k with all the bells and whistles maxed out.
Unless it was really badly implemented by Square I really doubt it could take up to 20 fps.
A truly informative article.
WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS, WHO HAS BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS….nah, its just pirates making stuff up, Kim, where are you Kim? What you got to say now Kim?
I predict KKW is going to have a sh*t-fit when he sees this article. This might be the thing that finally sends him over the edge.
I’ve been saying for a long time that DRM or Anti-Tamper seems to be affecting load times, not necessarily performance, in fact ever since The WItcher 2. I also think it’s rather convenient that once DRM is removed, a patch has faster loading times in the patch notes.
Check my reply to ugh
No pirated game has ever run better than the legit version. Nice try child.
False, even back in the 90 you could use a crack to avoid having to destroy the disk drive by overuse. Try including some citations next time.
https://www.google.sk/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/crackers-say-denuvo-drm-caused-slowdown-on-rime/%3famp=1
You mean all Ubisoft titles in last decade/late 90s etc… or Rime ?
Check out my reply to him.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
Far cry 2 kept on giving me bluescreens of death, i had to disable one of the cores to get it to work, thanks drm. Then got the gog version and run perfectly. From dust have perfomance issues and crashes because of drm. Rainbow six vegas 2 had crashes due to drm, the crack did not, so ubisoft patched it wtih a crack. Assasin creed 2 was a disaster with its always online drm, constant bugs, cracked version run fine. The assasin creed 1 leak run significantly better than the final release. Batman arkham city had constant stutters due to the drm. Witcher 2 had stutters and crashes due to drm rime had stuttering due to drm.
I just got those from off the top of my head. I could go on but suffice to say that YOU are the child for not knowing this things, proving that you started playing games recently…or you could be a good moron and swallow whatever drm pill ea and ubisoft is giving you and never question it. Like a good corporate slave.
Your tests are God awful.
For one, you’re NOT using the same save file! Who’s to say the extra time isn’t due to the differences in the file itself? Try doing it properly and get back to us.
Just tested it myself on my SSD.
10hour save – Lestallum=22 seconds
13hour save – Road Side scrapyard= 15seconds
So yeah, longer loading times in different areas, Lestallum is the city area, probably more accets to load.
and what about stuttering?
Why should the save file impact peformance, is this clown world or what?
I was wondering the exact same thing myself LOL. Maybe he is talking about time of day effecting performance even though he measured both at night. This guy doesn’t really get it.
PC gamer and their readers are now the authority on the subject, didn’t you know? :p
Honestly at this poing PC gamer has zero authority on any subject. They have turned into politically correct gamer. Actual pc gamers are so sick of those traitors who sell out to anti pc companies with anit consumer practises.
Indeed. With them having largely handed over news reporting duties to Andy Chalk they may as well rename the website SJW Gamer. Seldom a day goes by without an article by him on the subjects of what now passes for feminism, alleged sexism, alleged racism, alleged homophobia, alleged ‘toxicity’ in gaming communities, thinly veiled anti-capitalist nonsense, anti-police nonsense and (of course) the favourite obsession of all SJWs… President Trump.
Yes I’ve noticed that too.
Do it yourself and tell us, we cant wait to see how for your a save file can make a difference.
I honestly dont know why he thinks a save file would make such diffirencies, its a freaking save file for crying out loud, we used to download savegames and putting them in our save folders for years. Its not a graphics mod, its a save file.
Please provide your results and not just words. Show it, not tell it.
You have screenshots with RTSS.
Yeah. Screenshots. Show us some videos. Also the screenshots are poor in the sense they show different lighting, characters on screen, all of that can easily account for any difference.
For a fair comparison, we’d need to see identical scenes. This is an OPEN WORLD game.
Even with small difference in lightning fps gap between versions shouldnt be that big.
It easily can, given the settings in this game and your hardware, if you go over % performance amount, FPS can dip a lot. It has to be 1:1 frame comparison to be a fair test.
Even so there should be like 5 fps difference not 20, and it’s probably not game fault nor denuvo. In past i’ve done some tests with cracking my original denuvo protected games and apart from Lords of the Fallen there was like 1-2 fps difference.
There is no way a 20FPS difference between a few feet of a screenshot ingame, looking up at the sky, yes sure.
“THIS IS A OPEN WORLD GAME, yeah tell that to durantee who compared the linear maps in the demo with the open world…ahahhahahah what a denuvo shill.
There is that forbidden magic called screenshots. Just see the damn images in the article…
You can’t be surprised when people pirate content if you punish paying customers by giving them a substandard experience. These publishers will just not learn.
someone should do this for dishonored 2, performance is very random in that game.
apart from the fact no non denuvo exe exists for dishonored 2
What about the Special K fix tho, did that fix any of the issues or not?
That way we should be able to find out for sure if It’s down to Denuvo or Steam, as people are already saying.
Guys try running tests with Steam Shader Cache option disabled just to be sure and also run steam with offline mode.
For me looks like game have some issues with offloading some files to disk(maybe game’s catche files) with steam causing issues. Since FFXV has MP it could be vac protected.
Do you mean the shader pre-cache option? If so that only applies to OpenGL and Vulkan.
Hopefully the apologists Will finally accept Denuvo needs to die in fire.
It was always obvious it would have some sort of impact on CPU
Nonesense, just make a new version of denuvo with 70% perfomance drop. Freaking pirate!!
Idiot, cause that’s how development world.
Hmmm hey, let’s decrease CPU impact by 70%.
I’ll just tweak the code on my coffee break, and there we go, it’s now 70% more effective. ?
You are the idiot, the joke here is “DENUVO DIN DU NOTING” so they gonna keep saying that and make a new version of the drm that will have 70% worse perfomance.
Because they are incompetent.
Do you even speak English, cause I don’t have clue wtf you TRYING to say here.
Denuvo clearly is impacting on performance of the game as displayed here.
John
Can you reproduce that performance gap that you shown on the bottom two shots and are they the same save play time or even the same save file?
Yeap, it’s reproducible. You have to play the game a bit in order to see the performance degradation (we have a save file right after sleeping in the first inn. All we had to do was let Ignis drive us back to Cindy and then go to that exact place). The scene was running with 60fps as you can see. We then saved the game in a new file, exited to the main menu, loaded the game from that save, and saw that 15fps performance increase.
Also, since I’ve seen some claiming that we did not use the same ‘lighting conditions’… guys… it’s the same time of day. I take it that those complaining have not even played the game, otherwise they’d know that the in-game time is displayed/shown at the top right.
Also, SpecialK did not improve in any way the loading issues. We’ve also tried with Steam Overlay disabled and Steam in offline mode. No luck with any of them.
What about steam shader cache option?
give them a month to finish the game
This also includes a fix for excessive SteamAPI overhead that causes
unusually long load screens and hitches during heavy texture streaming.
That problem is easily mistaken for Denuvo, but emphatically has nothing
to do with Denuvo.
If I honestly had 200 gb free, I’d show you how stupid you are.
No it doesn’t. The pirated version does not run better. And Denuvo definitely doesn’t cause any problems with the game, which actual people with actual experience in the field have already determined on other websites.
Stop using bad hardware. The game runs perfectly fine with non-existent load times on an SSD.
You should be banned
Maybe you should pester devs to put only mining rigs in the system requeriments if every peformance comparison should be addressed by buying better hardware.
“And Denuvo definitely doesn’t cause any problems”
Then prove it.
“which actual people”
Sorry, I only take fictional people’s experience into account.
“Stop using bad hardware”
Stop throwing money at useless hardwares to bruteforce your way in.
Dont worry mate durante “denuvo is great rime perfomance isnt bad because of denuvo” tested the linear demo with the open world full game and decided there is no perfomance issues.
If i didnt knew any better i would say durante is an idiot, but we all know he is a denuvo shill.
Why you need 200gb? Just download the crack adn try it.
Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on.
Only a moron who started gaming after 2017 would say this.
The entire point of Steam in 2003 was that it ran games faster than running them normally. Nothing has changed. steamAPI takes 0 resources and hinders nothing.
Not in this case. The Steam API has caused some performance issues with the game. Modder Kaldiean found some issues with the Steam API overhead in the game and released a mod to manage it, as well as taking care of the stuttering caused by how the game handles input switching.
RIGHT RIGHT, i got half life from 1998, also known as the WON version. On a pc that is star trek powerfull compared to what was available back then, it still loads faster than the steam version does.
To argue that steamapi takes 0 resources is so riddiculus that you might as well argue that gravity doesnt affect your weight.
Freaking moron.
Thats what YOU GET FOR PAYING FOR DENUVO CRAP!
If only people had a brain and NEVER buy any Denuvo game..Do I need to say more!
Hope you enjoy that gimped version of your’s 😉
I buy denuvo games and i love it…granted i have 64gb ram and 1080ti sli so this game is a cakewalk
Richy Rich has just speak guys, lets spend 3000$ on a computer to support lazy devs. HAHA!
Well you look like a total idiot, not everyone has the money to spend on 80ti fegget
Lol, povvo peasant.
sounds like your problem tbh
nahhh I have decent pc I m good
And now to sit back and watch as the major video game media refuses to cover this, because it doesn’t fit the pro-DRM narrative……
What’s this ” pro-DRM narrative” ?
“The Publishers like DRM, so since we’re the Publisher’s propaganda mouthpieces (excepting when it goes against our SJW beliefs), we like DRM too!”
Who are you quoting ?
DSO is gaming media and they are reporting it runs better without the drm. I have seen varying reports from outer outlets depending on the game.
People had issue with steam when it was new , But now its the drm of choice.
Why, do I need to be quoting someone? I’m confused.
DSO isn’t major media, and DSO doesn’t wh*re out to publishers like PCG & Co. do. Just look at how many of the major sites sycophantically insist on defending loot boxes and routinely downplay scandals and controversies to see how much they value their ad revenue relations with the publishers over their relations with their viewers.
Steam is an acceptable form of DRM to most people due to its benefits outweighing its negatives in their eyes – not to mention that it isn’t generally considered to be a DRM by a lot of people.
“” are quotation marks.
Sorry for the confusion.
Who is at fault for loot boxes? the compy providing them or the people buying them?I don’t see the issue with them. I don’t really keep up with PCG anymore so I don’t know what their stance is.
You are going to have to give some examples of this “defending” and ” downplay scandals and controversies”.
If they get no viewership why would anyone pay for ad space?
At the start steam had its issues and no benefits, I don’t care what most people consider something if it’s not true, It makes no differences
The company pushing loot boxes and pay-to-win is as much at fault for pushing gambling mechanics on minors in clear violation of laws across various states and nations worldwide as the whales (a small minority of players who spend a sh*ttonne of money on an individual game) who generate more profits for the developers through these monetisation systems than anything else, at the expense of most of the rest of the community, as ultimately we’re all playing the same games, except one gets to grind the sh*t out of it while the other gets to skip ahead “because muniez.”
But that’s neither here nor there in regards to DRM, it was just an example, as PCG tried to appear “neutral” on loot boxes so that they wouldn’t harm their relationships with the major publishers instead of coming down on the ESA/ESRB for their hypocrisy like a ton of bricks, as they should have.
The loot box example being one, but as we can’t post links without our posts getting flagged for approval by mods first, I’d say just Google search for more.
Not sure what you mean here, so I’ll just point out that journalists have an ethical responsibility to be neutral when reporting the news, instead of protecting their relationships with the major corporations, regardless of whether or not they sell them ad space on their websites.
And yes, Steam was bad in the beginning, I don’t think anyone’s ever denied that, but it’s come a long way since then, and I dare say it’s shaped up quite nicely since.
So kids are spending money on “gambling” on games no doubt they shouldn’t be. What are the parents doing? So it’s a small minority of players choosing to partake?
I’m not a minor but I do not see them pushed on me, Do they know when it’s a minor playing?
They tried to appear natural? My god … We need more hysteria!
ESRB has sucked since first created.
“so I’ll just point out that journalists have an ethical responsibility to be neutral when reporting the news”
“PCG tried to appear “neutral” on loot boxes”
doublethink? Your ideas on their motives are not fact.
I don’t know what their parents are doing, buying them more CoD copies, for all I know. And yes, microtransactions and loot boxes are profitable because of a minority who spends a lot of money on them, not because they’re overwhelmingly popular or whatnot.
And no, there’s no age checks, other than the ones Steam has.
The problem is PCG only does neutral when it suits them so as to avoid getting yelled at by their readerbase, as was the case with loot boxes, not because they actually believe in ethical journalism. The industry was saying stupid things (see: Pink Vader), they couldn’t quite figure out how to come up with a good defense for their stupid statements, so they opted for neutrality until the industry could figure out a more concrete defense for “Why Loot Boxes Aren’t Virtual Slot Machines.”
When they ultimately failed, however, they decided to revert to shilling out the old argument of “Loot Boxes Are Necessary Because Video Game Development Is Expensive.” Yeah, those marketing budgets are ridiculously expensive, I agree. Hiring Kevin Spacey to put his face into your game is also expensive, I agree….. Oh, if only they could figure out how to cut down on these frivolous costs 😐
Righ,t people choose to buy it. So what is the issue? Aside from parents not looking after their kids.
So now PCG listens to there fans?
“Why Loot Boxes Aren’t Virtual Slot Machines.” they are not. More like a lucky ball machine.
You are going to have to bring the article up if you are quoting it.
Indeed, marketing is outrageous and such a waste.
The issue is the entire AAA industry jumping on board with Pay-to-Win mechanics because it generates the most money with the least amount of investment, at the cost of those gamers who don’t want those mechanics to infest the AAA industry, because “f*ck them.”
The issue is these ideologies have already brought around the belief that “single-player games are dead” to these publishers (because they simply don’t generate as much money for them) and as a result, we’re the ones who lose out, ultimately.
PCG toes the line, they don’t “listen” they just know that they can’t full-out sperg for the corporations any more the way they used to 5+ years ago, as they’ve been exposed to too many scandals and controversies by now. Basically, it’s not 2011 any more.
I was paraphrasing the article’s title from memory, actually.
The industry will do what it wants as long as you keep paying them to do it. PersnolyI have never felt compelled to buy something to win.
Single player games are clearly not dead.
“Single player games are clearly not dead.”
Yeah, if only EA & co. would get the message.
Also, the industry will do whatever it thinks makes it the most profit, even if it means making more money off of less people, as it means less maintenance costs as far as they’re concerned, so that’s just icing on the cake and whatnot.
If you don’t like the way EA does business don’t buy their games.
He doesnt which is why all their games fail and they keep killing studios and franchises.
HEY GUYZ I AM SO SMART, I DONT BUY EA GAMES AND STUDIOS ARE CLOSSING DOWN AND FRANCHISES ARE DYING….LOOK HOW SMART I AM.
Now imagine if consumerss who voted ea twice in a row the worst company in america, would have informed ea what they are doing wrong so they can fix it…hmmm that could have saved studios and franchises…nah, we just keep out mouth shut and dont buy any games.
Then what is the problem ? Do you want the games or not?
Cant get those games when the studios are dead and ea owns the licenses idiot.
Cute, childish name calling? It’s Ironic to be insulting intelligence in a discussion but you do you.
Such is life kiddo, Don’t worry if EA is doing as bad as you say the licenses will be up for grabs.
Nope, chances are they’re going to sit on the IPs they own rather than sell them off. Or, at least, that’s what they’ve been doing so far.
The only thing that may be up for grabs is Star Wars, but only to other just-as-sh*t major publishers, and that’s only because Disney (who owns Star Wars) is sick of EA’s bullsh*t.
Why would they sit on ip’s if they have no income ? I would be surprised if Disney didn’t have to ok everything they did . Did you by battle front 2 ? I didn’t or 1. They are free for 10 hrs and that’s about all the game .
For that matter, why would they buy out studios, then kill their IPs over and over again with the stupidest of corporate antics, leading to the IP getting devalued and the studio eventually being shut down due to it no longer generating any sort of significant profits? Because it’s EA.
Disney’s Star Wars division (“LucasFilm”) is involved in and has significant oversight over the Star Wars projects, yes, that was one of the problems with the Visceral RPG, they needed Disney’s approval for everything, which slowed the entire development process down significantly.
No, I didn’t waste my money on either of EA’s cheap cashgrab games, and yes, I know they’re content-starved jokes, that’s my entire point.
Because they are worth something and have potential. Buy them or let someone else buy. If they are so content starved why are buying buying them ? Clearly there is enough to keep them going . Just wait till every thing is a monthly charge.
Yes, they were worth something and had potential – before EA got their hands on them, sadly. Then their quality and output swiftly declined under the iron fist of the Evil Empire (surprise!) until they were subsequently “forced” to shut them down after running them into the ground, having successfully alienated their formerly stable fanbases, like I said.
Why are people buying Star Wars games? Well, the 2015 game shifted millions of copies on the name “Star Wars” alone, whereas the 2017 game shifted jack sh*t by comparison, so, yeah, they aren’t buying them….. That’s the entire reason why Disney is looking to pull EA’s Star Wars exclusivity deal.
As for “monthly charges”; yeah, no – good luck sustaining the AAA industry on a subscription-based model which has already fallen out of general use as of several years now, with but a handful of notable exceptions such as WoW, EVE and consoles, which can only justify it on the basis of “we host MP servers for your games”, which neither Steam nor any of the major publishers can pull off, considering the microtransaction models they already shove into games using such excuses.
Especially now that loot boxes are under heavy legal scrutiny, which is forcing the industry to walk on eggshells while sacrificing small animals in overtime in hopes that they’ll be able to successfully quash any sort of loot box legislation before it becomes law, thus causing them to lose out on a significant portion of their profits (and good riddance to them).
Unless you’re specifically implying that they’re going to replace loot box income with subscription-based income, but even if that has been considered, I’m sure it’s been dismissed on the basis of “not enough bang for buck” – i.e. the same issue most streaming services are going to run into sooner rather than later, and inevitably collapse under the weight of.
And if they can’t figure that out internally (as Hollywood most obviously couldn’t), then I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people more than willing to teach them that the hard way – by not giving them any money, and thus humiliating them in the most hilarious ways possible.
Ah a big conspiracy. Logical. If they were doing so well and had such a stable fan base why were they sold, to begin with?
So Disney is more concerned with profits just like EA :O what a shock, a profit-driven business model.
It’s going to happen, It is the next step. EA has access, Sometime they will put a game only available through it and enough people will throw them money they will do it again.
Not liking something is hardly the reason to get legislation pushed. Time to grow up I think Big government can’t save you from everything. Least of all bad purchasing decisions.
I never implied such a thing. I think they will no doubt move to a subscription-based model.
The best way is to vote with your wallet. Not legislation and not buying things and complaining about it after.
It used to be a very common practice for a studio to sell itself to a publisher once it hit big, actually. Though this has stopped almost entirely in the last 10+ years because of the way companies like EA routinely shut down the studios they bought out.
I don’t think I ever said Disney isn’t concerned with its profits, but whatever. Or EA for that matter, just that they’re far too obsessed with their short-term profit margins because they’re too invested in how much the value of their stock is, rather than how to keep IPs thriving for decades on end, so as to have a sustainable, thriving long-term business model instead of a constant turnover rate.
EA literally has nothing but DICE, BioWare and Respawn left to their name right now in the AAA industry; DICE is humiliating itself, BioWare is going to be strip-mined once Anthem falls flat on its face, and Respawn only has Titanfall and its unnamed Star Wars game – if even.
As such, EA has seemingly nothing with which it can use to push EA Access on to people other than Anthem, and if they try it with that, it’s just going to epically backfire on them. It’ll be hilarious, no question there, but yeah. Now perhaps they may have some major project left that’s still later down the pipeline, but going by what’s currently announced, they have nothing with enough power behind it to push EA Access onto people.
The AAA Publishers had a chance to avoid legislation by taking responsibility and opting to self-regulate, as they have done in the past, but instead they opted to have the ESA (ESRB parent company) be their b*tch about the entire affair, so, yeah, f*ck them and bring on the legally-binding legislation. After all, they’re the ones asking for it by continuously refusing to self-regulate, so, yeah, they’re more than welcome to choke on anti-loot box legislation, instead.
I doubt that is the case, They put them selfs up for sale because they cant keep the lights on.
I never said you said anything. Disney ok’ed it all but didn’t like the blowback. Even tho it mostly came from the vocal minority virtue signaling away.
You do understand its a business right? Their goal is to make a profit not create games you “want”, Sorry to say but that is how the world works.
Ya, you cant go with what is currently announced, There is no doubt so many projects going on and so many that have been canceled it would make your head spin.
How are they going to self-regulate? You say the issue is kids buying loot crate, They shouldn’t be playing the game to start with. But then you say its just a small amount of people who do buy into it, So its no issue really. Regulate adults buying things in a game? As a grown man I find it quite funny you think legislation or a company should regulate what you can and can not buy.
So, what, Notch sold Minecraft because he couldn’t keep the lights on any more? Hm.
“Even tho it mostly came from the vocal minority virtue signaling away. “
Yeah……… sure, sure.
I know it’s a business, I also know what a bad business decision is, but obviously you don’t seem to want to understand what I’m saying in this regard, so whatever.
I’m sure they’ve got a few things in development, but whether or not they see the light of day or not is another question entirely, and that’s even excluding whether or not they’re actually going to sell well, ultimately.
Regardless; the ESRB classifies “gambling” under its “AO” (“Adults Only”) label. All the ESA (ESRB parent company) had to do was admit that loot boxes are digital gambling and reclassify games with loot boxes under the AO rating, but they refuse to do this because AO games are banned on the Xbox and the PlayStation, so they’d either have to be pulled, or Microsoft and Sony would have to change their policies – alongside most major brick-and-mortar retailers, who also don’t carry AO games.
Regulating loot boxes is merely a question of applying existing gambling legislation to them, which prohibits underage children from participating in such activities, nothing else.
I think he sold it to create something else. Do you hate notch also?
I understand what you say, The result is much different tho.
Indeed they only finish projects they think will sell. Right now its BF, SW, ME.
It’s not gambling tho. Why would they admit it? Its the same as a random ball machine. Is that gambling? If I go to a candy dispenser is it gambling? are pokemon cards gambling? Seems a minority of over sensitive people like to make noise.
Indeed AO rating will create a mess. Just like it did with GTA SA.
Again it’s not gambling. You pay for random game loot.
He sold it because he didn’t know how to make a sequel to it and he wanted to move on, yes, I don’t know how you figured I must hate him for that, but whatever. I was merely providing a counter-argument to your absurd claims, but again, whatever.
They finish projects which they think will generate them billions, not “which will sell.” They care about “maximum profit” on “minimum investment”, not “decent profits” on “middling investments” and that’s a problem that the entire AAA video game industry has suffered as a result of for the last 10+ years, ever since they decided to switch from a quality focus to a quantity focus and as a result ran IP after IP into the ground, resulting in the industry as it is today, but no, please, keep acting as if this is all irrelevant.
Ah, the strawman “Pokemon cards” argument, where people try to compare physical items which I can store in a shoebox in my attic for 20 years and then suddenly randomly rediscover one day, and then be well within my rights to resell on eBay for a hefty profit (as people have done), to what is literally nothing more than digital lines of code which will one day disappear and leave me with nothing when the servers for those games are shut down and rendered inoperable as a result of mass inactivity.
Yeah, hate to break it to you, but that argument is a failure and a bad joke. Especially as loot boxes very much are gambling, regardless of how much “some over-sensitive people like to make noise” about how they aren’t, usually because they have an allergy to government intervention in general, on whatever basis they’ve managed to come up with to excuse their allergy to that intervention.
Again, it is gambling, as you’re literally rolling a digital slot machine. Loot boxes falling into a legal loophole doesn’t change the fact that they use the same basic mechanic as a slot machine, except you don’t pull a physical lever, but rather, you click your mouse over the digital equivalent of one. The psychological effect is the same, the end result is the same, it is the same thing, and it ought to be regulated as if it is the same thing.
AO won’t create a mess, as the publishers will simply force Microsoft and Sony to alter their policy on AO games, or they’ll just have the ESRB separate pornographic games from loot box (i.e. gambling) games using a new ratings system. Either way, you can rest assured that publishers will figure out something to avoid much of the problems with the AO rating, even if they are ultimately forced to stop selling loot box gambling to underage children.
You seem agitated when people make profits or are profit driven. You proved my claim right. Thanks.
They finish projects which they think will generate them billions, not “which will sell.” Both is the same. You are just crying over words.
The AAA suffers because money men have seen an opportunity to make even more money. And most people support this idea as we can see from the revenue. Your opinion on what games you like is irrelevant.
“Ah, the strawman “Pokemon cards” argument” Its only a strawman if you don’t understand what a strawman is. The medium doesn’t matter the concept is the same.
You are rolling a digital dice on many MMOs that drop loot, Seeing your
level increase releases the same toxins as gambling but it is not the same
. You are not spending money on the chance to win, you win every
time with loot boxes.
People have also sold guns and knives etc on CSGO for stupid amounts of money. Clearly, there is a market. Both pokemon cards and in-game loot isn’t worth crap all to me. If it is for you, fill your boots.
Yes calling for the government to help you not make bad purchasing decisions is good? Passing the buck again.
Yes, it will create a mess that is what legislation does.
Again with the children? Is it up to the company who has no idea who is at the end of the input device to decide what your child does?Or would the parent be the one who should know what their child is doing? Seems like a lot of passing the buck to me.
“And most people support this idea as we can see from the revenue.”
Yeah, all those dead IPs most definitely support the idea…. Oh, wait.
Now you’re just repeating yourself, and this is getting boring and repetitive. Have fun in your echochamber, I’m out.
P.S. “You are not spending money on the chance to win, you win every time with loot boxes.”
I also get free drinks at my local casino. Doesn’t mean I can’t lose. Likewise, the possibility of duplicates exist in most loot box implementations in order to increase the odds in favour of the company, not the player, so, yeah…..
You don’t know what a echochamber is or IP’s IP’s don’t have feelings. You don’t go in a casino for drinks quite the silly argument.
Wow, he’s really that stupid.
I feel rather ashamed, really….. It took me this long to figure out I’ve been arguing with an actual moron.
Nice , back to the childish insults. The true intellectual tactic. When you have no argument go to insults… Sorry you don’t understand IP ,strawman or echo chamber. Try only useing words you understand . Also falling to insults about intelligence is ironic . Grow up bud.
Look who’s talking.
Yeah, The one who don’t throw around childish insults and can talk logically about a topic even with someone he disagrees without thinking they are intellectually below me when rebutted.
Ohhnos
Actually I meant the one who repeats the same arguments over and over while acting like he’s proving something, but whatever, to each their own, I suppose.
You mean stating reality?
Whereas you used childish ironic insults. A troll wouldn’t that would they?
Must be convenient that everyone who disagrees with you is just a troll.
I don’t, that’s not the point; such antics, when they’re financially successful, have an effect on the other companies in the industry. EA wasn’t the first to do loot boxes, it was just the first to try and push Pay-to-Win into the mainstream for maximum profits. Likewise, Rockstar popularised microtransactions with GTA Online, but they weren’t the first to monetise their game to such an extent, and their implementation of them pales compared to what EA tried to pull. Likewise, Activision is trying its own approach with psychological manipulations, etc.
All of this builds on itself; the companies learn from each other’s successes and failures, and use them to create even worse systems.
And no, I didn’t buy GTAV (or Destiny 2) either, but its effect on the industry is notable regardless, what with GTAO being one of the major factors which resulted in EA pushing the “Single Player is Dead” narrative.
Why do they keep succeeding then if it’s so unwanted ? If it didn’t make money they wouldn’t do it . Stop partaking in things you don’t agree with. Gtav is a fantastic well made game. I don’t do the online but sp alone was worth the price. That narritve has been pushed forever ago. Mass effect is still sp and they still do so sp campaigns for bf and swbf.
As I’ve already stated, “you” – meaning I – don’t “partake” in this, and neither do most people; these systems aren’t designed for the majority, they’re designed for the minority, because the minority is more profitable than the majority when these systems are abused and exploited to such absurd degrees.
Also, Mass Effect is dead, and Andromeda had a multiplayer mode because Mass Effect 3 had a multiplayer mode, and it made EA significant sums of money, so go figure. As for DICE; SWBF2017 had a half-*rsed “campaign” (if you can even call that thing a campaign) because of public pressure and backslash stemming from SWBF2015 being so content-bare, and all you need to do is play through it and the Battlefield “1” “campaign” both to tell exactly how much of a sh*t DICE gave in both cases – that is to say, none. They threw those in there so they could tick the marketing box of “has a single-player experience.”
Lol you make no sense . The minority makes more then the majority. ME mp it’s not the main focus at all sp is not dead. If you like the game or not , ME didn’t “fail” because of its mp or micro transactions . Bf1 campain isn’t that bad, swbf I can’t say fist hand but I hear it’s pretty bad , But these games main focus is mp. Did you try titan fall 2 ? I got it for 5$ and bf1 for $20 well worth it imo.
One person spending $1000 in a game = more $ earned than ten people spending $60 in a game. Hence, minority > majority when it comes to profits from microtransactions and loot boxes. And yes, there are people out there who spend hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars on a single game. Not many of them, but enough to make them more profitable than the people who don’t, thus making them inherently more valuable to corporations.
ME didn’t fail because of its multiplayer or microtransactions, no, I never said that, so I’m really not sure where you’re getting that from. What I said is that Andromeda had MP because ME3’s MP made EA money.
Sure, BF1’s and SWBF’s main focus is multiplayer, but then again, so is Titanfall’s, but that didn’t stop Respawn from making an excellent (albeit, short) single-player campaign for Titanfall 2, far outpacing the sh*ts & giggles joke that DICE slapped together for SWBF2017.
So going your little scenario people are getting what they want, This upsets you?
The game made EA money, Not just Mp. Mp game bf1 Sp ME.
Right, you may like one game over the other makes no difference, Your idea that Sp is dead is wrong.
Satisfying the desires of a minority at the cost of a majority is a path that will result in disastrous side-effects for the AAA industry, as most people will forsake their games in favour of AA/Indie productions. Now to be clear, I really don’t care, in fact, I think they deserve to get f*cked (hard), but as this will come at the cost of even more IPs that I like/used to like being decimated for “maximum profits”, yeah, it isn’t exactly something I look forward to.
Especially as this will eventually inevitably result in a (well-deserved) market crash, as their ludicrous, cannibalistic “games as a service” models begin to devour each other at the expense of the average consumer – as always.
Once again you’re misquoting me; I never said SP is dead, I said EA said that, but whatever.
LOL, The it won’t happen. They will push as much as people are willing to pay So far they are on the line.
All games are made for “maximum profits” even aa/indie games. They are all made to make money.
You think This is fact tho even tho EA pushes out SP games. So it’s a mute point.
We’ll see.
Yes, they are, but there’s smart ways and stupid ways to make money. There’s ways to generate massive short-term gains at the expense of long-term profits, and there’s ways to sustain stable profits over the long-term, even if it means less short-term income.
Not sure how it’s a moot point when the CEO of EA himself said it, but whatever.
It’s a moot point since it’s not happening. The proof is in the pudding.
What you consider smart and what the people who run huge business is different. Let me know when you are running a huge business Whos investment is tied up for years creating a game people might or might not buy.
This guy….. acting like EA, Activision etc. aren’t industry jokes skating by on ideas they’ve already run half-way into the ground.
I’m loving it. No, seriously, please, continue; it’s hilarious.
That makes no sense. Do you not understand how the games industry or business works?
Please create another straw man to argue against.
What I do understand is that EA’s offerings are becoming more and more measly every year, and Activision is right up there alongside them with the same problem; their major IPs are dead, and they’re struggling to replace them. All that’s left to them is Titanfall, Battlefield, Star Wars (for a few more years, if even), and Call of Duty, respectively.
They’ve literally nothing else to field, other than bullsh*t jokes like EA Sports. And yes, I know, EA has Anthem, but as I expect Anthem to be Dead on Arrival, there’s no point in even bringing it up.
The fact that you either can’t see this, or insist on refuting it, is hilarious, but that is your prerogative, of course, so have fun with that (for as long as you can).
Your making up an argument I didn’t make, again.
Zatara pacience is going to the gold level, this 5british5 . Can’t be serious.
;D
5’s not trying to understand anything; he’s just trolling. No matter what you say, he’ll want an explanation and a link.
He’s like those historically illiterate agitators who demand proof that Moses lived, only you can’t present anything that he wrote, anything that anyone said about him, the fact that his contemporaries preserved his works as accurate accounts of the events through which they lived, his place in his nation’s memory, or the existence of ancient Israel itself.
rofl, nice comparison 😀
Not really. He cited Moses and therefore God as being fact. His opening sentence was spot-on though.
I like how from mocking christians and using jesus we have not gone to mocking jews and using moses. Next up is islam, no wait thats hate speech and can get you banned from UK.
Christoper Hitchens had it right.
Didnt Dawkins say that he is scared by the downfall of christianity becuase it looks like it will be replaced by something far far worse?
He may have but I couldn’t personally confirm it because I’m not particularly well versed in all Richard Dawkins has said over the years.
I dont get why you bother, it is obvious he is trolling, but you got my admiration for trying to explain it to him.
Bring your point to me . Oh, you have none.
Id say something but if you read your post, you have pretty much described yourself.
So i wont bother any longe,r you got nothing to say.
So, you have nothing to say but throw around ironic insults? What a shock.
Cute Bring your points to me little one.
You mean I want evidence instead of hysteria ..what a troll….
Cute […] little one […] troll
Thanks for proving my point.
Still nothing to say ?
If you’re going to keep proving my point, then there’s nothing to say except, “Thanks.”
So talking about the subject is “trolling” But just calling people trolls is not? Interesting.
Do you know what Irony is?
Do you know what Irony is?
You’re soaking in it.
Clearly not, Do you have anything to say on the topic or you only came to talk about me?
only came to talk about me
First Rule of Holes.
So , you only came here to talk about me and not the topic … How un-troll like..
you only came here to talk about me
You’re so vain; I bet you think this song is about you.
Yet here you are only able to sing one song.
It’s the only one you care to hear.
Wrong, I came to talk on the topic. What is it you came to do?
Like always, I came to read the comments. And then I noticed a troll trolling. Since you employ the same nescient and annoying techniques that others I’ve been engaged with recently use, I figured I’d try to spare others the aggravation.
Looks like I have.
So, do hasn’t to hasn’t the last troll, out can we move on to better user’s if our time?
Is this you trolling trolls ? Mean while I talk on the topic you all people troll ? Hummm .
you all people
I get you. You’re the kind of person who doesn’t know how to talk normally to people, so you antagonize them, because even negative attention is better than none at all.
I suppose that puts me at fault for responding to you in the first place. My apologies.
If you want to be friends, then let’s be friends, but you have to play nice.
Why would I want to be friends with someone unable to talk on a topic and reverts to childish insults?
You projecting your self on me don’t make a bit of difference. If you have something to say on the topic say it but coming in with “waa waa troll” is Not a good start.
unable to talk on a topic and reverts to childish insults
That sounds like projection. Does this mean that we’re not friends anymore?
Sounds like projection? You clearly don’t know what that is.
Sounds like projection? You clearly don’t know what that is.
That’s ironic. (Do you know what that is?)
So, Now you don’t know what irony is.
Now you don’t know what irony is.
And you’re still making my point.
I guess you don’t want to be friends.
Next you will say drug dealers are fine. Let them be. I still don’t get why tobacco industry can still sell their stuff to the addicts.
Right, I have no issue with people choosing to poison their body.
How ironic that you talk about media whoring out while defending Steam.
Okay?
Whats there to report? That a tech illliterate dj that posts daily news about the latest available cracks did an “analysis” of an open world game with hundreds of variables, with comparison of scenes with different composition and even settings? And how he didnt isolate the cpu with lower resolution and settings? How the cant replicate those large framerate differences? Reddit and other forums are already laughing about his ineptitude. God knows its not the first time.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c4ec043eaf2d95383ba99ffe864d2b80ef0553891cb26b51a9be7f2d1bab1fcb.png
qqq, you wouldnt happen to be jewish and or a paid shill would you?
Reddit and Neogaf a litterally trash talking, also you didnt realize what John did here was just sharing his own experience? You are a proof of the level of understanding of those forums and reddit.
“of an open world game with hundreds of variables, with comparison of scenes with different composition and even settings?”
MEANWHILE denuvo shill “drm is not responsible for bad rime perfomance” durante, compared the demo which does not feature the open enviroments of the full game with the full game which does and decided that there is no problems here.
GENIUS….hey, i am gonna compare a linear corridor map in doom snapmap with a big open one, i bet i ll get the same perfomance….lol
Durantee is a denuvo shill, he cant be that stupid.
” Reddit and other forums are already laughing about his ineptitude. ”
“Reddit”
Aside from the fact reddit is quickly becoming a bigger circlejerk than neogaff, i have been laughing at the ineptitude of “other sites” for years, especially with denuo shill durante who compared a linear demo with the open world.full game….because we all know demos and full games are identical….RIGHT? RIGHT?
That’s twice that I’ve seen you say that the editor here is a laughingstock on Reddit. You do know that some people consider Reddit to be a cesspool of disinformation and nonsense. I don’t take such a harsh view of Reddit but you seem to hold the site in such high esteem to the point that you believe that by using Reddit as a source for your point of view lends credibility to your opinion.
There are probably numerous threads on Reddit trash talking every gaming site in existence. People love to b*tch and moan.
I could spend an entire day telling you the nonsense I’ve seen posted on PCGamer over the years for instance.
qqq evidently has a personal axe to grind with DSOG’s owner.
Yes you’re right, Reddit and forums are full of tech illiterates and then come here thinking they know something. Instead of laughting, how about proving John wrong, send their best instead of sending their worst.
Check out the implosion at PCG for their shambolic fake news article titled ‘Researchers discover 13 major security flaws specific to AMD’s Zen CPUs’ published 14 hours ago. PCG’s integrity and already dubious reputation is being shredded in the comments section. Highly entertaining.
But pirated version had incomplete experience because you can’t play the dlc…
Not the point of the post
4 or 5 hours more content in a 40 or 50 hours game vs. a free game. and the winner is ?
WHERE ARE YOU KIMMMMM!!!!????
Yeah its like he dissapeared.
Busy applying copious amounts of Prep H to themselves……
Obviously 😉
Everything thus far is pointing to a botched Steamworks implementation. I wonder if the Windows Store version has these issues?
What about the version of Origin? Any difference? That is one way to see if it is the Steam DRM behind the issue or Denuvo
shhhh keep it low, we dont want people to wise up and compare steam with origin in order to find out that the fault isnt “bad implementation of steam api”
There is an opportunity here to test and compare the perofrmance of other DRM such as the version on Origin and the Windows Store…
Im glad i did not buy it then
The issues are likely not Denuvo related and more related to the Steam API.
Still would be nice if they removed Denuvo though since it was rendered mostly pointless before the game even came out.
maybe its because steam api
because Kalaiden say on their mod
Misc. Notes
This also includes a fix for excessive “SteamAPI overhead that causes unusually long load screens and hitches during heavy texture streaming”. That problem is easily mistaken for Denuvo, but emphatically has nothing to do with Denuvo.
maybe add comparasion with kalaiden mod too 🙂
ahahahahhaha! pc pirate master race wins again!
All we need now is more evidence. I trust Durante because he has been a saviour to the games I’ve played in the past but I also don’t think John would falsify data just because. We need more tests
Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on
“compared a linear demo with an open world full game”
I was only interested in the results so I didn’t read all the things on that article and wow 0_0 . I didn’t realize he only tested the demo version and not the pirated version (full release). That’s suspicious. The pirated version is available and yet he used the demo to compare the two.
You try to simplify something very complex on a populist manner.
I have seen myself the difference between a pirate version of the same game in the same hardware, I can expect Steam DRM taking load time at the first launch and then subsequent launch, but taking 20 FPS in game, is something I have never seen. Still we have the bishop of Durante church twisting John words with “its not denuvo” and saying “save files” could make a difference, without explaining how.
Denuvo drones are funny, but they have 64GB/i7/1080TI computers so the only ones who have to worry about DRM killing performance are the rest of the mortals who doesnt have 3000$ to spend on hardware.
Durante used steam demo version vs steam full denuvo version, and not steam full cracked without denuvo version vs steam full denuvo version. So not sure what pc gamer and Durante were doing comparing apples and oranges
Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on.
That’s a good point. Very few people are running a 1080 Ti and a high end CPU. Someone was complaining on another article that John is using average hardware for testing games but average hardware is what most people have. A 980 Ti is around the same performance as a 1070 and a 1070 is a solid midrange Pascal.
The next generation from Nvidia will probably drop the 980 Ti performance to an entry level GPU in comparison but that’s the way it always goes. Tech progresses fast with GPUs.
imo it’s good to have some info on how Denuvo affects average hardware.
They seem to be illierate, John never said it’s Denuvo that’s causing the performance issues and the conclusion is just that crack version runs better than the Steam version, it’s not hard to understand. These same people came here thinking Durante was right and John is wrong rather than reading the conclusion.
SecuROM 2.0!
Good times! 😀
Are people still surprised by this? C’mon folks wake up! Stop supporting this denuvo sh*t.
right its never denuvo, it must be steam that hasnt been a problem for over a over a decade.
Durante the denuvo shill who argued that rime does not have perfomance issues because of denuvo and compared a linear demo with an open world full game..because we all know there is no diffirence between linear corridors and open world and we all know that whatever perfomance you get in a demo you will get in the full game, despite the fact the demo is an old build who doesnt get patched but the full game constantly gets patched.
People attack john for his “bad” comparison, but durante didnt even try to compare because he was too biased to shill for denuvo. Kinda how feminsts first reach the conclusion of sexism and patriachy being the problem and then they come up with statistics to support their narrative instead of doing actual ressearch to find out what is going on.
John, it looks like facts always trigger some people :), but thanks for detailed article.
Kalaiden is full of s**t, why SteamAPI won’t cause this problem in thousands of other games ?
People defending denuvo is disgusting.
+200 comments ? What is going on ?
Really should have seen it coming when they released not only the benchmark but the demo a few weeks before release. Even tho it was over a year late I wanted to support them for bringing it over at all. I did not buy the overpriced ff12 on steam,but for this one I want to show my appreciation/support and honestly on 4790k/1070 this has an effect for sure…Now this purchase just comes with the added bonus of using a crack for first time in over a decade guilt free!
This looks like Square Enix deliberately made the game run worse.
Then they wait for it to get cracked and immediately release it’s “improved/fixed” version after.
In the meantime all their customers suffers.
Square Enix is disgusting. I now hate them more then ubisoft. At least ubi didn’t lie about “drm is not the answer”.
I can’t even play the game without crashes. The patch delayed my crash by a few more minutes, but the game is essentially unplayable for me. I don’t care about the marginal performance decrease between retail vs. pirated, I’d just like to play the game at all.
Kh-khm 🙂
So on my ryzem 1700 16 gb ddr4 3200 mhz gtx 970 at max settings 1440p pirated version how many fps will it run?
Just another reason to not pay for digital distribution.
I have no intention on playing this game, but I pirated it just to help seed.
Wauw, loads of discussions about this and rightly so.
Why would a pirated version run better than the paid one?
People say it’s Steam, others say it’s Denuvo, others say it’s a memory leak etc. I understand the reasoning of course. PCGamers and a famous modder (who’s name I never remember) claim Denuvo doesn’t impact the game. So the only difference is Steam then? But others don’t believe them so it must be Denuvo?
I know Denuvo isn’t popular. I mean heck, it is just DRM, plain and simple and I don’t like it either. But I’m not sure why a modder would lie about something like that. What would be in it for him? Unless ofcourse, he is mistaken?
Well seeing how SE did patch the summon bug in less than a week, I am curious to see if maybe we’ll get either a word or an update on this. Sucks that it happens.
Though in my personal experience, other than the summon bug, I had no problems. Load times around 30 seconds, framerate between 50-60 (slightly upped the graphics from recommended), never crashed, nothing like that. And no, no monster PC. I have a GTX 970.
This is what you get for paying for digital distribution.
Paying for digital distribution is like jumping off a cliff when there is a lift 5ft away.
Then stop paying for digital distribution.
Paid digital distribution is inherently DRM.
I only play on PC. A proper physical release on PC where the entire game is the discs/USB and doesn’t require some extra “service” like Steam is not DRM. Steam and GOG are inherently DRM.
A physical copy that requires you to enter a code on the manual on the initial installation without ever connecting to the internet and without requiring an account is rightfully considered DRM.
Steam and GOG require the internet and an account to download the game which is inherent with digital distribution, therefore it should be rightfully considered DRM since its DRM is even worse than the DRM I mentioned above.
Dumb Valve drone.
John Papadopoulos is a well known piracy lover.
“The point is that the pirated version has significantly less stuttering,
loads way faster, and runs better/faster as it is not plagued by the
unoptimized scenes that we’ve witnessed in the Steam version!”
That’s a big lie
I want to believe this article. I really do. But I’m having some difficulty reproducing the results. The methodology you posted isn’t complete.
For example, I can’t really discern which specific pirated version you are using to test your methodology, as I seem to be stuck with a demo version now which you stated would not want to compare to in that performance report article you linked to.
Also the tool you used to benchmark with – I’m giving Fraps a go myself seeing as it has frametime, FPS and min/max/avg logging – it seems you’re just using MSI afterburner and noting down the FPS at certain points?
I remember when FFXV first came out for PC. I tried the demo, then bought the game, and immediately noticed how much slower the full version was.