According to a study conducted by The Video Game History Foundation, nearly nine in ten video games released in the US prior to 2010 are gone. As in, lost. As in, never to be found again. The precise loss rate is 87%. This is worse than that of silent films (around 75%) as claimed by the Library of Congress.
As the current triple A industry chases its own tail slowly drowning in a mud pit of utter creative bankruptcy, video games are losig their very roots. And instead of pulling their heads out of their arse, the bottom-feeding likes of Activision-Blizzard, Square Enix, Micorsoft, EA, or Ubisoft have their hands full desperately trying to ride the wave of, usually dead-on-arrival, always-online live-services. That, and implementing invasive anti-piracy measures. Which, smoothly as a healthy dose of laudanum down one’s throat, brings me to the scummiest scum of them all; Denuvo.
I wonder what happened to Denuvo’s and their trusty sidekicks, the triple A video game industry’s, ironclad defense of piracy harming sales fingues. Ah, I ‘member, it got absolutely destroyed in yet another survey, this time by the EU. Too bad only a handful of industry zealots do actually seem to ‘member. Subsequently, just as every single pork-faced freeloader ever does, Denuvo has created a diversion. Enter their lazy-arse kernel-level aniti-cheat software. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the con men have found themselves on the defense again, this time with a resounding, and nonetheless ironclad, “just trust us”. Cut to present day.
The question over Denuvo’s uttetly pointless existence affecting video games’ performance has never been properly answered. While my arse firmly sits in the club of it indeed does, it remains questionable and extremely difficult to actually prove. That’s exactly where the miserable deadbeat fucks at Denuvo saw yet another opportunity to steer the conversation away from true issues their cow dung of a DRM creates, put some googly eyes on, and embarked on an aggressive attempt to clear their name.
Let me tell you something that’ll surprise absolutely no one. If bullshit and a nothingburger had a kid, it would be Denuvo’s proposed test. Performed on a single video game (it is not yet known which one) and observed in controlled conditions by only a handful of journalists, that’s not a test, it’s a PR stunt. But one would truly be delusional to expect otherwise from the mobster outfit that is Denuvo.
So what are the true issues of Denuvo’s escapades in what we for lack of better words have to call software? Well, in case you didn’t notice, I started this off rambling about video game preservation. And it really is as simple as that. The remote servers that run either the live service or the DRM go down, the game goes down. Not just that, it disappears, forever. And believe you me, the greasy porkers endlessly salivating over the thought of stripping people of all – not just some, or a lot, all – of their money won’t give this level of control up. Ever.
