10 Gaming Industry Secrets You Didn't Know
3. Anti-Piracy Software Often Hurts Game Performance
As long as video games have existed, publishers have naturally sought means to minimise piracy, and in more recent years this has generally involved inserting anti-tamper and DRM software into PC games in order to prevent them being interfered with.
Though the vast majority of games are eventually cracked by piracy groups regardless, as of late extensive criticism has been levelled against popular anti-piracy software Denuvo, for the noted dent in performance it often causes.
Numerous games, including Sonic Mania Plus, Tekken 7, Rime, and most recently Doom Eternal, were noted to suffer slowdown and longer loading times due to the presence of the software compared with pirated versions of each game.
While Denuvo certainly saves some lost revenue within the first days or weeks of a game's release, it has the unfortunate side-effect of punishing players who actually bought the game, by ensuring their CPU is pre-occupied jugging both the game and Denuvo to the former's detriment.