Lets take inventory. Has Denuvo really been a great system as said above?
- FIFA 15 releases uncrackable, protected from pirates. It sells about the same as FIFA 14 though. Where is the dramatic spike in sales from all the previously "lost sales" that should now be coming in? Somebody tell me, where are they?
- Lords of the Fallen releases uncrackable. With no pirates to decrease the sales, surely this must score much higher than other games which are pirated to heII and back, right? FIFA fans might just all be so loyal they've always been buying the game. But no such luck. Isn't it like 10 pirates to every 1 sold copy on PC? Wasn't that what Crytek said? WHY DOESN'T THIS SELL 10 TIMES AS MUCH AS OTHER GAMES THEN??! I just don't understand. Why aren't we seeing these "lost sales" not being lost anymore? Where's the incredible profit after shutting down the filthy pirates?
- Dragon Age Inquisition releases uncrackable. Despite no pirates hurting this, it sells about as expected. It doesn't even manage to top the charts anywhere though. Games that have cracks out for them and are being pirated are still outselling this one. How on earth is this possible?
- Denuvo is said to introduce severe performance problems. Now that is regrettable but I guess that is something paying customers just have to live with, to have the satisfaction of knowing that no filthy pirates are playing the game which they payed for.
- Denuvo is said to wear out SSD much faster than regular use programs. Well, if this proves to be true, at least the developers have all that sweet dough they made from not losing so many sales to pirates. They're gonna need it to deal with all the incoming lawsuits.
Okay, enough with the jokes. I'm ultimtely glad this thing came around because it finally dispelled this narrative we've been hearing all these years about lost sales. This idiotic lie that if only the option of piracy is removed, suddenly they would see much higher numbers of sold units. Well, thank you Denuvo for finally proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that, this tale is simply not true.
But why isn't it the case? I think the answer is pretty obvious but I'll break down what I believe is the reason by typecasting the different kinds of pirates and pirate/consumer hybrids.
1. Poor Pirate

Pirates everything, simply doesn't have the money to be buying games, often times lives in a not so well off country, probably unemployed and barely scraping by. Can't spend money he doesn't have on uncrackable games.
2. Punishing Pirate

Pirates to punish publishers and developers he holds a grudge against. This person only buys games from people he wants to support. They somewhat irrationally will still play and enjoy certain games from devs or publishers they hate but they won't give them money for this. EA is a popular target of this practice.
3. Testing Pirate

Pirates everything first, then buys it if he likes it. This person isn't actually a pirate, they just don't accept that there aren't any demos anymore so they use piracy to demo games to evaluate if the game is worth it. Won't spend money on an uncrackable game before testing it at a friends or lending it.
People will generally buy what they like when they can. DRM has no influence on that. Even if every game out there came with uncrackable DRM forever. I sincerely doubt that there would be significantly more sales. On the contrary, sales might actually go down. It would probably be great for lending services though because they would suddenly be really popular again.
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