Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

"Basically, Ubisoft have implemented VMProtect on top of Denuvo, tanking the game's performance by 30-40 per cent, demanding that people have a more expensive CPU to play the game properly, only because of the DRM. It's anti-consumer and a disgusting move," Volski said.

Source

My opinion?

There's no hard proof of it, people blamed Denuvo for all kind of stuff over the years and literally nothing has been confirmed.

But hey it's Ubisoft so it might as well be true.

//PC only, who cares.

Doubt the game is going to even reach the sales numbers of Divinity Original Sin 2 that was drm free from day one and had little to no marketing.

Can't tell if the problem is the DRM, since we don't have DRM-free benchmarks. But if you get 50-80%+ CPU usage and the screen is displaying an empty desert and the MC, then you know, that something is wrong.

It'd be funny if it were true. Kind of a last F U before dying in shooting games. Like throwing a grenade at the last second.

I get like 100% CPU usage.

Also, the game runs like poop.

Buy the game you bloody pirate!

Ah ah kidding. Man if a system like yours is struggling with the game can't even imagine what it does to lower-end systems. What are your settings and resolutions?

Everything maxed out at 1080p.

Ubi is lucky I'm enjoying the game. I put in 7 hours straight a couple days ago.

Have you checked the GPU load while playing? How much is it? 100% too?

I don't believe this to be true. According to our community here at GS, PC gaming nowadays is trouble free just like consoles.

AHAHAHAHA!!!! Consoles aren't trouble free.

Around 50%.

Woah so you're supposed to be in the 100fps but because the CPU is crippled it holds you back? Damn. Hope they patch it soon.

I've seen this elsewhere on the web this morning. That's nuts, having the dual layer of drm. And really unfortunate for paying customers. I'm glad I haven't bought it yet.

I can attest to seeing people play pirated games that run better than their paid counterpart, though it's been a couple years. I remember how put off I was...like, how is it cool for somebody that bought a game to have a WORSE experience than the pirate? Just nuts.

I think it's a load of bullshit and people who are whining are just the pirating community that believe in pirating and believe they're entitled to it.

Anyhow, if there is a performance issue, my guess is the main culprit, Nvidia sabotaging the game by helping developers with the game using their own proprietary APIs made to chug on an AMD cards... yet, when Nvidia does this, it seems to effect both Nvidia and AMD users alike.

If the PC gaming community really cared about performance, they'd be throwing a fit about problems Nvidia is causing trying to sabotage performance of non-Nvidia users. But they aren't, instead we hear about all this anti-DRM whining, probably because it has less to do about performance, more to do about playing games for free.

Ubisoft crippling a game with DRM...haven't we been down this road before

Ubisoft DRM is the worst, remember Assassin's Creed 2 ?

No saving for you if you go offline.

Don't think NVIDIA has anything to do with CPU usage ramping up to 100%.

well you couldn't be more wrong

If there's no DRM foolery going on, how does this game actually boot up on consoles?

Even those numbers seem very high based on the results people have been posting

but teh conspiracy!

AC Origins is very CPU intensive, this has nothing to do with Nvidia.

Latest drivers, 2k ultra settings. Runs more or less how I'd hoped it would for a next-gen title on my rig. Smooth with just a couple of minor glitches and bugs.

@whalefish82 said:

Latest drivers, 2k ultra settings. Runs more or less how I'd hoped it would for a next-gen title on my rig. Smooth with just a couple of minor glitches and bugs.

Why is the game running so bad for me?

@Jebus213:It is strange considering the similarity in our specs. Might be worth reinstalling the drivers with a total sweep. Have you had issues with other games?

no

Stuff like this is exactly why people end up pirating games.

The pirated version would run way better and would have gotten rid of this useless DRM that got cracked day one.

Punishing the actual paying customers with this.

Upgrade CPU's and stop supporting Piracy folks, i'm Happy with whats UBI doing :)

At this point if you're supporting Ubisoft then you deserve all the shit you get.

imo

I don't get it. Hopefully they release a patch that improves things across the board because the performance of this game seems to vary enormously on PC, so something isn't right. It's still better than the sub 30fps consoles at least.

We'll see how the pirated version runs..

If I was interested in this game and knew the cracked version runs better.. I wouldn't even think twice of not supporting Ubisoft.

Strongest gaming cpu on the market only holding 70~ minimum fps?

Pretty sure that's sarcasm. Upgraded your CPU? Weren't you rocking a 2700K until recently?

@howmakewood said:

Wasn't that taken out of context?

@Juub1990: 2600k to be precise, was time to retire it, installed new stuff on friday and ye it's the old watch dog meme

I just reinstalled my drivers and ran DDU. No change.

Are you stupid?

You are stupid. And Stop Pirating games. If you want to play it, upgrade your rig as simple as that.

@Jebus213 said:

@whalefish82 said:

Latest drivers, 2k ultra settings. Runs more or less how I'd hoped it would for a next-gen title on my rig. Smooth with just a couple of minor glitches and bugs.

Why is the game running so bad for me?

Got it installed on a SSD?

hahahahhahahahah

@howmakewood said:

@uninspiredcup said:

At this point if you're supporting Ubisoft then you deserve all the shit you get.

imo

Holy shit. Are you trolling?

First off I don't pirate games, hell I even posted my receipt. People who legitimately bought this game are having performance problems and high CPU usage. Also, I already have a good system. Upgrade to what exactly? I have fucking i7-7700 and GTX 1080 and I play at 1080p.

I mean really. People are getting 40fps in Alexandria on a GTX 1080Ti and this game isn't that graphically impressive.

@Gatygun said:

@Jebus213 said:

@whalefish82 said:

Latest drivers, 2k ultra settings. Runs more or less how I'd hoped it would for a next-gen title on my rig. Smooth with just a couple of minor glitches and bugs.

Why is the game running so bad for me?

Got it installed on a SSD?

No.

Most likely the game is just poorly optimized. Wouldn't surprise with Ubi.

i'll wait for the superior drm free version

This^

I played a little bit of Assasins Creed 3 a couple weeks ago and my FPS was dipping into the high 40's.

@Jebus213 said:

@Gatygun said:

@Jebus213 said:

@whalefish82 said:

Latest drivers, 2k ultra settings. Runs more or less how I'd hoped it would for a next-gen title on my rig. Smooth with just a couple of minor glitches and bugs.

Why is the game running so bad for me?

Got it installed on a SSD?

No.

Could probably the reason why performance tanks more on your system versus his if he does use a SSD. i see a lot of performance problems in newer games when the game isn't running on a ssd. But who knows tho. Ubisoft has a track record of delivering horrible unoptimized games.

You are Trolling. The games unoptimised then, complain in UBI forums or wait for a fix/patch. There was no need to call me stupid as i dont support piracy.

I have it installed on a standard WD 1tb drive. I only keep a couple of games on my SSD and never had any issues with running from a mechanical drive. I've switched games between the two before and not really noticed any difference other than better load times.

I wish they did tests with harddrives these days on games. but not many if any do. Never really checked to be honest.

It depends on the games you play i guess. i play a lot of Black Desert Online and Ashes of Singularity which basically make a huge difference with SSD versus a mechical drive. Like random not loading in enviroments when running with your horse around because hdd isn't fast enough, or just getting hickups and slowdowns entirely.

But again who knows with this game tho, its ubisoft after all. Probably just have to wait on some drivers / patches to hit.

Yeah but unfortunately they own a few franchises I really enjoy, AC being one of them.

You're right, though. My biggest problem is they just think game worlds all need to be massive and open, and they don't. I miss the cities of previous AC games, I don't need all this desert to explore just give me a zone for Memphis, a zone for Alexandria, and a few other places to explore and make them really detailed.

As for game performance, mine has been good: Geforce 980, 16 GB memory, Intel Quad core @ 4 GHZ, and SSD for hard drive. I did notice some stuttering (microstuttering? Like when it buzzes for half a second?) and I have to wonder if that was the DRM.

And why did they "double up"? I don't have an issue with Denuvo thus far, but they put another layer on top of that? Ugh. Also I lost my internet the other day and it would not let me play :(