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

SSDs can definitely make a difference, particularly in big online worlds, but in my experience it doesn't tend to be huge with single player titles such as Origins. I think this game simply has optimisation issues and I'm probably just lucky to not be affected by it.

Denuvo is cracked within days now

What, sub 30fps, mid to high settings? No thanks. Assassin's Creed games benefit massively from higher frame rates, particularly Origins, which implements a proper combat system.

You bought a Ubishit game, sorry, no sympathies.

LOL, consoles. (PS4 gets a pass)

While that's been typical for most past releases, here we have a reviewer saying it's quite a well optimized game, and he tested it with an i7 7700K and 6 card configurations; GTX 1080 Ti, Vega 64, GTX 1060, RX 580, GTX 1050 Ti, RX 560 - all tested in 1080p and 1440p, additionally 4K and 3440x1440 (21:9) for the 1080 Ti and Vega 64.

What his captures show is that at Very High settings (not using any Ultra that's the 5th tier) all cards show consistent and steady performance relative to their class and resolution. Sure in all cases you got some frame dips below 60 fps, but the overall play is smooth and stutter free.

And these sub 60 fps scenarios can be attributed to the demanding build of this game (is this a new next gen engine?), probably the scale of the world, maybe some physics aspects and population AI. There's nothing that shows the CPU is "crippled" by the game, having near 100% CPU usage is just an indication of full resource utilization. It looks like this game is meant to be future proofed, that you won't play "maxed out" even on the highest hardware, relative to your resolution. It's one of those games that'll take advantage of future tech releases to enjoy on revisiting. But for now, just dial a few less essential settings like shadows to High and see a substantial boost in frame rate.

Beat me to it.

also, wasn't the console version of AC:O having performance issues in the DF video.

@AdobeArtist: if game doesn't run past 60fps its shit, thats about it

It can run above 60 fps consistently, so long as you're good with not fully ultra. If you're going to ramp everything up.... you should accept lower frames or have a PC from 2023.

How does it play without looking at a framerate counter? That's all that matters, really.

You know nothing about PCs when you say upgrade. lol Why even comment in this thread when you don't have the knowledge on PC parts.

I'll wait for it to be cracked and then laugh at Ubisoft. I wasn't gonna buy the game due to micro transactions and DLCs but damn this CPU hampering DRM is even MORE of a turn off! I'm afraid I cannot ever give them my money unless they remove it.

And how exactly is that a solution? you do realize that console performance is worse than PC?

If you bought this game on Steam, you'll have FOUR active DRMS at the same time. smh

PC pirates always make me laugh, the insane mental gymnastics they do to try and justify stealing is as impressive as they are scum.

@vfighter: “I love pizza, but I don’t want to pay for it. Thanks for the free pizza mr delivery man!”

Is there any actual evidence of this?

I suspect that 99% of the anti-DRM rumours are deliberately started by the piracy community to unfairly discredit the publishers.

If they can't beat the DRM protections, they can always try to beat the company using those protections with fake PR issues.

1. Cracking games usually doesn't remove/turn off the DRM.

2. It's still not cracked.

Btw, X1X's CPU has modifications to reduce VM related overheads.

It also credits the rearrangement and enlargement of the TLB cache**, and the introduction of a redesigned and larger Page Descriptor Cache, which “caches information about nesting page translations” and improves performance by “up to 4.3%.”

**Slightly larger than Ryzen.

VM (Virtual Machine) methods are use to secure game content.

Assassin's Creed Origins wouldn't be a problem on my 16 threads Skylake X CPU.

Assassin's Creed Origins runs with PC's DX11 hence higher CPU overheads which is then combined with DRM with VM methods.

Yes, literally any PC that can run AC Origins at 60fps is better than any console...

Let him now test it with a couple of year old cpu. not everybody is found of replacing it's cpu and motherboard every 2 years these days anymore.

How much people even have a 7700k.

Kinda worthless benchmark.

But i agree with the drm, could easily be the pc version has a far further draw distance which murders cpu performance. Hard to tell if the drm is actually the issue if it's not tested along side next towards a drm free version.

Borderline 4K PC GPUs wouldn't do 60 fps.

DRM effectively stops cracking.

So DRM has to be removed to be able to crack a game.

This game will run better on Xbox One X due to optimization.

at 30fps

I just wish MS just port XBO's Windows 10 with lower CPU overhead DX11.X as a sandbox for PC's Windows 10. It's pretty clear that some devs likes to stay with DX11's easier to use APIs.

Still better than the shitshow on PC atm.

or is it?

Last time I tried an Assassin's Creed on console, I couldn't believe the bad performance and other people's tolerance to such bad performance. It was so bad I was absolutely puzzled as to why the forums weren't filled with angry people who can't play their console game smoothly. And I'm not exaggerating. I just assumed most people who game on consoles only don't know what good performance looks like.

Story short: Don't ever play Ubisoft games on consoles (if you have higher than shit standards). They care about their games looking pretty in pictures and don't give a shit about how they run.

It doesn't though, does it? I posted my benchmark on the first page here. I've had no issues running it at 60fps, in 2k at ultra. If I turn down shadows one notch I get a 99.9% locked 60 fps with V-sync. Either way, it's far better performance then I'd get with the One X version.

I hope pirates rip this free of the drm and it gets better performance. That'd be hilarious!

Some PC owners are having issues. For others, such as myself, the game runs pretty flawlessly. It's a fact that everyone who got it on console is having to put up with sub 30fps performance at lower graphical settings.

This. I remember (rightfully) moaning about getting fps drops down to the 40s in Unity at launch. Then I had a go on my brothers PS4 version. A stuttering, glitchy, slideshow nightmare, with the added unwelcome bonus of turning the console into an intrusively loud jet engine.

It's completely baffling how OK people are with Ubisoft releasing games that don't work as intended on the systems they release it on. Like.. wtf? And shouldn't all reviews of their games also have giant warnings about really bad performance as well? Reviewers are OK with it too? WTF! Ubisoft should be burned at the stake for this, and it feels like no one else is even talking about it.

Problem is reviewers never got to see the PC version, and they don't give a rat's ass about it either.

Reviewers played the game on PS4 and Xbone X during a review event.

If true, I'd suggest you ask your money back. The fuckers.

@bowtothepc

According to Ubisoft:
In a statement to Ars Technica, a Ubisoft spokesperson said bluntly that "the anti-tamper solutions implemented in the Windows PC version of Assassin’s Creed Origins have no perceptible effect on game performance." The spokesperson added that the game "uses the full extent of the minimum and recommended PC system requirements... while ensuring a steady 30fps performance."

I wonder if that's true. If it works using virtual machines it's tough to see how it wouldn't be a resource hog, unless it doesn't run while the game is running? I don't know enough about DRM to tell.

@KungfuKitten: VM isn't by default a resource hog, even if the executable makes a lot of calls it doesn't directly mean it has a noticeable performance impact on the application, it's very hard to prove if the drm has a negative effect or not, the "proof" pictures you see flying around don't really mean shit

lol 5%? come on man, even you don't believe that XD

I haven’t seen any CPU issues with the game, but it crushes any GPU on the market. Come on Volta, we need you!

I guess we should just see a pirated and a DRM version of the game running on the same system, to see how they compare. There are people who pirate games after they buy them because of alleged performance gains, I'd be interested to know.

Or they tend to remove DRM from games after they've been cracked, right? That could be a way to test it too.

@KungfuKitten: the pirated version would also need to remove the protection instead of just bypassing it for real comparison. And ye some games have removed denuvo after a while, dont know how common that is, never had problems with denuvo games so havent really followed

Looks like the Xbox X version will be the best after all :)

Normal VM's client memory areas are not usually encrypted... This is VMprotect which is different from normal VM setups.

http://vmpsoft.com/

What is VMProtect?

VMProtect protects code by executing it on a virtual machine with non-standard architecture that makes it extremely difficult to analyze and crack the software. Besides that, VMProtect generates and verifies serial numbers, limits free upgrades and much more.

VMProtect Virtualizes Code

Code virtualization is the next step in software protection. Most protection systems encrypt the code and then decrypt it at the application’s startup. VMProtect doesn’t decrypt the code at all! Instead, the encrypted code runs on a virtual CPU that is markedly different from generic x86 and x64 CPUs as the command set is different for each protected file.

It looks like software based custom CPU instructions are assigned for each game...

It seems to be encrypted software LLVM based CPU inside a VM sandbox.... The protected file is not native to X86 or x64, but for custom encrypted LLVM software CPU.

Assassin Creed Origins PC build is like running emulated CPU with custom instruction set inside a VM sandbox.

I'm guessing it's running fine for pirates.