Irdeto, the creator of anti-tamper and Digital Rights Management (DRM) system Denuvo has backtracked on its original plans to prove that it doesn’t have a noticeable impact on game performance.
Back in July, 2023, during an interview, Irdeto COO Steeve Huin had stated that the company had planned to distribute a DRM-free versions of games that are otherwise sold with Denuvo to trusted media outlets in an effort to prove that the DRM itself doesn’t negatively impact performance. This week, however, the company was asked about its original plans on its official discord server. Irdeto’s response indicates that it has since backed out of conducting such performance comparisons.
In its official response, Irdeto representative Andy stated that the company would be happy seeing developers share these comparisons, but it can’t force them to do so. As for why this is not happening, he talked about the fear of receiving backlash from the pirate community, which is too biased to accept such a test. He mentioned that claims could be made about the tests being rigged.
As for the other option of Irdeto performing the comparisons, the representative shared two problems with this approach. Firstly, the company would need to get the approval from its customer to do any public statement involving its games. Again, he said that people would claim the test was rigged if it doesn’t show the results they are expecting i.e. a noticeable performance impact. He added that such a test would needs to be done in Irdeto’s office, as it can’t hand out unprotected versions of a game externally. He said that it would probably be best to have multiple games to test, from small to big, from old to new.
According to the Irdeto representative, if either the company or developers perform the test, people will say it’s rigged. He stressed on the need for an independent source, and brought up the possibility of Digital Foundry performing the test.
