“Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher’s] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game”

The only entity benefiting in this scenario is Denuvo, while the client clutches their pearls to protect a misguided concept of the elusive lost sale. Denuvo rakes in cash in the name of copy protection, but the truth is most acts of piracy are driven by a lack of means to obtain the product or a desire to demo the product.

Sure it’s their right to protect it but I don’t think there’s any accurate way to actually measure the impact of games with and without such aggressive copy protection.

Modern games have been getting shittier, and with Denuvo claiming that many publishers don’t renew beyond that 6-month period, it really doesn’t change anything. The best period to buy (or pirate) a game seems to be 6 months to a year after release, when all the bugs that shouldn’t be there in a finished product have been fixed, and Denuvo is not there either (or the game has been cracked anyways), it seems to me that the best time to play a game for anyone involved, is 6 months to a year after release. Also, for paying customers, the game would have likely gone down in value significantly and you might be able to pick it up second-hand for a significant discount, while also ensuring you don’t support greedy publishers releasing half-baked, incomplete products. Problem solved.

None of the above applies to indie games, which I would feel more inclined to pay for, and genuinely find more fun nowadays.

But all of that is just my opinion on the matter.