Publishers face 20% game revenue reduction if Denuvo DRM is cracked quickly, according to new study

Complete nothingburger of a study, which itself is locked behind a $25 paywall to access it. And the author of the article obviously didn't cause there's 0 mention in the article itself about the methodology used to determine the 20% revenue lost (nice round number might I add). The only thing that even alludes to the methodology used in the abstract is

When Denuvo is cracked very early on, piracy leads to an estimated 20 percent fall in total revenue on average relative to an uncracked counterfactual

Which really doesn't tell us much, how are these counterfactuals selected in the first place? What is the cirteria? How are you determining that the differences between revenue of a game that was cracked and that went uncracked are due to one game being cracked? How can anyone even confidently claim that they've normalazied the data set enoguh that these differences in revenue are mainly caused by a game being cracked, especially with how rare early denuvo cracks have been in the past few years. Statistically this sounds dubious at best, especially when we have fully open studies (like the one funded by the EU a few years back) that have found no statistical proof that piracy has any impact on revenue ( with the exception of box office revenue of big new movies being leaked and pirated while still in theaters). Surely they wouldn't have missed a 20% meadian difference in revenue.

Lastly you have major tech news outlets all reporting on a study less than a month after it was made available online. For context the journal containing this study will only be published in jan of 2025.

Me: Publishers face 20% game revenue increase, if denuvo DRM wasn't implemented day 1.

Interesting. Wonder how much Denuvo costs to offset that 20%. I also wonder if there is a way to control for people that won't buy a game with Denuvo at all.

Huh, interesting. I thought that the primary reason game devs use DRM these days is to specifically keep the first week's sales as high as possible (since that's the most easily available metric to judge a game's success, and also the biggest moment of profit, as it's usually only downhill from there). To see researchers actively suggest removing DRM after three months seems to confirm this idea further.

Wow that's a pretty damning indictement of the product.

To be able to go from "pirated games tend to sell more" all the way to "pirated games with this added not only negate that effect but go so far as to sell fewer copies" is an impressive feat