And some DRMs like Denuvo are massive in size (add several hundreds megabytes to the executable) and resource intensive. It's quite common to see a significant performance gain and reduction in stuttering from the cracked version compared to the original version.
For this reason I tend to prefer buying my games from GOG, which sells all its games DRM-free.
I do value the work game developers put in these games and I buy all of them, but I like having the peace of mind that if something happens to my purchases down the road I could run a cracked executable later on.
> It's quite common to see a significant performance gain and reduction in stuttering from the cracked version compared to the original version.
It's quite common when a developer updates a game to remove Denuvo, or when an official Denuvo-free executable is accidentally leaked (as appears to be surprisingly typical), but I don't think it's that common for cracks.
Cracks generally do the absolute minimum to get a game to run, which often means leaving neutered but still performance-intensive DRM in place. Once a game works, I've never seen anyone take a second pass to improve performance. (Games that actually crash are of course a different matter.)
IMO, this is again an indicator of the scene's priorities.
For this reason I tend to prefer buying my games from GOG, which sells all its games DRM-free.
I do value the work game developers put in these games and I buy all of them, but I like having the peace of mind that if something happens to my purchases down the road I could run a cracked executable later on.