DRM ensures that the paying customer gets the worse end of the deal, regardless of whether it affects performance.

Good luck with that, assholes. Denuvo can fuck off. They're sure right that they have an image problem: I don't buy Denuvo protected games anymore, period. Their claims that it doesn't affect performance is laughable. Every Denuvo title I've had the displeasure of owning has seen massive performance and stability boosts after I just get fed up with my legit copy and go get a pirated Denuvo-removed version of the damn thing. Without fail.

Irdeto is working on a program that would provide two nearly identical versions of a game to trusted media outlets: one with Denuvo protection and one without. After that program rolls out, hopefully sometime in the next few months, Huin hopes independent benchmarks will allow the tech press to "see for yourself that the performance is comparable, identical... and that would provide something that would hopefully be trusted by the community."

Doubt. I don't expect they're going to release two copies that differ only in Denuvo presence: they're going to release one copy that has Denuvo, and another with intentional performance degradation that matches Denuvo's raping of your computer. Then they'll claim, "see? no difference! we're fine!" Meanwhile, the Denuvoless crack copy will perform 200% better, "somehow."

As long as it fucks with the performance of my games (which they keep claiming does not happen when we all know that is bullshit from experience), you're going to have a hard time convincing me otherwise.

They'll carefully game the code to run the same, or to be cute, better with Denuvo. No chance it is independent. No chance it is remotely verifiable.