As reported by TorrentFreak, the ubiquitous DRM producer, Denuvo, is attempting to take one of its biggest foes to court over their work circumventing the antipiracy measures on games like Hogwarts Legacy and Black Myth: Wukong. The case is unique in that it comes from Denuvo and not one of the individual copyright-holders of an affected game.
The target of the lawsuit, who goes by “voices38” on various channels, is particularly prolific when it comes to putting out DRM-circumventing patches or “cracks” for games that license Denuvo’s copy protection software. Denuvo is suing voices38 under the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits tampering with digital protections.
While voices38 is an anonymous actor, Denuvo lists a number of social and gaming services accounts associated with them in its filing, an indication that the company will likely subpoena Valve, Reddit, and/or Discord for identifying information. We saw a similar move from Rockstar recently as it attempted to uncover the identity of GTA6 leaker Cyberleek.
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“On information and belief, Defendant is an individual who has circumvented Denuvo’s technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works,” Denuvo wrote in its filing with the Northern District of California. “Defendant has further announced, posted, or disclosed online, including through Reddit, how to circumvent Denuvo’s technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works, facilitating or allowing others to similarly circumvent those controls and access video games without authorization.”
Denuvo’s software is largely unpopular with gamers, pirates or paying customers, as it is seen as invasive and a drain on system resources (Denuvo claims that its software does not affect game performance), but major publishers still turn to it as an antipiracy measure. Denuvo’s legal strategy echoes the successful actions taken by Bungie and Activision against cheat developers for their competitive multiplayer games. In addition to keeping up in the anticheat arms race, some companies have taken to suing cheat makers out of existence.
But part of what let them pursue that strategy is the fact that developing hacks for multiplayer games had evolved into a grey market business with identifiable, profit-making entities to sue, while piracy is more diffuse and inherently not a moneymaker. Successfully unmasking voices38 is the cornerstone of any successful legal action by Denuvo.
Voices38 does not seem particularly bothered by the threat, or they’re just playing it very, very cool. “All is fine, everything will continue as normal,” they wrote in a comment on the piracy-focused CrackWatch subreddit.
