DRM company Denuvo has sued a game hacker for releasing ‘cracks’ for games that remove its protection software.
Denuvo’s anti-tamper software has been the source of controversy for some time now, as some players believe it can have an adverse effect on PC game performance.
At the end of last year, the game pirating community created a bypass which installs a driver at a PC’s kernel level, and can intercept and respond to Denuvo security checks, theoretically blowing open Denuvo’s security.
Some players are uncomfortable with the idea of giving kernel-level access to their PC to software that was created by a hacker, however, and as a result there are still those who download ‘cracks’, which are essentially unauthorized patches for games they either own or have pirated.
Now, as reported by TorrentFreak, Denuvo has targeted ‘voices38’, a prolific games cracker who has released cracks for nearly 30 games which specifically remove Denuvo’s DRM from them.
In a complaint filed on Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Denuvo accuses “voices38, an unknown individual or entity”, of bypassing its anti-tamper tech on at least 26 games.
It also lists the 26 games in question, which include Resident Evil Requiem, Stellar Blade, Black Myth Wukong, 007 First Light, Pragmata, Hogwarts Legacy, Sonic Frontiers, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Mafia: The Old Country, Doom: The Dark Ages and Dead Space Remastered.
According to the complaint, voices38 “has bypassed the Denuvo Anti-Tamper and thus bypassed DRM restrictions, removed copyright protections restricting unlawful access, and allowed for the creation and distribution of pirated versions” of all 26 games in its list.
Denuvo is asking the court to order voices38 to pay damages for violating the anti-circumvention terms of the DMCA, and is also requesting an injunction that prevents them from “circumventing Denuvo’s Anti-Tamper in any past, present, or future video game”.
As TorrentFreak notes, the “future” qualifier is particularly notable here because since Denuvo put its list of 26 games together voices38 has released even more cracks for games like Persona 3 Reload and Star Wars Outlaws.
Although Denuvo hasn’t been able to name voices38 yet, the complaint does list their Discord user ID, their Reddit account and seven Steam accounts associated with them.
The company will presumably hope that by filing its case, it can then ask for permission to subpoena Discord, Reddit and Valve to ask for details associated with the accounts, allowing them to identify the person involved.
In a response to the news on the ‘CrackWatch’ forum on Reddit, voices38 posted a message saying: “All is fine. Everything will continue as normal.”
