DRM maker Denuvo has seemingly filed suit against one of the scene’s most prolific crackers. Voksi reports that “Denuvo filed a case against me to the Bulgarian authorities,” with police seizing his personal and server PCs, leading to the shutdown of the website for scene group Revolt.
Users on the CrackWatch Reddit first noticed something was amiss yesterday, when Revolt went down and redirected to the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior. A short time ago, Voksi posted to the same subreddit, announcing Denuvo’s action against him. “I contacted Denuvo themselves and offered them a peacful [sic] resolution to this problem,” Voksi says. “They can’t say anything for sure yet, but they said the final word is by the prosecutor of my case.”
In the Reddit post (archived – just in case – on ResetEra), Voksi says “Sadly, I won’t be able to do what I did anymore. I did what I did for you guys and of course because bloated software in our games shouldn’t be allowed at all. Maybe someone else can continue my fight.” After providing contact info, he adds “It’s bullshit guys, I know, but that’s how the world is run nowdays. By evil.”
We spoke with Voksi last year, when Denuvo cracks were coming at their fastest, and at the time the feeling was that protected games would continue to get cracked ever more quickly. With one of the scene’s most prominent crackers apparently out of commission, those circumventions will likely slow down for the foreseeable future.
The arms race between DRM makers and pirates has left plenty of questions for legitimate game buyers. There remain questions about how much effect DRM has on game performance, with Assassin’s Creed Origins proving a particularly combustible example, and niche instances like Metal Gear Rising on Mac have left some wondering if DRM will keep them from playing their games in the future.
Exactly how this all shakes out will be up for the legal system to decide, and the areas of DRM and circumvention of copy protection remain murky – even if piracy itself is not.