Denuvo is requesting a court to subpoena Discord, Reddit, and Steam for information on notorious cracker's identity

Denuvo is determined to take down the infamous game cracker “voices38” and is sparing no effort. The game cracker has bypassed Denuvo’s DRM protection on multiple games and has been a major thorn in Denuvo’s side. Since Denuvo’s DRM protection is supposed to be the most secure amongst the competition, an anonymous entity that can circumvent it within a month of a game’s release does not exactly present an impregnable defense against pirates.

Denuvo’s Initial Move

In mid-September, Denuvo filed a DMCA anti-circumvention lawsuit against voices38 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The company accused the cracker of bypassing the protection on 26 games, including major titles like Black Myth: Wukong and Hogwarts Legacy. Denuvo also called for a permanent stop by voices38 on any further activities.

Because voices38 has gone to great lengths to remain anonymous, Denuvo does not know the identity of the person it is suing. However, it has gathered information and identified 7 Steam profiles, voices38’s official Reddit account, and a Discord account it believes are potentially linked to the game cracker. As revealed in a new filing, it has asked the court to subpoena these platforms to identify voices38.

Denuvo’s Demands

Denuvo’s motion for the subpoenas states, “Denuvo seeks leave of the Court to serve limited discovery on Discord, Inc., Valve Corporation, and Reddit, Inc. solely to determine Defendant’s true identity.”

In another statement, Denuvo says it reached out to the platforms before moving for a subpoena, deciding to do so only after all of them declined to share information. Valve and Reddit responded that, without legal grounds, their privacy policies prevented them from sharing user information. Discord, by contrast, has not responded yet. 

In its motion for subpoenas, Denuvo has also outlined what information it seeks from these platforms. From Steam, it requires extensive details concerning the 7 Steam accounts it has specified: registration data, names, billing addresses, payment methods, transaction histories, linked accounts, and IP addresses with timestamps and device identifiers. 

From Discord, it demands user information and a list of the servers the account is a part of, along with its role in those servers. Reddit has been asked to provide complete data on voices38’s account: all their comments, posts, and all subreddits they are a part of.

Potential Cryptocurrency Trail?

The motion also reveals Denuvo’s investigation into a cryptocurrency transaction trail, which it alleges is tied to voices38. Denuvo claims that it has discovered crypto transactions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana made by voices38 on the crypto exchange platform FixedFloat. Interestingly, Denuvo does not reveal how it deduced this, or whether these transactions contain information related to the cracker’s identity. It also has not asked the court for permission to subpoena FixedFloat and makes no mention of why it chose to do so.

Voices38’s Response

Voices38 had already made the following statement upon the initial filing of the lawsuit in September: “All is fine. Everything will continue as normal.” It’s safe to say that the cracker has no intention of ceasing its activities for now. However, since then, they have been inactive, and it remains unclear whether this stems from the lawsuit. 

One change since the initial lawsuit is the disbandment and discontinuation of activities by the group known as “DenuvOwO”. This group provided Hypervisor bypasses for Denuvo games and made significant strides in making them user-friendly and safe to use, with most available on Linux too. Since these Hypervisor bypasses could target Denuvo games on release day, a key factor in whether the DRM software finds buyers in the industry, Denuvo will no doubt be reveling in its victory, even if it is potentially short-lived at best.