Digital rights management software provider Denuvo are taking a prolific anonymous game cracker to court in the USA, accusing them of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing the anti-tamper technology on 26 games, including Black Myth: Wukong, Resident Evil Requiem and Doom: The Dark Ages.
On Monday 14th September, the company filed a DMCA complaint against a person or group called “voices38” in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Torrent Freak have gotten hold of the filing, in which Denuvo claim that voices38 “has bypassed DRM restrictions in copyrighted works, removing protections that allow copyright owners to restrict who may access their works, and allowing for pirated versions of those copyrighted works.”
This isn’t a traditional anti-piracy copyright infringement claim, because Denuvo obviously don’t have the copyright on the games in question – rather, they’re invoking a section of US copyright law that prohibits the bypassing of digital locks on copyrighted works, or the distribution of tools and instructions about overcoming such protections. Denuvo are seeking damages and also, an injunction against the removal of anti-tamper software from “any past, present, or future video game”.
Denuvo’s major difficulty is that they don’t know who “voices38” really is, beyond having identified a Discord ID, Reddit account and a few Steam profiles they believe are used by the cracker. They name the defendant as “an unknown individual or entity,” alongside 10 other unnamed defendants.
Torrent Freak suggest that Denuvo are filing the complaint partly so that they can ask permission to subpoena Valve, Reddit and Discord for more info on the user or users concerned. Beyond that, if Denuvo are successful, the court case could serve to deter other crackers, or make it easier to have download links for Denuvo-busting software removed. Whoever “voices38” is, they don’t appear to be very bothered by the legal action so far. Here’s a Reddit comment purportedly from the cracker: “All is fine. Everything will continue as normal.”
While voices38’s cracks can be used for game piracy, that’s not why a lot of You People try to get rid of Denuvo. The latter’s anti-tamper protection works by obfuscating and encrypting code, which can have an impact on the game’s performance.
There’s a lot of argument online about the actual extent of the performance cut, mind you. In 2023, Denuvo promised to set up an independent testing initiative and blow away their reputation for tanking frame-rates, but I’m not aware that this has happened, as yet. The more serious objection to Denuvo DRM is that the software may require online checks to function, which is a threat to game preservation.