Denuvo goes after 'voices38': asks Valve, Discord and Reddit to unmask them

Denuvo has taken another step in its war against those who break its anti-piracy system. As reported by Vandal, the company behind the PC's best-known (and most controversial) protection has asked a United States court to force Valve, Discord and Reddit to hand over information about a user operating under the alias 'voices38'. The company already sued them last September, but with a fundamental problem: it doesn't know who they are.

This matters because Denuvo is trying to put a real name to one of the crackers who has spent months taking its technology apart, and because the chosen route goes through the platforms we all use every day. Steam, Discord and Reddit aren't just a store and two forums; they're the places where the competitive and creator community lives. The fact that a DRM provider can pull on that thread with a court order opens a debate that goes far beyond a single hacker.

What you need to know

• Who versus whom: Denuvo, the anti-piracy system found in countless PC games, against a hacker known only as 'voices38'.
• What it's asking for: court permission in the United States to force Valve, Discord and Reddit to provide data on that user.
• Background: the lawsuit was filed in September, but the company doesn't know the real identity of the defendant.
• The accusation: removing Denuvo protection from 26 video games.
• The titles: among them Resident Evil Requiem, Stellar Blade, Black Myth: Wukong, Hogwarts Legacy, Assassin's Creed Mirage, DOOM: The Dark Ages and Mafia: The Old Country.

From suing an alias to hunting for a person

Suing someone when you don't know who they are doesn't get you very far. That's why, as Vandal reports, Denuvo has changed strategy: instead of waiting for 'voices38' to show up, it wants the digital platforms to be the ones to point them out. The request targets the hacker's accounts on Steam, Discord and Reddit, in other words the services where they presumably buy, chat and post. The court documents the outlet refers to haven't been made fully public, so for now we don't know exactly what data is being demanded or how the three companies have responded.

The list of affected games is the part that stands out most. We're not talking about minor titles: Hogwarts Legacy, Black Myth: Wukong, Stellar Blade and the new DOOM are best-sellers that bet on Denuvo precisely to protect their first weeks on the market. If a single person has managed to get past that barrier 26 times, the message for publishers is an uncomfortable one: the protection they pay for has an expiry date, and that date is set by a stranger with a Reddit account.

Why Steam, Discord and Reddit are the key

The three platforms chosen are no accident. Steam ties an account to a payment method and a purchase history; Discord stores emails, IP addresses and conversations; Reddit is where this kind of cracker usually announces their work and answers the community. Combined, they can reconstruct with considerable accuracy who is behind a pseudonym. That Denuvo knows this is obvious; whether a judge will authorize it is another matter, and that decision determines whether the lawsuit moves forward or stays a threat.

There's an underlying precedent worth remembering without inventing anything: Denuvo has for years been a controversial system among PC gamers, accused by part of the community of hurting performance and treating legitimate buyers as suspects. That reputation colors how any legal move by the company is read, even if in this case the target is, on paper, a person breaking commercial protection.

Our take

At Underworld Lordz we're not going to defend piracy. The games played in our tournaments and the ones our creators stream need healthy studios, and that means people paying. That said, Denuvo's strategy strikes us as an admission of weakness dressed up as an offensive. If your product is sold as the ultimate wall and you end up asking Valve, Discord and Reddit to tell you who's knocking it down, the wall has already failed. The battle is being fought in the courts because it's been lost in the code.

We're more worried about the precedent than the hacker. A content creator or competitive player lives on Discord and Steam; their real identity, their IP and their private conversations are all there. A private company being able to open that door with a court order to chase an alias is something we should watch very closely, even if this time the target is nobody we care about. The platforms have a responsibility to resist overly broad requests and hand over only what is strictly necessary, and it's up to the community to make sure that's what happens.

And there's a purely practical angle for anyone who plays seriously: Denuvo remains a toll that legitimate users pay in the form of performance and reliance on activation servers. If all it ends up protecting is a few weeks of sales before someone breaks it, publishers should ask themselves whether the cost to their own community is worth it. Going after 'voices38' doesn't answer that question; it only postpones it.

What do you think?

This story touches two nerves for any gamer: the right of studios to protect their work and the right of users not to have their accounts turned into a file available to anyone who sues. Do you think Valve, Discord and Reddit should hand over 'voices38''s data, or is that a line they shouldn't cross? Tell us in the team chat or on our Discord.