Pirating is a tricky trade. It is illegal and often impossible to justify, but a few hackers often do it to give people access to a game or tamper with it in a way to make it run more smoothly. Hacker Voksi may have been putting up free cracked versions of PC titles, but they were also making game with Denuvo DRM run better. Although, now the anti-tamper technology company is suing Voksi and have already taken down their cracking website.
Voksi took to the subreddit r/CrackWatch to explain what happened after users noticed that their website had gone down. According to Voksi, their cracking website Revolt went offline after Bulgarian authorities came over and took their server PC and personal computer. Voksi attempted to contact Denuvo directly for a “peacful [sic] resolution to this problem” but the prosecutor holds the final word in the case. The hacker described how this is probably their exit from this line of work.
“Sadly, I won’t be able to do what I did anymore,” they said. “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.”
“Bloated software” is a common complaint in games with Denuvo DRM. People claim that anti-tamper technology inflates the game’s footprint and drags down the PCs they run on. Just last week, users were ironically noticing slowdown in PC copies of Sonic Mania Plus. Other games like Assassin’s Creed Origins and Tekken 7 were also said to run worse because of Denuvo, even if only the latter admitted it. People like Voksi go in and remove the DRM, thus making it run better, but also help enable piracy.
Slowing down legitimate customers is an awful thing and gives people another reason to pirate software. Even though its respectable to protect your products, there has to be a better middle ground here for publishers and customers. GOG.com has no DRM and while it can be hard to convince publishers that that is a worthwhile strategy, some games can sell well even without protection. Most games, like Middle-earth: Shadow of War and Resident Evil 7, get cracked quickly after release and while that may stop some people from stealing, it also lets resentment for publishers and Denuvo fester.
