Anti-piracy firm Denuvo is escalating its legal battle against the anonymous game cracker known online as ‘voices38.’ In a recent filing at a California federal court, the company has requested permission to issue subpoenas to major digital platforms including Discord, Valve, and Reddit. The move marks a crucial step in the ongoing digital rights management dispute, as Denuvo attempts to pierce the veil of anonymity protecting the individual accused of bypassing its anti-tamper software across dozens of high-profile video game releases.
The legal proceedings began last month when Denuvo—owned by security technology giant Irdeto—filed a formal Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anti-circumvention lawsuit in a federal court in California. The core of the legal complaint targets the pseudonymous entity ‘voices38,’ accusing the individual of successfully circumventing Denuvo’s robust Anti-Tamper protection on 26 distinct commercial video games. Among the titles highlighted in the legal documents are major blockbuster releases such as Hogwarts Legacy and Black Myth: Wukong, games that represent hundreds of millions of dollars in development and publishing investments.
At this stage in the litigation, Denuvo faces a significant hurdle familiar to rights holders pursuing online infringers: it does not yet know the legal identity of the person it is suing. The initial complaint filed with the court listed specific digital identifiers associated with the defendant, including a Discord user ID, a Reddit account, and seven distinct Steam profiles, but it notably lacked a real name. As the lawsuit unfolds, the anti-piracy company hopes to bridge that gap with the direct assistance of the federal court, seeking to uncover records that will establish the true identity behind the moniker.
To achieve this, Denuvo filed an ex parte motion asking the court for authorization to serve limited discovery subpoenas on Discord, Valve, and Reddit ahead of the standard discovery timeline typically established in civil litigation. The urgency behind the request stems from the company’s prior attempts to secure this information through voluntary channels. According to the court filings, Denuvo previously reached out directly to the three technology corporations to request account details, but those efforts yielded no results. Valve and Reddit reportedly declined to cooperate, citing internal corporate privacy policies that strictly prohibit the voluntary disclosure of user data without a formal, binding legal order. Discord, on the other hand, allegedly did not respond to the inquiries at all, leaving the legal subpoena process as the only viable path forward for the rights holder.
Subpoenas for Discord, Valve, and Reddit
The scope of the information Denuvo hopes to extract from these platforms is detailed extensively in the proposed subpoenas submitted to the court. For Valve Corporation, the operator of the dominant Steam digital storefront, Denuvo is requesting fundamental registration data, including verified legal names and billing addresses tied to the seven identified Steam user accounts.
Adding a notable detail to the case, one of the specific Steam profiles cataloged in the legal filing utilizes the username Enzo Favara. This name directly references the protagonist of Mafia: The Old Country, serving as a telling Easter egg given that the title is one of the very games Denuvo alleges voices38 successfully cracked. Alongside basic registration data, the proposed subpoena directed at Valve demands comprehensive payment methods, historical transaction logs, IP addresses accompanied by precise timestamps, device identifiers, and details regarding any other accounts linked to those profiles.
Although the seven Steam profiles identified in the documents display relatively low levels of direct public activity, Denuvo’s investigators have evidently established a nexus connecting them to the broader cracking operations attributed to voices38.
The proposed subpoenas aimed at Discord and Reddit similarly seek granular digital footprints. For Discord, Denuvo wants a complete breakdown of the servers the target account is currently or formerly a member of, alongside the specific administrative or participant roles assigned within those communities. Meanwhile, the subpoena requested for Reddit asks the platform to produce an exhaustive archive of all posts, comments, and interactions authored by the voices38 account, as well as a complete list of subreddit memberships associated with the profile.
Crypto Transactions on FixedFloat
Beyond the digital storefronts and social media platforms, the recent legal filings have introduced entirely new dimensions to the investigation. Denuvo’s legal team revealed that their corporate investigations extended far beyond typical software platforms into the realm of cryptocurrency exchanges, uncovering financial trails allegedly linked to the defendant.
In a formal declaration submitted alongside the motion for expedited discovery, attorney Ryan Morris disclosed that Denuvo uncovered cryptocurrency transactions executed by the cracker using FixedFloat, an automated digital asset exchange platform. According to the court documents, these blockchain transactions involve prominent cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.
However, the submitted declaration remains sparse on certain technical specifics. The documents do not publicly outline the exact investigative methodology Denuvo employed to successfully link these decentralized cryptocurrency transactions to the persona of voices38. Furthermore, the current filings stop short of confirming whether the financial data retrieved from the blockchain yields explicit identifying details that could directly unmask the individual operating the handle.
FixedFloat operates as an instant cryptocurrency exchange service that heavily promotes the convenience of its platform to users, advertising a streamlined, hassle-free experience characterized by a lack of traditional account registration and minimal personal details required from traders. Despite highlighting the exchange explicitly within the declaration, Denuvo’s legal team has not requested court permission to issue a subpoena directly to FixedFloat at this juncture, and the current filings do not elaborate on the strategic reasoning behind that omission.
What’s Next for the Litigation
The immediate future of the discovery phase now rests in the hands of U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., who will ultimately decide whether Denuvo is permitted to move forward with issuing its requested subpoenas to Discord, Valve, and Reddit.
Even as the legal machinery grinds forward in the California federal court, the initiation of the lawsuit has already sent significant shockwaves through the broader digital piracy and game-cracking ecosystem. Late last month, industry reporting highlighted that DenuvOwO—a prominent cracking collective known for releasing sophisticated hypervisor bypasses capable of neutralizing Denuvo protection across numerous PC games—had abruptly disbanded. According to reports citing group members, the aggressive legal posture adopted by Irdeto and Denuvo exerted a severe chilling effect on their operations. In response to the growing legal scrutiny, major piracy discussion hubs such as the CS.Rin forum reportedly moved quickly to purge links associated with the now-defunct group’s software releases.
When the lawsuit was initially filed, the primary target of the legal action appeared unfazed by the threat of federal litigation. Shortly after news of the complaint broke across the internet, the user voices38 posted a characteristically dismissive message on Reddit, writing to the online community that all was fine and that everything would continue operating as normal.
In the weeks following that public statement, however, the online presence of the cracker has shifted notably. No new game-cracking releases attributed to the handle have surfaced online. Whether this quiet period is a direct consequence of the legal pressure, a tactical retreat, or entirely unrelated remains unverified as the court prepares to weigh Denuvo’s motion for expedited discovery.
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