Denuvo Wants Discord, Steam and Reddit to Unmask Cracker voices38. Will Discord Hand Over the Data?

Denuvo wants a US court to force Discord, Valve and Reddit to help it find out who voices38 is. voices38 is the anonymous cracker it’s suing for stripping its anti-tamper protection out of more than two dozen big PC games. If the court agrees, it’ll be up to Discord, which hasn’t even replied to Denuvo yet, to decide how hard it pushes back. It’s been here before.

The case so far

In mid-September, Denuvo GmbH (owned by Irdeto) sued voices38 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It brought two DMCA anti-circumvention claims, which cover getting around a digital lock rather than copyright infringement itself. Denuvo wants damages and an injunction stopping voices38 from cracking its protection in existing games and in games that haven’t been made yet.

The complaint lists 26 games, including Black Myth: Wukong, Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil Requiem, Doom: The Dark Ages and Stellar Blade. voices38 has reportedly claimed credit for 30-odd AAA cracks in the past year. Their cracks patch out Denuvo’s checks directly, unlike the hypervisor bypasses that appeared earlier in the year and need you to switch off Windows security features. Because nobody knows who voices38 is, they’re named as an unknown defendant alongside ten “Doe” defendants.

What Denuvo wants from each platform

On 3 October Denuvo asked the court for permission to serve subpoenas before the case goes any further. The complaint ties voices38 to one Discord account, one Reddit account and seven Steam accounts.

• Valve (Steam): registration details, billing addresses, payment methods, purchase history, linked accounts, and IP addresses with timestamps and device IDs for all seven accounts.
• Reddit: everything posted, commented and joined by the account, plus registration and IP data.
• Discord: account identity information, server memberships, roles and connection IPs.

Denuvo says it approached all three first. Valve and Reddit both said no, citing privacy policies that stop them handing over user data without a court order. Discord didn’t respond at all. Denuvo has also reportedly traced crypto transactions linked to voices38 through the exchange FixedFloat.

voices38’s response on Reddit: “All is fine. Everything will continue as normal.” Not everyone is as relaxed. The cracking group DenuvOwO has disbanded, citing the court case.

Has Discord handed over user data before?

Discord has been on the receiving end of this exact kind of request, mostly from Nintendo, and in the same California court:

• 2023, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo got a DMCA subpoena ordering Discord to identify users who shared scans of the unreleased game’s artbook in a Discord server.
• 2025, the Pokémon “Teraleak”. Nintendo asked for a subpoena to unmask “GameFreakOUT”, the user who posted around a terabyte of stolen Game Freak data to a server called FreakLeak. It was filed on 18 April and granted three days later, ordering Discord to hand over the user’s name, address, phone number, email and IP addresses.
• 2018, Charlottesville. In a civil lawsuit brought by victims of the Unite the Right rally, a judge upheld a subpoena for the identities of Discord users linked to planning it. Identities could only be shared with the lawyers, and the users’ actual messages were off-limits.

In none of those cases was it ever made public whether Discord handed the data over or what it contained. Discord’s published policy is that it discloses user data “in response to valid legal requests” in line with the US Stored Communications Act, and that it tells users when governments ask for their data unless it’s legally barred from doing so. That policy is written for law enforcement. Civil subpoenas like Denuvo’s go through the courts.

What that means for anyone on Discord

US law (the Stored Communications Act) stops platforms handing the content of your messages to a private company in a civil case. That’s why the Charlottesville judge blocked the messages, and why Denuvo is asking for account data, not chat logs. Account details, linked emails and phone numbers, payment info if you’ve bought Nitro, server memberships and IP logs are all fair game once a judge signs off. Discord isn’t anonymous if a court is involved.

Our take

Whatever you think of Denuvo (and plenty of PC players have strong opinions about what it does to performance), this is the normal legal process working the way it should. Valve and Reddit refusing until a judge orders them to is exactly what you want from a platform that holds your data. The bigger questions are how much a cracker’s Steam purchase history really proves, and whether Denuvo can stop cracks for games that don’t exist yet. We’ll keep an eye on whether the court grants the subpoenas.

Sources: VGC, TorrentFreak, KitGuru, RespawnFirst, Axios (Zelda), Kotaku (Teraleak), VICE (Charlottesville), Discord.