The Bulgarian hacker, Voksi, who was behind the original cracking of the perceived impenetrable Denuvo DRM, has been arrested and his site for distributing Denuvo cracks has been taken down by the authorities. It's not clear yet what charges he faces, but this is a dark day for those who rely on his input when it comes to tackling new versions of the anti-tamper DRM system.
Denuvo was, for years, seen as impossible to crack. Bedroom coders the world over threw everything they had at it and they just couldn't figure out how to take it apart. Games that would have been cracked before release in years past spent months or even years completely uncracked, forcing people to use the DRM if they wanted to play the games, despite its seemingly poor impact on overall performance.
But that all changed in 2016 when Volski took a stab at it. He's been helping to crack new versions of the DRM ever since, but now he may have to halt his cracking ways for good.
"It finally happened," Voksi wrote on Reddit. "I can’t say it wasn’t expected. Denuvo filed a case against me to the Bulgarian authorities. Police came yesterday and took the server PC and my personal PC. I had to go to the police afterwards and explain myself."
The Bulgarian anti-crime unit purportedly worked in tandem with Denuvo itself to help track Volski down. The 21-year old man remains in custody awaiting charges.
"Sadly, I won’t be able to do what I did anymore," he said in a Reddit comment. "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."
