You know, were I less committed to the noble crusade of videogame journalism, I'd say there's money to be made in a job where you gently cajole widely reviled people and institutions away from any interaction with the public. I bet you could make six figures just telling loathed organisations the real-life equivalent of 'No, they're saying Boo-urns.'
Today's despised company that bafflingly decided to open the door up to unmediated public engagement? Denuvo. Yep, the DRM software that the whole internet is perpetually angry about (and fair enough, at least some of the time) decided that it should clear the air with consumers by opening up its own Discord (via TechRaptor) where curious onlookers could come and ask it questions about DRM tech. There are FAQs about how Denuvo functions, the latest Denuvo news, and, fatally, channels where passersby can ask Denuvo devs questions, chat, and post memes.
5/8Starting today and for the following 2 months, we would like nothing more than to give you a platform to express your queries and receive the answers you have deserved all along. Please, welcome to our Discord server: https://t.co/6OnyS87mbfOctober 15, 2024
No prizes for guessing the result. Two days after throwing its doors wide and with "nearly 2,000 people on the server," Denuvo sheepishly returned to X to announce that "as you can imagine, the amount of inappropriate content has made moderation quite challenging for our small team, who are doing this alongside our regular day-to-day work. For that reason, we've decided to make some changes to the server, which we'll be implementing over the next few days. Stay tuned!" No one's been able to post on the server for two days at time of writing.
In other words: The entire Discord server has been put into read-only mode until Denuvo can figure out a way to stop it from being flooded with people screaming obscenities at Denuvo. I suspect the worst of the worst has since been scrubbed from the server by mods—there are certainly a lot of 'User has been warned for bad word usage' messages from the automod lying around—but a brief wander through the frozen-in-time channels reveals people posting pro-piracy memes, wishing bankruptcy on the company, and hitting it with sick burns like "Did you guys enable slow mode just so we can also experience slowdown in discord like any game that has your DRM?"
It all really just continues from there. People hate Denuvo and have been very keen to make that clear. I kind of feel bad for the Denuvo employees who have apparently taken on moderating the inevitable tyre-fire of the server alongside their usual responsibilities, but also: What on Earth did Denuvo think was going to happen? You might as well try to rehabilitate scabies.
Anyway, it looks like Denuvo has learnt some of its lesson. As I was writing this, the server beeped back to life with an announcement that "we restructured the server a bit." Basically, you're confined to the no-fun welcome channel zone—forever in slow mode—until you prove you can behave yourself, at which point Denuvo will elevate you to "Verified Player" status and let you get into the meme, chat, and dev Q&A channels. Do I think this will stop the avalanche of abuse? No.
The server will return on Monday at noon CET. Good luck Denuvo, you'll need it.
