The most famous solo name in the modern PC piracy scene is stepping away. In a ten-part document titled “End of an Era – EMPRESS”, the cracker behind many of the biggest Denuvo releases says she is officially ending her career and considers the “age of piracy” over.
Her statement mixes health issues, frustration with the pirate community, a surprising change of heart about Denuvo, and even advice to developers and players. It also raises a bigger question for PC fans watching the current wave of uncracked games: if EMPRESS is really done, what happens next?
Why EMPRESS is walking away
In the first part of the document, she explains that after her last release in summer 2023 she ran into serious health problems caused by extreme lack of sleep and rest. That forced her to step back from cracking and work privately on a “universal system” for changing character body proportions in games – an ambitious project that, according to her, pushed her health even further down.
By early 2025 she says she was physically recovering and had even started sketching a new, more powerful anti-Denuvo system. But somewhere in that period her motivation collapsed. She writes that when she asked herself why she was still cracking, “every time I asked myself ‘why’, I found a big question mark with no quick answers.”
She also claims she had already built an experimental method that worked by crashing Denuvo’s functions rather than bypassing them, and that it successfully worked on several test games – but she chose to stop anyway. In other words, the decision wasn’t about hitting an impossible technical wall, but about deciding there was no longer any point.
Her harsh verdict on pirates and the “scene”
A large chunk of the statement is dedicated to criticising the broader piracy community and the scene around it. She describes pirates as ungrateful, entitled and unwilling to understand how much work each crack required. She says many users saw her as a kind of “servant,” constantly demanding new releases while rarely donating or showing real appreciation.
EMPRESS also attacks what she calls the “modern scene” – a space she sees as toxic, low-skill and driven more by ego than real technical work. In her view, people stole her methods, lied about her releases, and used her work while pretending to care about “preservation” when they mostly just wanted free games.
That disillusionment feeds into her central conclusion: that she spent years sacrificing her health to feed people who, in her words, rarely showed genuine respect.
“Is cracking Denuvo actually worth it anymore?”
Another key section deals with how games have changed. EMPRESS argues that the constant stream of patches, hotfixes and new content has made long-term preservation through cracks almost impossible.
A crack today, she says, is often outdated within weeks as games get new updates, DLC and technical fixes – sometimes years after launch. That makes each release a huge amount of work for something that quickly becomes “obsolete.” In her view, this kills the old idea of keeping a perfect offline copy of a game forever.
From that perspective, investing months into breaking modern Denuvo for a specific build simply doesn’t make sense to her anymore, especially when combined with her health problems and frustration with the community.
From Denuvo’s biggest enemy to unexpected defender
Maybe the most surprising part of the document is how positively she now speaks about Denuvo. After years of branding herself as its nemesis, she now calls out what she sees as the benefits of Denuvo-protected games.
She argues that:
- Denuvo acts as a gatekeeper, reducing what she describes as low-effort modding, spoilers and harassment from people who never paid for the game.
- It pushes players to be more honest with money and indirectly motivates them to study, work and afford their own libraries.
- Crucially, she claims Denuvo actually protects consumers from something worse: fully always-online DRM. Without Denuvo, she believes more studios would choose server-based protections that are effectively uncrackable and far worse for preservation.
She also downplays the performance impact of modern Denuvo versions and points out that many publishers eventually remove it anyway.
It’s a dramatic reversal: the same person who built a reputation on breaking Denuvo now says its existence is important to keep publishers away from harsher online-only schemes.
Piracy vs legal libraries: her case for buying games
EMPRESS goes further than just defending Denuvo. She spends several sections listing what she sees as the “dark side” of piracy: unorganised folders, constant risk of malware, lost save files, forgotten game names and the feeling of playing alone without a proper platform, friends list or achievements.
In contrast, she praises platforms like Steam for their organised libraries, cloud saves, automatic updates and community features, arguing that they make single-player games feel less lonely and more valuable.
For players who genuinely can’t afford games, she suggests alternatives: cheap licence activations, family sharing, watching playthroughs, or simply waiting for Denuvo to be removed later instead of relying on cracks.
The overall message is clear: in her eyes, piracy erodes both appreciation and enjoyment of games, while legal purchases – even delayed or discounted – are the healthier long-term path.
Advice to developers: Early Access instead of endless DRM
In a later section she directly addresses developers and publishers. Interestingly, despite defending Denuvo’s role, she doesn’t call it the “best” solution. Instead, she argues that long-term Early Access and continuous content updates are a more effective way to convert pirates into paying customers.
Her reasoning is that players who fall in love with a game will eventually get tired of re-downloading huge pirated builds for every major update and will choose to buy the game for convenience and ongoing support. She also suggests that if studios insist on Denuvo, they should at least remove it after six to twelve months to earn trust and goodwill.
It’s a strange mix: someone famous for cracking telling publishers how to lock things down just enough without alienating legitimate buyers.
“The end of the age of piracy” – is it really?
The statement ends on a very dramatic note. EMPRESS writes that “this is the end of a long and an important era in gaming history,” and declares that piracy should now give way to “legitimacy.” She calls outdated the idea of preserving offline copies when everything – operating systems, hardware, stores – keeps evolving.
In her final lines, she says:
“I, EMPRESS, the pirate queen with the longest biography of Denuvo releases, declare this is the official end of my cracking career.”
It’s a powerful closing, especially from someone whose name became synonymous with “this one finally got cracked” for Denuvo-heavy AAA titles.
But does her retirement really mark the end of PC piracy or Denuvo cracking?
History suggests the scene rarely rests on one person. Previous groups like CODEX, CPY, RELOADED and others have come and gone, with new teams or individuals eventually appearing to fill the gap. At the same time, the landscape has changed: more aggressive DRM, always-online requirements, anti-cheat at kernel level and increasingly complex day-one builds that are harder to maintain.
So the real question might be: will anyone step up to chase long, painful Denuvo projects in 2026 and beyond, knowing that the reward is a short-lived crack for a game that will be patched ten times in a month? Or is EMPRESS simply the first high-profile name to say out loud what others are quietly thinking?
What this means for players and Denuvo-protected games
For now, EMPRESS’s statement doesn’t magically make current protections any stronger or weaker – but it does change the mood. One of the most visible solo crackers is not only stepping away, she’s actively telling players to buy games, praising Denuvo’s role and arguing that official libraries are the only realistic form of preservation.
Whether you agree with her or not, her retirement leaves a gap in the modern history of cracks. If nobody fills it, Denuvo’s average “uncracked window” could stretch even further. If a new wave of talent appears, her story becomes one more chapter in a long cycle of rise, burnout and replacement.
Either way, the PDF she just published will probably be quoted for years whenever people talk about anti-piracy, Denuvo, and the strange relationship between crackers, players and the games industry.
