From what I understand, Empress demanded donations if people wanted specific games cracked that she didn't want to crack. I can't remember what game it was, but she had said there was a game she wouldn't crack because she thought it sucked, and that if people wanted her to crack it they'd have to pay her to do it. I can't honestly say I disagree with that. Cracking Denuvo has got to be a process that takes a lot of time and if you don't want to crack a game, asking for money in exchange for your time is fine. Of course, piracy is supposed to be "free" or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that it takes time. Time that could be spent working somewhere else to make money so you can live. Maybe if some other cracking groups would join in on the Denuvo fray we'd have a bigger spread of people working on it, cracking different games and/or working in tandem.

Charging money for any work you do is fine in my book. Especially if you're the only one who can do it. It reminds me of when people get pissed off at an artist for not drawing something they want, that they HAVE to pay money for the artist's work/time. Well, either find a different artist that will fulfill your free request, or pay up. There's a lot of entitlement that comes with thinking that a single person will be able to crack every Denuvo game out there by themselves even if they don't feel like it. When that entitlement escalates to doxxing people and getting them in trouble with the law, well... I guess that's how you know you're on the modern internet.

In my opinion, what Empress does is different from just providing free games and racing to be the first one to crack something. She's targeting a very specific piece of very shitty software, removing it from a game, and piracy is a consequence of that but not necessarily the motivation. The motivation is to make these games run better, and to get praise for making them run better, undoing a problem that the developers made on purpose. Without Denuvo, I think it's likely we would not have Empress. At least, not in the same capacity.