Software piracy scene and r/CrackWatch

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.

Empress is a

  • Total voters
    1,439
Solid Hyrax said:
What happened to this world when a cracking group is defending DRM?! What the fuck.
Click to expand...
It was never about piracy, really, in the old days, even though BBSs were full of it, naturally. Besides the point, but oldschool pirates got grounded for 6 months for 500 dollar phone bills from dialing into BBSs across the country back when long distance was a thing and it took hours to download a couple floppies worth of games (720-1440KB per floppy disk in my time). As a dumb kid, I didn't understand the scene, and was just glad to have a game library far surpassing what my allowance would ever afford me. Anyways, nfos used to have a lot of shit talk about pirates in those days.

It was about seeing if it could be done, kinda, and competing to see who could do it first and better. At least, thats my anecdotal take as a dumb kid who used to hang out on the fringes of the scene in the early 90's, so grain of salt, I guess.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
  • Agree
Reactions: Haftag, Carpenter Trout, Billy Stinkwater and 12 others
I'm happy to pay for shit, but the vast majority of games I currently play can't be bought anywhere, the companies just abandoned them and no longer sell them. This is how MOST games will end up eventually, especially anything live service. Having less cracks is a bad thing for everyone.

Also, saying this shit with the intent for the feds to catch him(street name is quite damning there) is incredibly gay. The only reason I can play some of the games mentioned above are thanks to Skidrow, I hope they keep staying active, same for Empress/Voksi. It was clear from a billion miles away that it was just an alter ego or a tranny though

Scene drama has happened since the scene existed, ego is one of the main reasons they do it like Skidrow-nfo man said. Even if all these groups die out, eventually another group will take the mantle, someone will be bored enough to figure it out, but it will take some time.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
  • Winner
Reactions: Haftag, Carpenter Trout, Maldavius Figtree and 14 others
0gh said:
I'm happy to pay for shit, but the vast majority of games I currently play can't be bought anywhere, the companies just abandoned them and no longer sell them. This is how MOST games will end up eventually, especially anything live service. Having less cracks is a bad thing for everyone.

Also, saying this shit with the intent for the feds to catch him(street name is quite damning there) is incredibly gay. The only reason I can play some of the games mentioned above are thanks to Skidrow, I hope they keep staying active, same for Empress/Voksi. It was clear from a billion miles away that it was just an alter ego or a tranny though

Scene drama has happened since the scene existed, ego is one of the main reasons they do it like Skidrow-nfo man said. Even if all these groups die out, eventually another group will take the mantle, someone will be bored enough to figure it out, but it will take some time.
Click to expand...
legit this, if a game is really fucking good, ill buy it, cracking to me is just an extended demo or whatever, and i understand why people in poorer countries turn to piracy. but i hate with faggots like Empress they seem to act holier than thou when its all techinally illegal shit they're all do, and trying to get simpbux is another form of patheic since i do believe Empress and the like are all trannies (them making rape threats only fuels my beliefs). its moral fagging that pisses me off in scenes like this at the end of the day.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Dumb
Reactions: Carpenter Trout, Maldavius Figtree, Autistic Joe and 4 others
Solid Hyrax said:
What happened to this world when a cracking group is defending DRM?! What the fuck.
Click to expand...
You might think that this is the case but scene doesn't really care about people *consuming* the crack itself, everything we get is what leaks to us poor peasants, main goal of the scene was always (as SKIDROW reiterated) inside competition, who can be more 1337 h4x0r out of the 1337 h4x0rz, they don't much care about attention from people that don't know what it even takes to make a proper crack.
At least Scene grps are not hypocritical about this, they do it for ███
███ competition and own ego
Click to expand...
This sentence is completely true, that's why something like "nuking" a release exists for being improper and sloppy, all these crackers basically do it for street cred.
In contrast to P2P groups such as EMPRESS and others, their releases are public and they're the ones that do it out of attention. Purpose of their cracks is so that people play shit for free.

I'm leaving yall to consider which perspective you like better, but I just wanted to say that this is not a recent phenomena or a result of an Overton window shift.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Informative
Reactions: Haftag, Autistic Joe, Doctor Neo Cortex and 7 others
Solid Hyrax said:
That still doesn't explain how they can defend the very thing they're trying to break. I know they don't care about us. It's a given at this point.
Click to expand...
As much as I enjoy EMPRESS' Buffalo Bill-antics, SKIDROW does have a point. They are not defending DRM per se, they are pointing out the hypocrisy of (alledgedly) accepting money to crack a product while moralfagging. If every Joe Schmoe engaged in the absolute frenzy of music, software, games, movies, MMA etc. I had the privilege of taking part in after getting my first DSL line, all those industries would be in dire straits. Record stores don't exactly stay open because of dudes who buy one Megadeth album a year for 5 bucks. The scene has never been about causing mayhem, it's about being the best. In short, it's young dude shit, consequences be damned.

No street artist worth their salt bombs on shopping mall windows and causes thousands of dollars worth of damage just because they can. They make the best, biggest pieces they can get away with to leave no doubt they are #1 and anyone who thinks otherwise should know the avenue to take to prove it. Whether there's a law to be broken or a company missing out on money is a complete afterthought. Monkey want Jagged Alliance 3, monkey get Jagged Alliance 3, ain't nothing more to it.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
  • Agree
Reactions: Haftag, Carpenter Trout, wrangled tard and 13 others
Voksi is allegedly saying that he's not Empress and he is still dealing with the trial, and is unhappy with Skidrow.
Screenshot 2023-08-17 060213.png
There's also some private convo with about the same message
This is from reddit who took it from YT or w/e
 
  • Informative
  • Like
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: awoo, Autistic Joe, Doctor Neo Cortex and 12 others
Short Circuit said:
You might think that this is the case but scene doesn't really care about people *consuming* the crack itself, everything we get is what leaks to us poor peasants, main goal of the scene was always (as SKIDROW reiterated) inside competition, who can be more 1337 h4x0r out of the 1337 h4x0rz, they don't much care about attention from people that don't know what it even takes to make a proper crack.

This sentence is completely true, that's why something like "nuking" a release exists for being improper and sloppy, all these crackers basically do it for street cred.
In contrast to P2P groups such as EMPRESS and others, their releases are public and they're the ones that do it out of attention. Purpose of their cracks is so that people play shit for free.

I'm leaving yall to consider which perspective you like better, but I just wanted to say that this is not a recent phenomena or a result of an Overton window shift.
Click to expand...
I remember CODEX who cracked and ripped ps1 games. I learn all about the scene in the 90' and it wasn't about who or why, it was about who can do it better and faster. The nfo of that age were full of shittalk.

And CODEX released their cracks for free. Which is what the scene was about, not money or privileges, just fame and attention.

Empress is like CODEX. Except he is neurotic and just do Ubishit stuff. Skidrow is full of posers and script kiddies who know more about torrent and p2p shit than cracking and compiling.... And the one who always profit is Dauphong.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
  • Agree
Reactions: Haftag, Da Capo, Carpenter Trout and 6 others
JustSomeDong said:
It was about seeing if it could be done, kinda, and competing to see who could do it first and better. At least, thats my anecdotal take as a dumb kid who used to hang out on the fringes of the scene in the early 90's, so grain of salt, I guess.
Click to expand...
Yeah, especially when you consider what developers were doing to avoid their stuff being cracked. It was a fun arms race.

There were all kinds of tricks developers pulled back in the DOS days. I tried cracking some BBS software a couple years back and it was a minefield. The copy protection was code that generated more code then put it on the heap and made it executable, and also they had stuff in there that would crash your debugger.
 
  • Like
  • Feels
  • Informative
Reactions: Haftag, s0mbra, A Hot Potato and 8 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back