Software piracy scene and r/CrackWatch

[awoo]

Software piracy is an illegal and unprofitable endeavor. The software crackers who do it usually do it as a competition for fame and there are always some extraordinary egos and personalities involved.
Usually productivity software like Microsoft Office or Photoshop are pretty easy to crack and so many groups are able to do it. Traditionally going back to the earliest days of computing, the hardest software to crack has been video games. In modern times, video game releases are the most hyped about to get cracked, with entire websites existing to track when games get cracked such as https://crackwatch.com/ and r/CrackWatch.

The hardest video game anti-piracy/DRM to crack is called Denuvo, with some games taking months or even over a year to be cracked. The history of groups that have been able to crack Denuvo is pretty interesting itself. Here's an overview video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_6zYVcJIKM

Recently, the only groups able to crack Denuvo were a Bulgarian cracker named Voksi who was not a part of the scene and got arrested by the Bulgarian authorities, longtime Italian warez group CPY / CONSPIRACY, and an anonymous cracker named EMPRESS, notable for cracking games that went a very long time without a crack like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Anno 1800. Attached is a sample NFO file to give you info on a crack release announcement.


EMPRESS is particularly notable because "she" (for consistency, I will use she although it's 99% an autistic guy) is also known to post insane rants, ebeg, and cause drama on r/CrackWatch. It got so bad recently that the mod team for the subreddit had to impose a set of guidelines on which posts of hers were even allowed (https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/ltccke/crack_watch_new_set_of_guidelines_regarding/). Here are some samples:

Philosophy ranting: https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/ksnx3u/a_philosophical_approach_toward_the_people_and/ (https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/ksnx3u/a_philosophical_approach_toward_the_people_and/)
Getting caught by the police and blaming repacker FitGirl (repack = taking a cracked game and compressing it, so it might be faster if you have third world internet but it takes hours to unpack) https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/lqs91b/finally_caught_by_the_police_goodjob_everyone/ (https://web.archive.org/web/2021022...inally_caught_by_the_police_goodjob_everyone/)
I don't know the full story here
Cleared legal troubles https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch...tigation_ended_i_am_safe_thanks_to_my_lawyer/
Also for some reason she made a music track for Mr_Goldberg who worked on a uplay emulatior and collaborated with empress on the RDR2 release.

Personal subreddit/containment chamber: https://www.reddit.com/r/EmpressEvolution/

For more info, usually the cracks are released on russian forum cs.rin.ru first and then torrents show up on pirate bay, 1337x, rarbg, etc.

This is going off memory so some details may not be correct. Corrections and additions welcome.

 

[DumbDude42]

the cracking scene feels like a remnant of late 90s and early 00s internet culture, love them and their work

 

[awoo]

the cracking scene feels like a remnant of late 90s and early 00s internet culture, love them and their work

comes with all the drama, ego, and anti government sentiment

 

[CallMeKiwi]

Still waiting for a Handball 17 crack.

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

There's absolutely no reason to believe Empress wasn't lying about "being arrested".

That's right up there with saying something stupid on Facebook and saying your account was hacked. Empress was doing it for the money, nothing more.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

I never understood the fitgirl stans.

 

[awoo]

There's absolutely no reason to believe Empress wasn't lying about "being arrested".

That's right up there with saying something stupid on Facebook and saying your account was hacked. Empress was doing it for the money, nothing more.

that's true
you can't get very many donations from people who don't want to pay for software. voksi could've made a lot more working in cyber security

 

[thrusting]

I know all these names but I never heard about a shred of drama cause who the fuck cares about the autists who made the cracks.

 

[No Exit]

They're doing God's work, of course these people will have an ego.

 

[awoo]

I never understood the fitgirl stans.

I never bothered with repacks because for torrents with a lot of seeders I can get up to 5 mb/s download. apparently the repacks take like half a day to unpack and might just be a crypto miner anyway. but selective download such as not downloading a whole bunch of localization files might bring the size down a lot

 

[Wish I knew]

IIRC people within the cracking community also hated EMPRESS for having some interview with WIRED which caused most of them to freak out over the scene getting widespread attention and authorities catching them. That and she got into some autistic slapfight with Fitgirl over a torrent that EMPRESS purposefully made it so that the seedbox would give everyone else including repackers 200 KB/s because of trust issues with repackers.

 

[DumbDude42]

I never bothered with repacks because for torrents with a lot of seeders I can get up to 5 mb/s download. apparently the repacks take like half a day to unpack and might just be a crypto miner anyway. but selective download such as not downloading a whole bunch of localization files might bring the size down a lot

yeah modern internet connections are so fast, it's a lot faster to torrent the full uncompressed game instead of a smaller compressed version that then maxes out 100% of your cpu for several hours while decompressing it

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

I never bothered with repacks because for torrents with a lot of seeders I can get up to 5 mb/s download. apparently the repacks take like half a day to unpack and might just be a crypto miner anyway. but selective download such as not downloading a whole bunch of localization files might bring the size down a lot

Fitgirl's stuff is on the level. I don't generally use her because it takes so long to unpack, but you usually end up spending less time than you would downloading the file full size.

 

[Spooky Bones]

the cracking scene feels like a remnant of late 90s and early 00s internet culture, love them and their work

based and nostalgiapilled. this takes me back to BBS days.

OP is pretty good, could use some fleshing out but is a good start. This is an excellent group to watch, though. A lot of huge egos that wind up bouncing off one another in amusing ways.

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

based and nostalgiapilled. this takes me back to BBS days.

OP is pretty good, could use some fleshing out but is a good start. This is an excellent group to watch, though. A lot of huge egos that wind up bouncing off one another in amusing ways.

I've got about ten or so sources, so I'm not hurting for places to go.

 

[awoo]

IIRC people within the cracking community also hated EMPRESS for having some interview with WIRED which caused most of them to freak out over the scene getting widespread attention and authorities catching them. That and she got into some autistic slapfight with Fitgirl over a torrent that EMPRESS purposefully made it so that the seedbox would give everyone else including repackers 200 KB/s because of trust issues with repackers.

wow that interview has some insane quotes.

If you ask Empress what got her started breaking DRM, she says it was a dream she had one night in 2014. Chains made up of numbers wrapped around the video game Dark Souls 2. It was anti-piracy software, she realized. As she focused, she began to see “what every number meant ‘universally,’’’ she says. Turning deeper inward, she says, she soon entered “the ‘ZONE,’ which allows me to SEE MORE into everything.” The chains broke.

If you ask Empress how she got to this point, the most she’ll say is “by mixing philosophy with coding. It's very complicated.”


“I have a ‘Goal’ that no one else has,” she says. “I have no need for ‘Ego.’”

“i always keep in the ZONE till i crush their pathetic puzzle prisons,” she says. Cracking DRM has taught her that the only real way to view the games industry right now is through the lens of philosophy. Philosophy helps people discern what is valuable, she says. And to discern what is valuable, you must look for higher truths. The higher truth in gaming, she says, is that “wanting to preserve something you ‘Buy’ should NEVER be a ‘Crime.’”

based and nostalgiapilled. this takes me back to BBS days.

OP is pretty good, could use some fleshing out but is a good start. This is an excellent group to watch, though. A lot of huge egos that wind up bouncing off one another in amusing ways.

thanks. I know of the empress stuff from a few months ago but I just got caught up with recent posting yesterday. if you have any other interesting info I can add it to the OP or try to put it in a highlighted post

 

[Alexander Thaut]

wow that interview has some insane quotes.

If you ask Empress what got her started breaking DRM, she says it was a dream she had one night in 2014. Chains made up of numbers wrapped around the video game Dark Souls 2. It was anti-piracy software, she realized. As she focused, she began to see “what every number meant ‘universally,’’’ she says. Turning deeper inward, she says, she soon entered “the ‘ZONE,’ which allows me to SEE MORE into everything.” The chains broke.

If you ask Empress how she got to this point, the most she’ll say is “by mixing philosophy with coding. It's very complicated.”


“I have a ‘Goal’ that no one else has,” she says. “I have no need for ‘Ego.’”

“i always keep in the ZONE till i crush their pathetic puzzle prisons,” she says. Cracking DRM has taught her that the only real way to view the games industry right now is through the lens of philosophy. Philosophy helps people discern what is valuable, she says. And to discern what is valuable, you must look for higher truths. The higher truth in gaming, she says, is that “wanting to preserve something you ‘Buy’ should NEVER be a ‘Crime.’”

sounds like drugs could have been involved

 

[Bongocat]

I never bothered with repacks because for torrents with a lot of seeders I can get up to 5 mb/s download. apparently the repacks take like half a day to unpack and might just be a crypto miner anyway. but selective download such as not downloading a whole bunch of localization files might bring the size down a lot

to me it's just extra unnecessary risk. Like ok you might take 12 hours longer to download, but can you really not just wait when the potential for disaster is so high?

IIRC people within the cracking community also hated EMPRESS for having some interview with WIRED which caused most of them to freak out over the scene getting widespread attention and authorities catching them. That and she got into some autistic slapfight with Fitgirl over a torrent that EMPRESS purposefully made it so that the seedbox would give everyone else including repackers 200 KB/s because of trust issues with repackers.

I can absolutely tell you this tranny is going to be in the slammer one of these days. Scene is right to freak out. Feds all over the world are after them to serve out sentences lasting multiple hundreds of years. The mental instability of a genderspecial combined with supreme arrogance is going to yield predictable results.

As a sidenote, I read crackwatch sometimes and I find it hilarious that the majority of redditors use "they" pronouns because deep in their heart, they know it's not a woman.

 

[awoo]

to me it's just extra unnecessary risk. Like ok you might take 12 hours longer to download, but can you really not just wait when the potential for disaster is so high?

yeah and the torrent client can resume a partial download. the unpacking will just shit itself

I can absolutely tell you this tranny is going to be in the slammer one of these days. Scene is right to freak out. Feds all over the world are after them to serve out sentences lasting multiple hundreds of years. The mental instability of a genderspecial combined with supreme arrogance is going to yield predictable results.

depends on which second world / third world country they live in. if it's like ukraine then maybe not.

 

[SalmaoneSlaamper]

Somewhat related but, why is there no torrenting thread for KF, is it just because no one has wanted to make one or is it not allowed?