Warez groups are teams of individuals who have participated in the organized unauthorized publication of films, music, or other media, as well as those who can reverse engineer and crack the digital rights management (DRM) measures applied to commercial software.
Their founder and leader is reported to be Su Feifei, more commonly known by the pseudonym "Bird Sister" (Chinese: 不死鸟; pinyin: bù sǐ niǎo; lit.
Some members of 3DM have previously been part of NETSHOW (now known as ALI213), a group which released Chinese language copies of games using stolen cracks directly to warez scene FTP sites.
In 2016 the group claimed that piracy of games produced by large developers and publishers would be impossible in the coming years, due to the technological challenges of reverse engineering and ultimately cracking the virtualization and licensing schemes employed by new DRM solutions like Denuvo.
They were known for releasing copies of games which used Steam licensing and also for emulating Ubisoft's Uplay digital rights management protection.
[10][11] CODEX collaborated with STEAMPUNKS on at least one game which used Denuvo DRM, South Park: The Fractured but Whole, which they released under the name "CODEPUNKS".
On February 1, 2019, CODEX published a cracked copy of Resident Evil 2, which used Denuvo DRM, 7 days after the worldwide commercial release of the game.
In late 2019, a crack developed by CODEX for Need for Speed: Heat, which uses Denuvo DRM, was leaked online, likely through their network of testers.
Normally, the final cracks published by CODEX made use of anti-debugging tools like VMProtect or Themida, to impede reverse engineering efforts.
[23] In early 2018, CPY released cracked copies of Assassin's Creed Origins and Far Cry 5, which were compiled with the most recent version of Denuvo DRM, and had additional anti-modification and anti-debugging features through the use of VMProtect software and EasyAntiCheat.
In November 2019, CPY released a cracked copy of Heavy Rain which featured the latest version of Denuvo DRM.
[24] After a long hiatus, CPY became active again in October 2020, releasing cracked copies of eFootball PES 2021, A Total War Saga: Troy, Mafia: Definitive Edition and Death Stranding in a single day, all of which featured the latest version of Denuvo DRM.
[32] In an email interview with TorrentFreak, the group stated that they were motivated by "fun" rather than profit, and blamed movie studios for driving piracy by not making media more accessible to consumers.
ACE boss Jan van Voorn informed TorrentFreak that several people connected to EVO were tracked down by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.
Hoodlum (also known as HLM) mainly focused on cracking games which utilized digital rights management solutions offered by Safedisc and Securom.
[48] In April 2010, the 28-year-old Gérémi Adam died of a drug overdose at the Pointe-aux-Trembles home he shared with his girlfriend, Cynthia Laporte.
They were one of the earliest groups to successfully crack Windows Vista, which was supposed to be a difficult task based on changes Microsoft had made to the activation scheme for the software.
In July 2020, after 3 years of inactivity, someone published a cracked copy of Monster Hunter: World, a game utilizing Denuvo DRM, with its Iceborn DLC using the name and NFO template of the group PARADOX.
The group made a comeback in June 2006,[64] and since then has cracked modern copy protection schemes such as Rockstar Games Social Club,[65] Ubisoft's persistent Internet connection requiring DRM,[66] and Battle.NET.
[67] In March 2012, Razor1911 announced that their tester and coder DYCUS, who had an active role in making trainers and testing the group's releases, had died of cancer.
[69] Their founders are believed to be ex-DEViANCE members, though their rival group HOODLUM claimed in December 2004 that none of DEViANCE's previous leaders had ever been part of RELOADED.
[71] The same month, Voksi, then in his twenties, reported having been raided by Bulgarian law enforcement in response to a complaint filed by Denuvo parent company Irdeto.
In comments made to media organisation TorrentFreak, Voksi alleged that "five or six officers, including two from Bulgaria's General Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime (GDBOB) and others from a local police station" entered his home and seized personal computing equipment.
A piece of cracktro software released by SKIDROW in 1992 with the game 10 Pinball Fantasies contained a complete list of their membership at the time.
[73] The most recent incarnation of SKIDROW began releasing unauthorized copies of games in June 2007, when they announced their return to cracking software.
The group has released cracks for Denuvo Anti-Tamper protected games, Yesterday Origins and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - A Criminal Past.
The forum and its members have often been referenced as some variation of "the Russian site/forum"[23] or directly by name by warez scene groups in statements which mention the site.
TRSI migrated from the Commodore 64 release platform to the Amiga and IBM-PC, and eventually branched off into the console gaming scene before finally disbanding their warez division.
[independent source needed] The United Software Association (also known as USA) was a prominent IBM PC games and applications warez group during the 1990s.
In late January 1992, several members of USA were arrested by the United States Secret Service and the Farmington Hills, Michigan police for credit card fraud.