The Death of Internet Piracy
The issue of piracy was first acknowledged by the United States government in law in 1998 with ‘THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998’ which specifically outlawed distributing or obtaining copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission[1]. Many companies go hard on piracy using software called DRM to prevent piracy in the modern age. In this article the history of piracy and DRM will be discussed, keep in mind that many sources are reddit posts and comments due to the fact that piracy is a fringe community and many sources such as the government sources don’t discuss the ins and outs of piracy groups, and only their statistics of usage.
The first widespread highly-effective DRM was a Russian DRM named ‘Starforce’ [2]. On release Starforce was well received as it largely prevented games from being cracked. Much of this success can be attributed to it being very invasive, not allowing a disk to be inserted into the PC. Criticism came when users tried to uninstall the game and Starforce and Starforce drivers remained in the system, preventing supposed copying of the game which had been uninstalled, couple that with its root access and users were pissed. It’s also important to know that despite its initial success in preventing games from being ‘cracked’ it was nowhere near impossible. Warez group Reloaded cracked it within 433 days of its first game[2]. There were many Warez groups who cracked games such as SKiDROW and Reloaded. Many games got cracked under Starforce’s protection, so many that companies chose a new DRM to use in 2014.
Denuvo is the most recent DRM to provide high security, and it provides the best protection to date. Denuvo first released in 2014[3]. The first game released with Denuvo was Fifa 15, which went uncracked for over 90 days, being cracked in December by Chinese Warez group 3dm. This started a trend where for three years crackers were able bypass Denuvo security, peaking in 2017 where Warez group were able to crack games under Denuvo protection within hours of their release. Many groups were able to crack Denuvo, each having their own history, but they all follow similar origins and stories.
3dm is the most unique cracking group, starting in China in 2001[4] it made headlines in 2014 when it was the first Warez group to crack Denuvo, cracking Fifa 15. 3dm continued to crack Denuvo for the remainder of 2014 and 15 albeit slower than other cracking groups. In 2016 3dm made headlines again, but for different reasons. 3dm had announced it’d be quitting cracking Denuvo in February of 2016 ,citing their frustration with Just Cause 3’s Denuvo protection, they claimed they’d revisit the topic in 2017, reconsidering their resignation from cracking games. In 2017, they had reconsidered their resignation, cracking a few Denuvo games before being sued by Koei Tecmo, a Japanese game developer who had their games cracked by 3dm. After the suit, 3dm was forbidden to crack video games from any companies by the court, forcing their permanent resignation.
The story of 3dm is not dissimilar to most groups who cracked Denuvo, with groups such as CODEX and SKiDROW[5]. There are few crack groups still operating, with most not releasing more than once a year. This void in cracking left a spot open for a group, but instead of a group it was filled by one person. EMPRESS is a cracker who started in 2014[6], she had gained a cult following but had not reached true fame until she was one of the only crackers in 2020. Empress is widely respected by the piracy community, she is also widely hated for her controversial views such as being extremely transphobic as shown in one of her .NFOs* shown on her crack of Hogwarts legacy [7]. She has also been accused of running a cult[8]. With Empress being the only cracker left, it is easy to see the slow death of piracy due to Denuvo anti-tamper.
Works cited:
[1] The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. (Accessed: 13 July 2023) https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
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[2] Foundation, W. (2023) Starforce, Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce (Accessed: 13 July 2023).
[3]Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, June 29). Denuvo. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo
[4]Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, April 23). 3DM. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DM
[5]Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, June 30). List of warez groups. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_warez_groups
[6]Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, July 19). Empress (Cracker). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_(cracker)
[7]EMPRESS. (2023, Feb 17). EMPRESS .NFO.
https://i.redd.it/q9m5zbglsxja1.png
[8]Viviano. (2022, Sept 8). ‘Exposing The Weird Spiritual Cult of Denuvo Cracker EMPRESS’ Exposing The Weird Spiritual Cult of Denuvo Cracker EMPRESS
- .NFOs or NFOs are the main way crackers communicate, since most other forms of communication would lead to them being tracked down
