List of warez groups
List of warez groups
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List of warez groups

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List of warez groups

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. This is a list of groups, both web-based and warez scene groups, which have attained notoriety outside of their respective communities. A plurality of warez groups operate within the so-called warez scene, though as of 2019 a large amount of software and game warez is now distributed first via the web. Leaks of releases from warez groups operating within the "scene" still constitute a large amount of warez shared globally. Between 2003 and 2009 there were 3,164 active groups within the warez scene, with the majority of these groups being active for no more than two months and with only a small fraction being active for many years. The warez scene is a very competitive and volatile environment, largely a symptom of participation in its community being illegal in most countries. Groups are generally not driven by profit, but by reputation.

3DM is a Chinese video game cracking group. 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. 'Phoenix'). Little else is known about Su, other than that her year of birth is speculated to be 1979. Unusual for piracy groups, 3DM's members have public profiles on the social network Sina Weibo, and use a blog to inform the public about their activities. 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.

3DM were one of the first peer to peer file sharing groups to offer cracks for games which utilized DRM produced by Denuvo. As newer versions of Denuvo DRM became more challenging to reverse engineer, 3DM gave up trying to crack games with Denuvo DRM.

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. One of the most notable groups on the web at the time, 3DM publicly announced a year hiatus from developing cracks for games. Since returning in 2017, 3DM have only released games which use Steam licensing, only releasing copies of better protected games which include cracks made by other groups. This practice has been criticized by the groups whose cracks were included in releases under the 3DM name.

CLASS (also known as CLS) was a warez group which was the target of federal raids such as Operation Fastlink. They were a global group with members worldwide, often releasing game "rips". The group ceased operations in 2004 after their 1,234th release.

CODEX (also known as CDX) – was a warez group founded at the end of February 2014. They were known for releasing copies of games which used Steam licensing and also for emulating Ubisoft's Uplay digital rights management protection. They were accused by the warez group SKIDROW of stealing their code to crack Trials Fusion, something CODEX denied,[self-published source] stating that they had written their own code for the DRM emulation. From 2016 to 2020 they have been one of the most active warez groups releasing commercial computer games with over 3700 releases in less than 6 years, compared to older groups like SKIDROW having fewer than 2500 over more than a decade of activity.

In late 2017 CODEX gained notoriety by becoming the third scene group (and fifth overall entity) to crack Denuvo DRM when they released a cracked version of Middle-earth: Shadow of War on its release date. 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". In February 2018 CODEX began releasing cracked copies of games from the Microsoft Windows Store. In mid-2018 CODEX began releasing cracked copies of games featuring the latest versions of Denuvo DRM, including updated versions of Assassin's Creed Origins and Far Cry 5, both of which used Uplay licensing DRM and contained additional anti-modification and anti-debugging code through the use of VMProtect. 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 June 2019, CODEX released two cracked copies of games which utilized Denuvo DRM, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and a cracked updated version of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

These cracks were previously released on the web attributed to the Russian cracker "Empress". Later, a cracker who self-identified as C0000005 began releasing cracks under the name Empress as well, suggesting that they are one and the same and that C0000005 had access to source code for CODEX's cracks. On June 27, 2019 CODEX released a crack for Star Wars Battlefront 2, about 527 days after its commercial release. On October 29, 2019 they published a cracked copy of Borderlands 3, another game distributed with Denuvo DRM, 46 days after release.

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