3DM is a Chinese video game cracking group. Their founder and leader is reported to be Su Feifei, more commonly known by the pseudonym "不死鸟" (pinyin: bù sǐ niǎo; meaning in English: 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.
list of games that work on cracked steam
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, they 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.[3]
CONSPIR4CY (releasing mostly as CPY) is a warez group founded in 1999 in Italy. They rose in notoriety after releasing Rise of the Tomb Raider and Inside in August 2016 under the name of CONSPIR4CY,[4] though they resumed using the 'CPY' tag shortly thereafter with the release of their cracked copy of Doom in September 2016.[5] They became the first group to create proper cracks for games protected by the third iteration of Denuvo DRM software.
They cracked Resident Evil 7: Biohazard only five days after its release, at the time the shortest amount of time taken to develop a crack for a Denuvo DRM-protected game.[6] They also cracked Mass Effect: Andromeda,[7] only ten days after its release. In July 2017 the warez group SKIDROW criticized the methods used by CONSPIR4CY to crack games using Denuvo DRM.[8] 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 2018 CPY released cracks for HITMAN 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, A Way Out, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Pro Evolution Soccer 2019, FIFA 19 - all of which featured the latest version of Denuvo DRM, with some using additional custom DRM or off the shelf DRM such as EACore and VMProtect. In December 2018, CPY published a cracked copy of Just Cause 4, which used the latest version of Denuvo DRM, on the day after its release. They also released a crack for Battlefield V on December 22, days after its official release. In January 2019, CPY released cracked copies of Ace Combat 7, Mutant Year Zero, and Strange Brigade, as well as the first episode of Life Is Strange 2 (titled "Roads") - all 4 titles using the latest versions of Denuvo DRM.
PARADOX attracted attention from 2011 to 2012, as they published files for playing unauthorized copies of games on the Sony PlayStation 3.[19] These copies required the use of a commercially-available USB dongle, which has been criticized as a form of commercial copyright infringement, and described as a "ReDRM" dongle because copies of game binaries were essentially decrypted using Sony's official keys, and then re-encrypted using the keys stored on the dongle, requiring the use of the dongle to bypass the DRM which had been added back to the games.[20] It is unclear whether groups like PARADOX had any affiliation with the creators and distributors of so-called "ReDRM" dongles, including potentially having profited from the release of these dongles by drumming up demand by releasing copies of games which only worked when used with the dongle.
The group made a comeback in June 2006,[24] and since then has cracked modern copy protection schemes such as Rockstar Games Social Club,[25] Ubisoft's persistent Internet connection requiring DRM,[26] and Battle.NET.[27] 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.[28] Since then, the group has seldom released cracked games, focusing on DRM-free titles from GOG.com, as well as games for Linux and macOS.
RELOADED (also known as RLD!) was founded in June 2004.[29] 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.[30] The group has cracked several modern protection schemes like SecuROM 8, Blizzard's Battle.NET, and Arxan Anti-Tamper. In 2022 the group was reported as still active and working with team BTCR.[citation needed]
REVOLT gained popularity for creating solutions for cracked games to have working multiplayer features, and later for cracks of games using Denuvo DRM which were released by its founder. REVOLT was founded by a Bulgarian teenager who used the online handle Voksi. In July 2018 the REVOLT website began redirecting to the website of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior.[31] 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.[32]
SKIDROW is a well-known cracking group originally formed in 1990, cracking games for the Amiga platform, and having used the motto "Twice the Fun - Double the Trouble!" since then. 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.[33] The most recent incarnation of SKIDROW began releasing unauthorized copies of games in June 2007, when they announced their return to cracking software.[34] They were the first scene group to crack the version of Ubisoft's Uplay DRM which required players to have a persistent Internet connection to Ubisoft's licensing servers, first in Assassin's Creed II[35] and then in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.
In July 2017, in a statement released to commemorate their 10th consecutive year of releases since re-emerging in the PC game cracking scene, SKIDROW made cryptic remarks that the techniques used by CONSPIR4CY, STEAMPUNKS, and members of the Steam Underground warez forum to crack modern copy protections are not proper.[8] These criticisms were themselves criticized on the web, as SKIDROW's apparent standards for a proper crack would seemingly disqualify both their most notable crack of Ubisoft's persistent online connection requiring DRM, which they emulated, and their most recent notable release of a Denuvo-protected game, which they cracked by modifying the executable from another game.[37]
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.[43][44] 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".[45] In February 2018 CODEX began releasing cracked copies of games from the Microsoft Windows Store.[46] 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.[47][48][49][50] 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 by an independent cracker on the web, attributed to the group "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.
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. This unfinished crack was not similarly protected. Subsequently, CODEX did not release any cracks for games using Denuvo DRM until June 2020, when they released cracked copies of Team Sonic Racing, Trials of Mana, The Quiet Man, and an updated version of Far Cry: New Dawn.
In February 23, 2022, CODEX announced its retirement in its cracked release of The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories. The group cited the lack of competition in the cracking scene as a sign that CODEX had accomplished its founding goal in 2014, which was to compete with RELOADED, "the dominating PC games group at the time."[51] 2ff7e9595c
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