Almost the entire warez scene gone due to major raid, 60 servers down in 19 countries, no more free cracked vidyas

nush said:
Not really, for TV and movies there was already a dieing market for the burned discs. Most of the piracy is on Chinese streaming apps these days. They don't really care about day one, the stuff will just arrive later.
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I just want to say bad, baseless things about China.
 
As someone who grew up in a third world country you're damn right I pirated hundreds of games growing up, up into the 360/PS3 era and I'm not ashamed nor regret anything, I know for a fact that I wouldn't have bought any games if piracy did not exist and wouldn't have this as my hobby.

Nowadays I'm in a position where I really can't be arsed going through hoops to play games for free and I also believe people should be rewarded accordingly for their products, so I buy the games that I want to play and don't give it a second thought. I am thankful for that.

I am also thankful for piracy for allowing someone under my circumstances back then to be able to discover and experience this hobby and refuse to blanket judge those who feel the need to pirate their games.
 
T8SC said:
Good.

I'm tired of people thinking its ok to steal because its digital.

"Oh there's too many stream providers, i cant afford them all" Well boohoo to you, you priviliged little shitbag. Thats not an excuse to illegally download stuff, do you walk into a shop and steal that DVD off the shelf? No.

Stuff like "ShowBox" and all the add-in packs f or Kodi need to die off. They'll never get rid of it all, just like you'll never get rid of people who steal physically from stores, but every little helps.
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Do you agree that photocopiers should be removed from university libraries? It's unacceptable that students can copy what they need instead of buying the textbooks. It's theft. Privileged little shitbags. Who do they think they are.
 
Red Rackham's Revenge said:
Do you agree that photocopiers should be removed from university libraries? It's unacceptable that students can copy what they need instead of buying the textbooks. It's theft. Privileged little shitbags. Who do they think they are.
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Libraries and universities usually pay some sort of blanket copyright fee to publishers to cover this.
 
Good, now I can sleep easy at night knowing that my favorite 'mom n pop' organization - Disney - isn't losing any money.
 
Red Rackham's Revenge said:
And if you don't?
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30yearsofhurt said:
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Yes you did. You avoided outright calling someone who photocopies pages from a book a thief. Even if you implied it.

Anyway, this whole logic is why copyright and copyright law is immoral and absurd.

Ask anyone 20-25 years ago if they thought recording a movie or TV show on a VHS tape was stealing they'd laugh at you and keep doing it. Copyright propaganda has managed to turn a lot of people into willing mind slaves who conform their thinking to how rights holders want them to and even fight for them.

It's so fucking strange.
 
nemiroff said:
So, this happened in the beginning of the year AFAIK. The effect should've happened a long time ago and torrent sites are easily available for everyone to check. Did you..? I mean, because right now I'm looking at games like Project Cars 3, MS Flight Simulator 2020, Battletoads and Doom Eternal among the torrents, plus a bunch of other new games.
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That's because none of the games you mentioned are protected by any DRM (except store drm, which again anyone can remove)(Doom Eternal famously had a DRM free exe packed in as well).

What people don't notice is how few games these days actually have DRM in the first place or remove it before it even gets cracked.
 
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reading the article i dont see anything here that will affect anything, the cracking groups are still around, this will be forgotten in about 2 days
 
This is one of the dumbest threads I've seen in awhile SPARKS and their sister groups aren't scene gaming release groups or have anything to do with software of any kind.

Scene race to release before launch and this is what brought on SPARKS downfall, this rarely if EVER happens with gaming distribution. Gaming pirates are only race against the clock against each other on who can beat the newest protection method.

This will have zero ZERO effect on gaming piracy.
 
Red Rackham's Revenge said:
Do you agree that photocopiers should be removed from university libraries? It's unacceptable that students can copy what they need instead of buying the textbooks. It's theft. Privileged little shitbags. Who do they think they are.
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Yes and camera phones should be banned too. Infact anyone with a photographic memory should be nailed to a cross & left in the desert.
 
Teslerum said:
That's because none of the games you mentioned are protected by any DRM (except store drm, which again anyone can remove)(Doom Eternal famously had a DRM free exe packed in as well).

What people don't notice is how few games these days actually have DRM in the first place or remove it before it even gets cracked.
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When I got a refund for Disco Elysium in Steam it stayed playable in my library even after my license was removed. I thought that was funny.
 
'Warez', lol I thought OP was talking about a Mexican drug cartel. I wonder how much tax money was spent chopping off this hydra head.
 
sure taking out the sparks group would be a big blow but some will just pop up anyways and there's plenty other groups
 
Only tens of millions?

Doesn't seem too big of a blow,

also how do they actually do anything against online piracy? It's too big and decentralized like someone mentioned.
 
Oh this should stop illegal downloading for sure. Like that time the owners of pirate bay was arrested. No one has downloaded anything since then.

Or... Oh.
 
I'm playing Xenosaga 3 and I got the ISO illegally to be honest. Piracy ain't all bad. If they ever remaster it I'll buy it but the series is likely forever dead.
 
Faithless83 said:
Sorry, it may come as a shock to you, but yeah... people will pay for entertainment if there is no "freebies" around.
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Hopefully this is by the wealthy and well off, if a poor barely able to subsist person does so in a third world country, that's not something to be happy about.

so they don't have steam sales epic and other store's giveaways? How about access to the android and ios stores? where there are probably thousands of games including high end 3d multiplayer games available legally for free?

The freebies on the net also aren't gone, and have never been gone. Not only on the net but physically in the streets.

If someone's barely able to feed themselves, and they don't know they have cheap and free easily available options for entertainment, including legal ones, that's not something to be happy about.

Even movies youtube officially and legally streams lots of old movies for free.

If someone has to starve or forsake basic ammenities just to buy a game, and they buy that game costing one third of their monthly salary. Is that something we should be happy about?


30yearsofhurt said:
Libraries and universities usually pay some sort of blanket copyright fee to publishers to cover this.
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but some students now use cellphone cameras and scanning apps instead of paying the photocopier coins...


T8SC said:
Yes and camera phones should be banned too. Infact anyone with a photographic memory should be nailed to a cross & left in the desert.
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in a cyberpunk future, with tech augmented memory, it is illegal to remember or share memories. You have to pay a fee every time you remember.
 
OSC said:
Hopefully this is by the wealthy and well off, if a poor barely able to subsist person does so in a third world country, that's not something to be happy about.

so they don't have steam sales epic and other store's giveaways? How about access to the android and ios stores? where there are probably thousands of games including high end 3d multiplayer games available legally for free?

The freebies on the net also aren't gone, and have never been gone. Not only on the net but physically in the streets.

If someone's barely able to feed themselves, and they don't know they have cheap and free easily available options for entertainment, including legal ones, that's not something to be happy about.

Even movies youtube officially and legally streams lots of old movies for free.

If someone has to starve or forsake basic ammenities just to buy a game, and they buy that game costing one third of their monthly salary. Is that something we should be happy about?



but some students now use cellphone cameras and scanning apps instead of paying the photocopier coins...



in a cyberpunk future, with tech augmented memory, it is illegal to remember or share memories. You have to pay a fee every time you remember.
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I'm not sure I follow your point. So games should be free if you are unable to pay for them?
Steam/PSN/Xbox live sales exists also used games.
What I meant is that we went from rampant piracy to companies investing in Brazil,. respecting it as market (looking at you Nintendo), having games with language options and often dubs in Portuguese.
Ferraris are also expensive AF here, so as cars in general. It takes around 4 years to the average guy to fully pay for a used car here, where the same car (new) in the US could be paid in 6 months tops.
Is it fair? No. Do you need a car to live? Also no.
Guess what? People still buy cars.

What I see is people so entitled that think that everything should be given for free. People that failed to see how it takes time and effort to make a game.
 
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Faithless83 said:
I'm not sure I follow your point. So games should be free if you are unable to pay for them?
Steam/PSN/Xbox live sales exists also used games.
What I meant is that we went from rampant piracy to companies investing in Brazil,. respecting it as market (looking at you Nintendo), having games with language options and often dubs in Portuguese.
Ferraris are also expensive AF here, so as cars in general. It takes around 4 years to the average guy to fully pay for a used car here, where the same car (new) in the US could be paid in 6 months tops.
Is it fair? No. Do you need a car to live? Also no.
Guess what? People still buy cars.

What I see is people so entitled that think that everything should be given for free. People that failed to see how it takes time and effort to make a game.
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I imagine ios and android also exist over there.

It is just sad that someone might resort to big sacrifices for a single game when there are plenty legally cheap and legally free. If they know of the alternatives and choose to do the sacrifice it's fine. But if they don't know of the alternatives and do it because they don't know better, that's just no good.
 
OSC said:
I imagine ios and android also exist over there.

It is just sad that someone might resort to big sacrifices for a single game when there are plenty legally cheap and legally free. If they know of the alternatives and choose to do the sacrifice it's fine. But if they don't know of the alternatives and do it because they don't know better, that's just no good.
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Believe me, they know. So much so that they try to pirate games whenever they can. My point is, if there is no other option people pay. I mostly buy games on sales, but I do preorders from time to time. I'm also a collector of retro and this is my main hobby. I'm not considering myself as the standard by any means.

But I know a lot of guys that mostly go for used games and they are just fine.
 
hariseldon said:
There is validity to the archivist argument. Put it this way - we would not have access to most emulated retro stuff without the warez scene - all those games would have been lost forever. The images have to come from somewhere and certainly on the Atari ST it's warez scene for 99% of it. Without warez we'd be in tricky waters re game preservation.
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Yeah copyright is broken. It's so far reaching now it's legitimately destructive to preservation efforts if enforced as written.

I think copyright should work like Trademarks, where you have to be able to demonstrate continued commercial exploitation in order to keep it (maybe after an initial grace period of 10 years). That seems like the fair compromise that allows people to keep the rights to stuff that makes them money, but also allows for a public domain of no longer commercially viable art to be preserved.

There's a real problem with some works that are owned by defunct companies that have been brought and sold and carved up that the ownership of a lot of IP is very ambiguous. And it becomes such a mess to to untangle that it's not worth it and these works just die. I know the Neverhood games are one example of that. Tex Murphy was a mess like that for a while but they used the book copyright to petition the courts to unify the IP rights.
 
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SF Kosmo said:
Yeah copyright is broken. It's so far reaching now it's legitimately destructive to preservation efforts if enforced as written.

I think copyright should work like Trademarks, where you have to be able to demonstrate continued commercial exploitation in order to keep it (maybe after an initial grace period of 10 years). That seems like the fair compromise that allows people to keep the rights to stuff that makes them money, but also allows for a public domain of no longer commercially viable art to be preserved.

There's a real problem with some works that are owned by defunct companies that have been brought and sold and carved up that the ownership of a lot of IP is very ambiguous. And it becomes such a mess to to untangle that it's not worth it and these works just die. I know the Neverhood games are one example of that. Tex Murphy was a mess like that for a while but they used the book copyright to petition the courts to unify the IP rights.
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The problem isn't just copyright - though it's certainly a significant part of the problem. It's also technical. The copy protection on older material makes it hard to copy while the warez versions are easier to image or copy. They also sometimes fix game-breaking bugs...
 
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