Why did people crack games?

[Retro-Nerd]

I was never a fan of UK magazines. Mostly overhyped game ratings for action stuff. But with such generalised articles about the European market. Sounds very naive or uninformed.

[Cpt. Hindsight]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

I was never a fan of UK magazines. Mostly overhyped game ratings for action stuff. But with such generalised articles about the European market. Sounds very naive or uninformed.

I hope you're not talking about reviews of brilliant games scoring at least 90 % in several UK magazines like "The Last Ninja 3", "Epic", "Harlequin" and hundreds of other examples why we had to overflood the continent with cracks.

I don't know why you didn't fall in love with at least five games a month. I just didn't know where to buy it. Man, I really wished we had stores back then, or at least some fancy adverts.

Zut alors, quelle horreur.

[Simmo76]

Originally Posted by Mark Wright

I reiterate: all of that hard work done by Chatterbox in Antwerp was not intended to be exploited by Kevin in Derby, selling a UK game deprotected in Belgium to his school chums, taking the credit for "ripping it off" and making a tidy profit...

Harrrrrruumph.

You leave Kevin alone! He was alright; and he never sold those games, he just required a blank disk from you and maybe a copy of your maths homework...

[Enverex]

people don't make money from music any more because 99% of music in distribution is pirated

Wow, if only 1% of music is actually purchased then it must be priced rather high considering the insane amounts of money that pop artists are making.

That's a stupid statement and you know it.

[Subzero]

What Galahad said!. second all and everything! .

[Phantasm]

I agree wholeheartedly with what Galahad said but for me it was the challenge of the crack way before I even joined the scene. I started learning to crack (on the Amiga at least) pretty soon after i got my A500 in 1990 - but i didn't join the scene till around 1993.

Cracking for me is like a puzzle, say a crossword or a sudoku. Following all the clues until you can fill in the blanks and end up with a fully completed cracked game. I guess it was the fact that someone else had set you a challenge and understanding how it all worked resulted in a big sense of achievement.

Quite often I already had a working copy of the game I was cracking (either having purchased the original or a cyclone copy of a friends original) so there was little actual benefit to myself in cracking the game other than the achievement of actually doing so.

Later on when i got a modem and joined the scene I got to experience all the stuff that Galahad mentioned but by then i think the Amiga was starting to slow down.

I still enjoy the buzz of doing Amiga cracks to this day even though the competitive aspect is long gone.

[dlfrsilver]

Jurassic Park is still not cracked to this day, do you think it could be a candidate ?

[edd_jedi]

Originally Posted by Enverex

That's a stupid statement and you know it.

Loving all the comments on here by idiots who can't be bothered to use Google. Before you call me stupid, maybe get your facts straight. Here's the first hit on Google for those too lazy to do any research before throwing around insults:

http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/online-piracy/

I never said musicians don't make money, I said they make a lot less money from music sales than they used to, and these days make most money from live performance. That's a fact, choose to plead ignorance to it again if you please.

Anyway, back on topic. Thanks for the replies, especially from those that were part of the scene. So it looks like most people were in it mainly for the challenge and for a little bit of recognition too, seems there was virtually no money in it. This surprises me because obviously counterfeiting is big business, so I assumed the main motive would have been money. Very interesting.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by edd_jedi

Loving all the comments on here by idiots who can't be bothered to use Google. Before you call me stupid, maybe get your facts straight. Here's the first hit on Google for those too lazy to do any research before throwing around insults:

http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/online-piracy/

I never said musicians don't make money, I said they make a lot less money from music sales than they used to, and these days make most money from live performance. That's a fact, choose to plead ignorance to it again if you please.

Anyway, back on topic. Thanks for the replies, especially from those that were part of the scene. So it looks like most people were in it mainly for the challenge and for a little bit of recognition too, seems there was virtually no money in it. This surprises me because obviously counterfeiting is big business, so I assumed the main motive would have been money. Very interesting.

Of course there was money in it, how do you think we paid for all those original disks in the first place? Very few were donated, but thats a whole lotta other discussion for a separate thread

[TCD]

Can we please get back on topic. The question is rather simple and directed at people who cracked games I guess. The whole 'piracy' aspect has been discussed often enough and doesn't need yet another thread.

[Mark Wright]

Oh well, colour my face red once again :-) It's clear that no-one supports my theory as to "why did people crack games?" (at least initially) with my answer "to make them available in their home territory due to lack of local distribution", despite all of my evidence and protestations to the contrary. No surprise for me there, though I stand by some of what I said. A bit... Or maybe it's time to let it go... Yes.... Aaaarrrrgh!

OK! Having FAILED to EVER influence anyone with this argument, I now wave the white flag of defeat: I SURRENDER! Let my discredited testimony be stricken from the annals of history! I concede defeat! I plead forgiveness from anyone offended by my remarks!

If anything, I was trying to pay a compliment to the pioneering Euro groups who became accidental household names among UK computer gaming pirates in the 80s and 90s. I stand by that part of my theory: Rodney in Runcorn or Wayne in Worcester were concerned only with wanting to play Turrican without having to pay full-price. They had no interest in, or concept of, who "Skid Row" were, other than knowing their intro delayed the action. They didn't know that "Skid Row" were the kindly benefactors who liberated the data and made it possible for them to own it for whatever price their clever computer whizz-kid chum charged for it. Surely HE was the one to thank anyway? Ad infinitum...

I concede I was wrong to propose the notion that games were originally cracked to make them available outside their home terriories. Clearly we were *ALL* indiscriminate thieves, unashamed to grab the latest "hot stuff" wherever it was made or cracked. For myself, I amassed several Posso(TM) boxes full of game releases during my time in the scene (the MAJORITY cracked abroad and re-imported to the UK) but these were full of disks retained for mostly sentimental reasons: iconic intro; released by a friend; something I might play now and again; etc. But then I was never a big gamer.

So, why did people crack games then?

Well, I'll repeat the received wisdom from now on: it was clearly to have a laugh and to gain notoriety by making available for free, as quickly and as widely as possible, something as new as possible (ideally before release), in order to decimate the future viability of the "evil corporations" who dared charge for the development and publishing of each desirable item, thus accellerating the decline of the target platform and surrounding industry, all in the name of adding a graffiti tag. Modern-day Robin Hoods. Must remember that. Modern-day Robin Hoods.

[watsonfmly]

Watsonfmly sneaks in, and quietly drags the soap box away..... nothing to see here....


Lol

[jimmy2x2x]

How did the finances work, how did the pot get sweetened for suppliers - getting the latest software straight away time after time.

Who paid for the equipment, the modems, the international phone bills?

Was it all through the 'backdoor' (oo-err missus) or did cash actually change hands

Find out next week in another thread, some time, some place

[WayneK]

Suppliers reasons for supplying were as varied as crackers reasons for cracking - recognition/ego, money (be it hard cash, modems, calling cards to avoid big phonebills etc - things that had a monetary value).
Some had no connection with "the scene" whatsoever, and just gave the games they got (from a distributor, or a shop, or a magazine, etc.) to a friend who gave them every game they could ever want in return - this friend would then be the one you see credited in the crack intro

Money is a touchier subject, but I'm sure you can work out that if you had access to calling cards (hacked) and free hardware (card fraud), generating money wasn't very difficult - also selling leech accounts on BBSes generated cash, as well as BBS sysops who paid to be in the group (and have their board advertised in intros, and traders from the group to upload all the latest games to them - they in turn probably sold leech accounts!).

Another common self-fulfilling way of paying for originals was to have someone in the Middle-East (Kuwait, UAE were common) pay for the games, warp them/send them to the cracker and then send the boxed original to the buyer who could then sell his 0-day imported original boxed game for a huge mark-up before anyone else in his country had a copy.

At one point in early 1990, after a night where several beers were consumed, one of the leaders of a well-known cracking group declared he would get the next round for everyone because he was taking £200/month from the group account and there was so much money no-one even noticed...this might let you know how easily groups generated income!

[h0ffman]

Galahad and Phantasm are both on point. Galahad taught me how to crack, although by no means was I as good as he was (is) but I used the skills I picked up to AGA fix games, add trainers, single file etc. Who'd have thought that 20 years later I'd use those skills to build a music disk from scratch on the Amiga.

Anyway, back to topic, it was fun. Lots of fun. Even if the fruits of your labour didn't get you any notoriety because the games had been out of months, you still wanted to find out how it all worked. I've even toyed with the idea of putting my hand to doing some WHDLoad and stuff, but to be honest I don't have the time and everyone else is doing such a great job of it.

I do however still remember the BC Kid incident! What a catch hey Phil?

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Mark Wright

I plead forgiveness from anyone offended by my remarks!

it seems like you are the one who is offended that no-one is convinced by your theory.

there may be a grain of truth in it somewhere but it seems to me like you've come to far too strong a conclusion based on circumstantial and anecdotal evidence.

it's true that i never knew any actual crackers, but there was never any single person who supplied everyone with cracks and certainly nobody ever charged any money for it, cracked games just spread through the social web like a disease.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Mark Wright

Don't tell me you paid for the disk too!

just so some pathetic British fucking pipsqueak schoolkid could parade around the playground boasting to his unenlightened friends that he'd personally ripped off some software (read: copied some cracks using X-Copy), much to their impressed amazement, and that they could buy it for £3 a disk. The wanker.

knock out copies of Speedball 2 for £5 to teenagers.

I know why Mr Wright is so angry. He's pissed 'cos he had to pay for cracked disks!

D.

[Photon]

In answer to your first post:

1. People don't crack games, crackers do. By which I mean there's a mindset required to become a good cracker, to "beat the system" or whatever you want to call it.
2. The result is that the game is copy-able. People will copy. Even things that aren't cracked - music has been copied since the 1940s. Often the game is fixed for compatibility and compressed also, sometimes loading faster, benefits over the original game.
3. Copying took place and this helped get the game into the maximum # homes worldwide, a dream come true for the game companies. They didn't get the profit, but they also didn't advertise, get resellers, and distribute maximum # copies of the games worldwide. That's where the "copying kills industries" logic fails, even though on Amiga I'm certain it was bad enough to drive developers and publishers to consoles much more quickly than necessary otherwise.

Today, if you're rich enough, you can just get a team of seasoned lawyers and "allow yourself" to copy stuff, make people pay for the copies, and send a pittance to the publishers. Just look at Steve Jobs' legacy, Itunes and App Store. It was better in the old days.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

certainly nobody ever charged any money for it, cracked games just spread through the social web like a disease.

You don't think groups put addresses in their releases so they could send people their cracks for free do you?

How Galahad, WayneK and others explained it, so it worked in the 80s, 90s and nowadays. Everyone in a Warez Team has different reasons why he does what he does. Some do it for the money, some for the thrill, some for pretending to be the best. Technology has changed over the years, but the motivation for the why, always stayed the same.

-= E.vil N.ever D.ies =-