Piracy

CLASS (CLS) was a notorious and prolific warez group that existed between January 1, 1997 and January 9, 2004.[2] The group was the target of federal raids such as Operation Fastlink. They specialized in cracked games, and sometimes had elaborate art in the cracktro or release (i.e. music, 3D animation, logo designs, etc.). They were a global group and had many members worldwide. Class used their group abbreviation, CLS, as a suffix at the end of the files they released.

This group was involved in a long-standing rivalry with a competing game pirating group known as MYTH. The two groups released strictly ripped games, as opposed to the CD image content released by groups such as Fairlight. Games would be split into the base rip, which would have as little content as possible to fully play the game; additional media (usually movies or digital music) would be released as add-ons. For some releases, intro movie add-ons were released as well.

They used advanced compression methods (most notably ACE) to reduce the size of the required downloads as much as possible; installers were specially crafted to use the abnormally compressed files. Many of their releases included a WAVE Injector/UHARC compression scheme, that decompressed and situated the files into a specific folder. These programs were at the core of their rip operation, as these programs (Wave Injector coded by CLASS/BACKLASH) are vital in decompressing the rips (i.e. games).

CLASS stopped producing as of January 9, 2004, by releasing an endtro. This stated that after 1,234 releases they were giving up their throne.

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, though they continued using the CPY tag with the release of Doom in September 2016. They became the first group to create proper cracks for games protected by the latest 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. In July 2017, the warez group SKIDROW criticized the methods used by CONSPIR4CY to crack games using Denuvo DRM.

Active from 1999 to 2006, DEViANCE was one of the most prolific warez groups. Their dissolution has been described as the end of an era, and the current affiliation of ex-DEViANCE members is a reoccurring argument between groups. Describing members of a modern warez group as ex-DEViANCE became something of a joke within the warez scene.

Echelon is a warez group which specializes in the release and distribution of console games, such as Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 ISO images.

Between September 4, 2000 to April 30, 2002, Echelons Dreamcast division released 188 game titles and 34 other various fixes, tutorials, trainers, and loaders, picking up where Kalisto left off.

In January 2001, Sega announced that the Dreamcast was to be discontinued by the end of the year; this was the end of Segas last foray into the home console business. Rampant piracy is often cited as one of the major reasons for the failure of the Dreamcast (but the validity of this claim is uncertain). This is because unlike other consoles, like the PlayStation 2, pirated Dreamcast games were capable of selfbooting like normal, retail purchased games. This ease of piracy, coupled with booming broadband internet usage to download game images, meant that the Dreamcast was one of the easiest systems to pirate. Echelon was single-handedly responsible for the bulk of pirated games released for the Dreamcast console platform.

In 2004, Echelon was named as a target of Operation Fastlink by the United States Department of Justice.

On December 19, 2001, Echelon released their first of several hundred PlayStation 2 titles: Final Fantasy X. As of 2006, Echelon continues to release games for the PS2 platform

FairLight (FLT) is a warez and demo group initially involved in the Commodore demoscene, and in cracking to illegally release games for free, since 1987. In addition to the C64, FairLight has also migrated towards the Amiga, Super NES and later the PC. FairLight was founded during the Easter holiday in 1987 by Strider and Black Shadow, both ex-members of West Coast Crackers (WCC). This West Coast was the west coast of Sweden, so FairLight was initially a Swedish group, which later became internationalized. The name was taken from the Fairlight CMI synthesizer which Strider saw Jean Michel Jarre use on some of his records.

HYBRID (también conocido como HBD) grupo warez fundado en 1993

International Network of Crackers (también conocido comoINC) era un grupo que crackeaba juegos para la PC de IBM durante 1980 y1990. La mayoría de sus liberaciones durante 1993 era juegos educativos para niños. En 1994 el grupo desapareció

Kalisto fue un grupo warez creado en 1998 el cuál se especializa en la liberación y distribución de imágenes ISO de PlayStation y PlayStation 2 también liberaron algunas de Dreamcast en el 2000.

Myth era un grupo warez, centrado en crackear y rippear juegos de PC. Además de rippear juegos, el grupo también liberó trainers y libero actualizaciones de sus cracks para juegos.

PARADOX (PDX) is a well known warez/demo group that has cracked games and programs for Amiga, IBM PC, and numerous game consoles. It was founded in 1990. PARADOX began by cracking Amiga software. They moved on to the Sega Mega Drive and SNES in 1993, and started cracking PC software in 1994. Other consoles/handheld devices they cracked for include the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Game Boy, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PSP. [1] Paradox has been noted to crack challenging dongle protections and many debugging and software development programs.

They are also known for adding futuristic chiptunes to most of their keygenerators.

Their slogan is Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest!, which was also a quote from the film Hackers

Phrozen Crew (PC), fundado en 1993 por tKC, era uno de los grupos más populares de Software de PC

Pirates With Attitude (también conocido com PWA) era un importante e internacional grupo warez de 1992 hasta el 2000

Razor 1911 (also known as RZR and RazorDOX) was founded in 1985, to crack software for Commodore 64, but also had a major presence in the Amiga and the IBM PC warez scenes. They were subjects of raids in Operation Buccaneer and Operation Fastlink. The group made a comeback in June 2006, and since then has cracked modern copy protection schemes listed below. In March 2012, Razor1911 announced that their tester and coder DYCUS, who had an active role in making trainers and testing the groups releases, had died of cancer. Since then, the group has seldom released cracked games, focusing on DRM-free titles from GOG.com, often for Linux and MacOSX.
Razor 1911 (RZR) is a warez and demogroup founded in Norway, 1985. According to the US Justice Department, Razor 1911 is the oldest software cracking group that is still active on the internet.

Risciso (Estilizado cuando RISCISO) era un grupo on-line warez , fundado en aproximadamente 1993, dedicado a distribuir software, juegos y películas

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 containing a complete list of their membership at the time.

Tristar and Red Sector Incorporated, Inc. (también conocido como TRSI) Es un grupo warez que fue formado de dos grupos warez antiguos Tristar y Red Sector Incorporated. En 1990 agrietaron juegos de Commodore 64 . Pero luego TRSI Emigró del Commodore 64 al Amiga e IBM-PC En 2003, TRSI quedó inactivo

United Software Association era un grupo warez de PC de IBM. En 1990 formaron una alianza con el grupo Fairlight. En las liberaciones con Fairlight se social llamar como EE.UU./FLT. En 1992, varios miembros de United Software Association. fueron arrestados por El servicio secreto de los Estados Unidos.