• MashingBundle@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I saw this tweet a while ago that was like “Piracy lore is crazy, there’s only like 2 people who know how to crack Denuvo. One of them is a psychotic transphobe who speaks like a JRPG villain, and the other only cracks football games”

    I’m paraphrasing, but honestly it’s so accurate…

    Edit: For anyone confused, here is a great writeup on the history of Denuvo cracking, and Empresses lunacy

    • Gatsby@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Only two people willing to crack denuvo games. And publicise their cracks.

      Usually talent like that leads to well paying jobs, well paying jobs usually lead to wanting to not go to prison.

      That doesn’t mean people don’t have the skill, it means they’re not willing to use it, when someone else is already taking the heat

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          Illegal? Probably not, so long as you were careful about not hosting any of their code/data

          Would doing it publicly end with you getting buried in lawsuits? It might. Anyone can sue for any reason, and copyright holders love making examples of people

    • BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Aside from balking at the audacity of using a platform for piracy as her own personal blog, the community was quick to knock her down a peg.

      So I guess you read them all? The great thinkers? To verify how you are above and beyond their thinking? Do you understand how utterly arrogant this post makes you? I will tell you why. To put yourself above thinkers like Arthur Schopenhauer, Adam Smith, John Locke, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Francisco de Vitoria, Friedrich Nietzsche and so many others. Human beings who have helped shape the foundation of the world we live in today. I am talking about the most basic of basic stuff we now take for granted like property, human rights, democratic governance and rule of law. Without these ideas and those who dedicated their lives to refine them, our world could not be like it is today.

      This was a strong argument, but as someone else jokingly pointed out:

      removed shut up, they pirated rdr2

      Which, to be fair, Hobbes and Kant never did.

      I’m fucking dead 😂

    • VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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      1 year ago

      The other cracks football games? You mean like FIFA? Because I haven’t seen any cracks of those…

    • Billy_Gnosis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Holy smokes. Got sucked into that one. So is she still the only one that can crack Denuvo? You mentioned 2, is the other not very active or something?

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Me, five minutes ago: “who’s this Empress?”

    Me, now: “I need to follow her, it’s free popcorn!”

  • JelloBrains@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I miss mostly anonymous people cracking games without running around screaming from the rafters about gremlins in their modems stealing their breakfast bars. I can’t believe most if not all Denuvo releases are now only cracked by this person.

    • clitoris@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      shit, what happens when she kicks the bucket? maybe someone else will emerge but it’s been so long already, and they haven’t, so it could take years and years

      • cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Demand is what causes Supply. Somewhere out there is someone with the skill to crack Denuvo, but no need to, because this lunatic is already doing it. And being the competition means being on empress’ radar, which is really something a sane person would not want.

        • psilocybin@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          That’s wishful thinking.

          She can only crack so many games, so the demand for the other games already stays without supply.

          The scene was much bigger before denuvo, the supply obviously went down independently of the demand.

          Also the demand/supply argument only makes sense where there is payment. There are starving people in the world who’s demand is not met bc the can’t pay while there are millions of facelifts administered to people who will pay large sums.

          Denuvo has succeeded in imposing such a huge threshold onto cracking that from the talented people only the most driven stayed in the game. With no money in it you need to be driven by something else, usually ego. Even if there is a successor to empress chances are that is true for them as well.

          • cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I should be clear that I don’t think supply and demand are immovable levers by which the world economy does or should work. I also don’t believe there’s only one person with the ability to do this. If they stop, I’m left to assume one of the eight billion people on this rock with the time and talent and resources to do this will.

            And if they don’t then I’m just going to have to deal with it because this is internet piracy, my dude. But there’s no world in which I’m going to defend what empress does as a vital public service. I think I would prefer that they stop and get help, but I don’t expect that to happen.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Can somebody enlighten me on who this is and why I should care?

  • SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    This is why I don’t trust her releases. God knows what she’ll put in them to try and get at her “enemies” during some psychotic episode.

      • MashingBundle@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Don’t forget the: “I’m the greatest philosopher who ever lived” and “I use visions and astral-states to crack my games” parts

        • cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          If the second one is true, even in a subjective sense, I’m honestly just impressed. I mean, if it works, it works.

        • YellowtoOrange@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well, astral projection is real, though I don’t know the validity in using it to crack computer games

            • YellowtoOrange@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Of course it’s real. Have a wander through the Reddit astral projection subreddit (I’d point you to the Lemmy one but it’s not populated well).

              It’s a deep topic, with various theories how it works however it’s not lucid dreaming, which is also real, of coursez and anyone can do both. There are many guides how to, if you read the faqs on the subreedits.

              It’s as though you told someone from an undeveloped country that electric cars are on the roads and they said, “what? Electric cars?”

              Reality is a lot stranger than you think.

              I’d recommend you listen to Mark Gober’s podcast “where is mine” - start with the NDE one (NDEs are also, very, very real, and have been documented since Roman times)

              • Toribor@corndog.uk
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                1 year ago

                Ehhh, looking into this a bit it seems like “Astral Projection” and “Near Death Experiences” are paranormal explanations for a category of ‘Out of Body Experiences’ that aren’t very well understood. I guess it’s fine to say that those experiences are real, but those specific terms seem rooted in esotericism rather than science.

    • theharber@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m torn between this and thinking she wouldn’t want to risk the hit to her reputation.

      FitGirl refused to repackage her content out of similar fears, though I’m sure the thought alone of FG getting to make a “told you so” post drives enough rage in her to ensure it likely wouldn’t happen.

    • IverCoder@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I heard there was this other one who’s in a healthy mental state but only agrees to crack football games

    • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Wait, so crackers don’t publish any documentation on cracking Denuvo? They just keep all the knowledge to themselves? Or is it just that nobody else wants to do it?

      • minnieo@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        they keep it to themselves to remain on top. empress also accepts donations, even going so far as to refuse to crack a game unless she receives a certain amount of money like $500.

        she doesn’t release info because then she won’t be needed, and therefore won’t receive money for something that many crackers can do

        • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s crazy. Those people are no better than the companies that put DRM in their products then.

          I wonder if we could do crowdfunding to pay someone to write and release the documentation? This way Denuvo cracking would be easy for any experienced cracker to learn.

          • McJonalds@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            isn’t that sort of what’s happening? she wants money for her work, and she won’t be able to live off of doing this if there is enough competition. this lady, insane as she is, isn’t the problem. it’s that finding something rewarding to do, and live off, isn’t easy. in fact, it is incredibly artificially hard

            granted, i know nothing about this woman’s financial situation. im just speculating as to why she wouldn’t want to share her knowledge or expertise

            • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              By keeping the knowledge to herself, she is slowing down the society’s progress on destroying Denuvo. She also created a single point of failure. If she is gone, a lot of that knowledge will be lost. What will the community do then?

              I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve to earn money for her work. But she has the power to make it easier for other crackers to crack Denuvo. With enough people like that, maybe Denuvo could be destroyed entirely? Wouldn’t that be a more worthy cause to support? But it seems that instead of actually helping the society, her priority is to be the only one who benefits.

        • Antiques@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well her argument is, if Denuvo knows how she does it, they will patch it and it the process becomes more suicidal that it already is.

        • soggywhale@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Can we blame them? When you invest so much time acquiring skill and knowledge at one point you gotta eat and sleep somewhere.

        • pelikan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          That’s actually pretty strange. Person who is able to crack Denuvo should have superior hacking skills. Such skills obviously allow to work as information security specialist, and such job easily delivers salary of 5+ thousand of $ per month even to specialists who are not skilled enough to crack Denuvo. So Empress asks to sponsor her for the money that she could easily obtain in less than two working days. This makes no sence.

      • ghostinthessh@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Correct, they never published documentation, which has led us to this situation. The lack of “training” for newer crackers is something i even remember empress herself pointing out. There is some crackjng training centering around archaic drm like securom on spore. However cracking groups had gone more and more “closed source”.

          • esty@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Probably one of the big things keeping them from open sourcing their knowledge is denuvo though, they download games with their (cracked) DRM to RE and prevent future cracking

            and also, empress cracks cost $$$ C:

            • ghostinthessh@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              I think that the cracking groups could have released better explanations on how their tooling worked so that others could at least be closer to “up to date” with the current DRM technology. Right now public cracking info is years behind because the groups that did have any knowledge took it with them. The idea that this would help only denuvo was a bit myopic since either way when they left cracking it would help denuvo. However I heard that many cracking groups now work for denuvo so that may be part of it. But considering they did all that work for free, I don’t want to conspire about them or claim that I am entitled to their work.

              Edit: Also the people who have released “how to break denuvo” guides have been some of the more aggressively persued legally. So my lamenting over no documentation/explanation may be a bit “man i wish someone would break the law for MY benefit.”

            • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              More people working on breaking Denuvo would mean more cracked games and more vulnerabilities being found. Even if Denuvo team could keep up with that, it would be extra cost for them.

              • esty@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Which clearly is money they have considering how much publishers pour onto that fire, tbh

                • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Probably, but they raised the cost for us, so we should do the same to them. Maybe we would eventually reach a point when companies using that product decide that it’s not longer worth it to pay X amount of money for a game to be “protected” for only Y amount of days. I think that should be the goal. To raise the costs, to make DRM as impractical for them as possible.

      • zxkhngjh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Have you seen her SPECIAL MESSAGE that was attached to the crack of Hogwarts: Legacy? There’s an awful lot of hate there, too. What was the need to pointlessly insult an entire group of already marginalized people? Pointing out someone’s bigotry and disliking them for it is nowhere near as bad as spewing bigotry, but that might just be my opinion.

        • VampireHunterB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          there´s something hilarious about her going on a transphobic tantrum and talking about how she supports jk rowling while giving a out a harry potter game for free making sure that rowling receives less money for it since she still gets payed in royalties(yeah I know she´s rich but it´s the irony of the situation for me)

        • Sharkwellington@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          The yin yang duality of day/night and hot/cold is so hilarious to me every time. You’re the greatest mind ever but you don’t know about the existence of twilight or room temperature?

          • zxkhngjh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            You should start be reading about the Paradox of Tolerance, which pretty nicely describes why you shouldn’t be so accepting of bigotry.

            I still don’t see what warrants the hatred you and others spew on Empress, particularly when you do so because you deem awful the hate for a marginalized group.

            Why are you so eager to defend bigots? Do you really not understand the difference between hating someone for their beliefs they hold versus hating someone for who they are as a person?

            Although I will admit it's kind of funny you're making the exact same argument Empress was.

            “THE WOKE SYSTEM” of today runs with and “claims” that it mainly wants “fairness, justice, equality and total freedom”. But then … when someone with views against trans and tries to express themselves today, they are treated as GARBAGE and fired/banned from wherever they are, is a clear sign of huge “Contradiction”.

  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Empress is a neurotic narcissist who needs to be NUKED at every release and HARD MUTED, IGNORED, AND DEPLATFORMED by every sociopathic rant she makes.

    We should not be giving her attention by talking about her; she needs to be SHUNNED into OBSCURITY. Let her fucking philosophize in her own damn isolation. Her behavior is unacceptable by most social standards and her contributions to society are not so significant we can’t do without them.

  • rodneyck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    OMG, its like being at the point in your RPG game where you are tasked to retrieve the DRM-free game, but you know the price from the crazed troll is going to be your rogue’s head and all your gear, else more violence.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    As crazy as that makes Empress sound, I’m definitely willing to look past this kinda stuff because it’s best not to bite the hand that might feed you.

    Also, we definitely need more crackers (especially of the d€nuvo kind) to step up and train the next generation of crackers instead of just ranting online about their torrents being removed from popular sites.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I personally believe that, since piracy is already illegal in the developed world, and since I live in a politically divided first world country, that we don’t need to bring politics and stuff into this.

        Besides, we don’t have many better options when it comes to d€nuvo than to accept the people who crack games with modern variations of it. I especially don’t since I’m not smart enough to crack it and also since I go for pre-cracked games for the convenience of not having to apply the cracks myself.

          • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I’m just saying getting stuff from Empress is no worse than getting it from a corporation. She’s going to be equally crazy whether you download her cracks or not, at least she’s not exploiting child labor or destroying the environment in the process.

            • Bonskreeskreeskree@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Corporations aren’t going to fill their software with crypto mining malware and when exposed go torched earth trying to put the blame on their accusers.

              • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Exactly. I’d rather take the unhinged rants and malware than the destruction of the planet and perversion of human society, thank you very much

  • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    It was kind of funny the first few times, now I just kind of cringe at her whenever she has one of these meltdowns.