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The warez scene is so fascinating

T

theaffection

Member
Has anyone ever been involved with the warez scene?


It always seemed like such a cool underground thing. All those groups competing to release the latest movies, games, music, etc. all while avoiding attention from the mainstream & legal venues. There's probably a shit ton of drama and politics involved too



Major respect for these guys and gals. The warez scene appears to be one of the very few subcultures that has been kept hidden underground for the most past, especially in this day and age.

Are there any documentaries, stories, books, etc on this kind of stuff?
 
W

woodland

Member
Don't think you'll find many people appreciative of it here haha, but I used to know people that used it. The speed they got stuff out was pretty crazy back then.
 
C

Cosmo Clock 21

Banned
theaffection said:
They found something they're passionate about in this life. Do you know how hard that is? 😔


Also the underground aspect of it. It seems like a secret club and that part of it is cool
Click to expand...
I mean I guess I also respect mafioso and drug cartels to some degree, but not to the extent you seem to be implying
 
T

Transistor

Banned
theaffection said:
They found something they're passionate about in this life. Do you know how hard that is? 😔


Also the underground aspect of it. It seems like a secret club and that part of it is cool
Click to expand...

The KKK is an underground club who's passionate about what they do. Do you respect them?
 
M

mcfrank

Member
theaffection said:
They found something they're passionate about in this life. Do you know how hard that is? 😔


Also the underground aspect of it. It seems like a secret club and that part of it is cool
Click to expand...

Do you respect people who rob 7/11s because they are so passionate about it?
 
J

Jezan

Member
Even though there are rivalries, they know that they have to work together so their passion is not found and busted. Unlike many other industries where everyone is on each other's throats and they accomplish nothing.
 
S

SuperStiltzkin

Member
I used to think Warez was a pyramid scheme or something because there used to be a user who would shill and promote the shit out of it on their avatar and signature in the old gametrailer forums.

EDIT: Actually I'm thinking of Lockerz
 
S

sunofsam

Member
Having long learned the errors of my youth, I can well remember the IRC scene in the early 90s, and connecting to hidden folders on oblivious university professors FTP servers. The Golden years.
 
F

FSLink

Banned
I mean it is interesting with the drama and hackers trying to outdo each other to crack stuff, but...major respect? Uhhhh
 
S

Sidon

Member
c8f24354-2f54-11e0-8827-cc1607e15609.png


I had a friend who coded for the Fairlight demo group, but warez, no not really.

I do remember the C64 and Amiga copy parties though....we have those now too, but it's legal since we buy the cheap ass indie games and it's called a backlog now.
 
S

see5harp

Member
In most cases outside of like the pirating of audio software and plugins, I feel like a lot of these groups offer little to no value of time or effort. It costs hardly anything to subscribe to adobe suite these days, especially if you are a student. Spotify and Apple music make music piracy almost a complete waste of time. Services like gamefly exist that offer nearly all of a gamers needs or wants. People living in places like Asia already pay next to nothing for steam games. Why bother stealing them when you can't go online and play with your steam friends?
 
G

g11

Member
strafer said:
anyone remember Razor 1911?
Click to expand...

Oh hells yes.

Even though I had absolutely no idea who the people or were or why they hated each other, I always loved to look at the greetz section of nfos. It usually went something like "shout out to X crew, Y crew, J crew. And FUCK B crew. Your rips are garbage", etc. Internet beef is always hilarious.
 
T

tearsintherain

Member
Netflix and VOD > extracting a video file from 29 .R03 files, which sometimes extracts to a ZIP file.

The weirdest thing about the old school warez scene were the demos and musical whatevers groups would put out, they got wildly insane on stuff like the Amiga. The origins of EDM?
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
theaffection said:
Are there any documentaries, stories, books, etc on this kind of stuff?
Click to expand...

I hope there is. I hope one of them decides to write a book about the hard work and dedication of their work in the warez scene. I hope they put their soul into it and secretly hope to make it sell well.

So I can buy it day one and make it freely available online and see how those fucking asshats like it.

they will never write a book because they only have the creatively to take products they don't own and place them online in a system they didn't create
 
C

Corronchilejano

Member
During the wild west era of the internet it was awesome, but I can't look at piracy any longer with the same eyes.

Not actually related, since I believe they're different scenes now, people cracking intrusive DRM and updating obsoleted software to make it work without the original servers are still my heroes. Kudos.
 
F

Fularu

Banned
In my yourh I used to (back in the Atari ST/Amiga days) with groups like Skidrow, Paradox, Fairlight, Delight and so on. A lot of past crackers work in the industry now (wither in software security/protection or in application development).

It was fascinating (the bbs culture, which you can now find 1000000 fold in modern forums), people knew who to contact within each group and rules were made to (vastly) improve the quality of releases (and ultimately of products, often fixing the game/app in the process).

It has kind of changed though
 
R

rocketskates

Member
sunofsam said:
Having long learned the errors of my youth, I can well remember the IRC scene in the early 90s, and connecting to hidden folders on oblivious university professors FTP servers. The Golden years.
Click to expand...
Yeah. IRC and FTP servers, those were the good ol days. Back when nukes and dupes were serious things and .nfos contained drama.

RNS ftw.
 
A

AuthenticM

Member
kmax said:
I remember Napster and Kazaa as a kid.

Pretty much all I know about "the scene".
Click to expand...

Napster was first for me. I was around 14. Then Kazaa when Napster went legit. It didn't take long for Kazaa to turn to shit; every other file would contain a virus. So Limewire replaced it. Limewire never was quite as good as Kazaa. After that came torrents.

Still torrents today. I don't see anything replacing it, really. It feels like the final form of file sharing.
 
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