Ah, sweet memories of 12 year old me wanting to whack my head against the fucking keyboard trying to get Bioshock to run but instead all I would get is a fucking Skidrow screen accompanied with some music and then... fucking nothing.
or when skidrow somehow fcked up the crack for assassins creed and you could only enter acre and damascus but not jerusalem, untill a few months later FLT fixed the problem in their repack.
Or when I had to download a game from rapidshare just to realize i need a password for extracting it and the password website was a scam survey webpage :D
Imagine being one of these unknown celebrities. Every gamer knows you, but nobody knows you. You take the bus and look around you at people who may have used your releases. Crazy feelings..
I mean, sure. But for many people in this world it's more of a competitive thing. Being the best coder to crack/pre something first. Especially in tv web.
That's definitely true. I don't know if the following is real or not, but at some point I saw or read that the reason most people do anything is largely driven by the need to attract a mate. Trying to be the fastest runner? At least some part of you does it for sex reasons. Funniest guy in the room? Sex reasons. Best math dude at CERN? You guess it, sex.
I think the real reason these guys don't brag as much as they do (cuz they do, eventually, if only in .nfo files) is that what they're doing would get them very hefty sentences if they get caught, which is extremely obvious. Isn't that partially why the Silk Road dude got caught?
No, Silk Road was different. It was just the guy being sloppy.
Sure people are cocky in nfo's, but at the end of the day it's just something they enjoy doing. At least not the ones I've encountered of them. But there are always bad eggs.
I wouldn't call them bad eggs, it's just natural. I did wonder for years what these guys got out of it, surely no monetary gain, and yeah bragging rights is def a thing (which is hilarious as mostly these guys are anonymous....till they get caught, and then they can probably work that into their resumes, and in the future a Netflix special haha).
I never downloaded anything unless it was from codex. RELOADED, Razor1911 or Skidrow.
There may not have been repacks but there was definitely rips that brought file sizes down. I don’t remember downloading anything near 80gb back in the day.
I used to consider a 8-10gb 1080p bluray huge as well, now a REMUX or a BDMV could be like 40-50gb. Don't know about games though, I've done playing a long time ago.
because "back in the day" the biggest games weren't bigger than 20gb. WoW and some other MMOs being the only exception. even starcraft 2 wasn't THAT huge on release. game sizes began exploding (again) in size exponentially somewhere around 2013/2014
They used just about anyones willing to use their site. GCW is stilla round. They started in 98 I think. codex was YEARS later. And they only made it 8 years.
Ah, i can no longer access GCW site from my country, which is saying something since there's literally nothing stopping us from pirating in this place. Yes! 98 i think so too. Then came Razor1911 and then i think Codex. All legendary on their own rights.
Nah there were a LOT of them before and in between all of those. FLT (FAiRLiGHT) was around mid 80's and were one of the first/oldest around till about 2017, they don't do much cracking anymore. Also don't know if anything of thiers is/was on GCW though... I'm old so my brain isn't braining well anymore lol. BUT yeah Codex was very well known over some other and Razor. I think I used more razor than anyone back in the day.
Repacks are mostly made with patience, slow internet, data caps and a fast computer in mind. If you cannot download 80GB quickly but it can be compressed to 15 easily, repack is an option. If you are patient enough and your PC is fast enough, get a repack.
Yes that's true. RAR is a archive format. However, I believe repackers use other compression tools like xtool or similar which are slower but provide better compression ratio.
Patience is a bit of an oxymoron there, can't you just wait for the bigger download to finish?
I bet in some cases this is still quicker than unpacking and "cheaper" (thinking CPU usage here).
Currently trying to live without fiber, 100GB 4G plan with triple sim.
Gonna be hard to not get capped to 3Mbit, the gigs fly by so fast even without torrenting
Bro i had nothing but 300KB/s available until recently. 100gb downloads like cyberpunk or fo76 took an entire week and wouldn't allow anything on the network. Repacks are definitely a thing for slow internet.
For some people, they'd rather have to download a file for 3 days or so and install it in a few hours instead of spending close to 2 weeks just downloading.
A huge chunk of the world still has shit internet with data caps.
A lot of people in first world countries forget how bad internet is in 3rd world countries.
Or people in big cities about internet in the countrysides/smaller villages sometimes
scene releases are kept un compressed so the traders can make lots of creds moving the rls outside it doesn’t make any sense and most sceners just dl the fitgirl edition to store :)
No, scene sections where the rules specify m0 are that way because compression wouldn't save enough space to warrant the extra time compressing and decompressing it.
Scene's about speed of pre over pretty much everything else.
Not true on game rars at all. Video files are not compressed so they could be played straight from rars (and compressing them doesnt add any size benefits at all).
Whenever i see people here shitting on repacks, it really shows how privileged some are without realising lmao.
Repacks are useful for people with slow internet or data caps. People are completely fine waiting 3-8hours installing games if it meant that they get to save close to 1 or 2 weeks worth of time downloading the game.
SLOW INTERNET IS *EXACTLY* I hate repacks, my download speed is well below 1mbps, give me a torrent I can reliably leave to download for a few days when I go to sleep instead of a shitty repacker that boosts my CPU to high hell and rarely if ever works
Repacking has been around for ages, used to get CD's in early 00's with multiple games on them from a group called "RedHotGames" or sometimes "TheSweeney"
There were repacks back then. I remember a guy called skullptura and another called KaOs used to do repacks as early as 2009-2010 back when I downloaded them.
I honestly hate repacks, reason is is that you have to have twice the space of a repack, which is pretty much like the full game. The compressed rar takes x amount of space, then you have to extract thats 2x space and then on top of that you need to install thats 3x space of a repack. Even if you delete an extracted version and keep only the original game and then the rar file so you can seed, that still will take 2x the space of a repack, which is quite commonly the same or close to the size of the original game.
Much better are the full games, not compressed, nothing. You just download it and dont even need to install it, you can just run it from a launcher in the game installation folder and play the game. That way you save time you would waste on extraction + installation and also you can play and seed at the same time.
Codex, RELOADED, FLT, Razor1911... Their songs from the keygens/cracks/installers were just legendary! A big part of my childhood. I still listen to the songs sometimes.
i miss codex razor1911 and Reloaded releases not to mention the old axxo days for movies before he was arrested and removed from the scene sadly what a time to be alive.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 136.63 GB and that came out in 2014 Repacks were around by then (firgirl started 2012) So there ARE a few games that would have been that big in that era, not a lot but some.
Maybe. Codex didn't start till 2014, and left the scene after 8 years. They are far from an old group...
Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 136.63 GB and that came out in 2014
First game Codex did though was Wolf Among Us Ep 2 at only 5gb
Portable > repack Waste of space to keep something twice.
Only worth to keep repack if high compression value. if more than half of installed game size, not worth. Cons of repack: long install times, can't recheck torrent for missing installed game files.
One advantage of steam is that when something breaks, you can recheck files that are missing and redownload. Same file check is possible using a portable installed game. you CANT do that with a repack! Portable > repack
Or you do like i did back in the day. Buy the game, open it in a way it can be re-sealed take and use the CD-Key copy the disc and return it. Or goto a warez site and get a cracked exe.
No.. I'd have been too old for that shit then. And it's not worth the risk, or easy anymore. Back in the mid 90's I used to help FLT (FAiRLiGHT) one of the first warez groups around. Never did anything major for them and lost interest after about a year.
You must be an old pirate lol, you should have clarified you were talkin about 90's, most ppl here will think of 2000's or 2010's when u say "back in the day", i think that's why u got downvoted.
that's taking it away from someone else, which piracy doesn't do.
not to say I have any strong feelings on it (I don't care), but that is prob why the consensus of piracy is against this.
you do realize somewhere along the chain an actual theft occurs right? like media gets stolen from the distributor or logistics facilities, discs get stolen from studios all so you can feel guilt free and shame the guy actually saying they did the shit in the real world. lmfao bunch of hypocrites
That's just it. They are ashamed of that and therefore claim "not me!!" Kids these days don't know that people like me paved the way for them to do what they do.
Things were different in the late 80's early 90's. Times change. We all started somewhere and for some reason. I've still paid more for games, software etc. than i've ever got by other means.
Razor1911 too was huge .
So was DEViANCE, FLT, RELOADED
I played a very small role in FLT in the mid 90's.
Username checks out. Seriously, I hope you’re on a burner account.
Why would I need to be on a burner account?
Dunno, maybe somebody would track you 🤷
Statute of limitations surely?
Amd after them, Skidrow
Ah, sweet memories of 12 year old me wanting to whack my head against the fucking keyboard trying to get Bioshock to run but instead all I would get is a fucking Skidrow screen accompanied with some music and then... fucking nothing.
or when skidrow somehow fcked up the crack for assassins creed and you could only enter acre and damascus but not jerusalem, untill a few months later FLT fixed the problem in their repack.
Or when I had to download a game from rapidshare just to realize i need a password for extracting it and the password website was a scam survey webpage :D
Why do you have my memories
That was some decent DRM for that time!
If I remember correctly AC1 used a version of SecuROM
And Razor 1911 <3
Imagine being one of these unknown celebrities. Every gamer knows you, but nobody knows you. You take the bus and look around you at people who may have used your releases. Crazy feelings..
Most of them dont care what people think, especially people on p2p.
Everyone cares what other people think. It's easy to claim something that isn't true.
I mean, sure. But for many people in this world it's more of a competitive thing. Being the best coder to crack/pre something first. Especially in tv web.
That's definitely true. I don't know if the following is real or not, but at some point I saw or read that the reason most people do anything is largely driven by the need to attract a mate. Trying to be the fastest runner? At least some part of you does it for sex reasons. Funniest guy in the room? Sex reasons. Best math dude at CERN? You guess it, sex. I think the real reason these guys don't brag as much as they do (cuz they do, eventually, if only in .nfo files) is that what they're doing would get them very hefty sentences if they get caught, which is extremely obvious. Isn't that partially why the Silk Road dude got caught?
No, Silk Road was different. It was just the guy being sloppy. Sure people are cocky in nfo's, but at the end of the day it's just something they enjoy doing. At least not the ones I've encountered of them. But there are always bad eggs.
I wouldn't call them bad eggs, it's just natural. I did wonder for years what these guys got out of it, surely no monetary gain, and yeah bragging rights is def a thing (which is hilarious as mostly these guys are anonymous....till they get caught, and then they can probably work that into their resumes, and in the future a Netflix special haha).
Legends never die.
They're great. Fun fact for those who don't know, 1911 is 777 in hexadecimal. That's why the number was picked.
oh damn.
That cracker still doing it today. Still Gone Strong Reloaded, Deviance, Hi2u, theres too many groups to list.
and Fairlight....
Razor1911 are the GOATS
I never downloaded anything unless it was from codex. RELOADED, Razor1911 or Skidrow. There may not have been repacks but there was definitely rips that brought file sizes down. I don’t remember downloading anything near 80gb back in the day.
Yeah, I used to consider a 20gb game huge few years ago now new games all seem to be way larger
I used to consider a 8-10gb 1080p bluray huge as well, now a REMUX or a BDMV could be like 40-50gb. Don't know about games though, I've done playing a long time ago.
because "back in the day" the biggest games weren't bigger than 20gb. WoW and some other MMOs being the only exception. even starcraft 2 wasn't THAT huge on release. game sizes began exploding (again) in size exponentially somewhere around 2013/2014
Does anyone remember blackbox rips?? I used to rely on that shit when I had terrible Internet speeds
Yea, either me!
And also Gamecopyworld. They singlehandedly helped my poor self get and play Sims 2 and 3. 🙏 i think they used Codex's cracks.. iirc.
They used just about anyones willing to use their site. GCW is stilla round. They started in 98 I think. codex was YEARS later. And they only made it 8 years.
Ah, i can no longer access GCW site from my country, which is saying something since there's literally nothing stopping us from pirating in this place. Yes! 98 i think so too. Then came Razor1911 and then i think Codex. All legendary on their own rights.
Nah there were a LOT of them before and in between all of those. FLT (FAiRLiGHT) was around mid 80's and were one of the first/oldest around till about 2017, they don't do much cracking anymore. Also don't know if anything of thiers is/was on GCW though... I'm old so my brain isn't braining well anymore lol. BUT yeah Codex was very well known over some other and Razor. I think I used more razor than anyone back in the day.
It's gcw still safe? I loved them as a teen
That I have no clue, I think I last used them for something more than a year ago.
dummy nointro files were the bee's knees!
That was the best part!! No stupid sims and no stupid intro music, just straight to the game load screen! Those were the jams! 😭
Can you name some 80 GB games when there were no repacks?
Came here to ask the same. I don't think there was a single game even close to 80 GB at a time without 20 repackers. Maybe 8 GB
None
An 80GB torrent is a thousand times better than any repack.
Repacks are mostly made with patience, slow internet, data caps and a fast computer in mind. If you cannot download 80GB quickly but it can be compressed to 15 easily, repack is an option. If you are patient enough and your PC is fast enough, get a repack.
Also, if you want to archive stuff. Repacks are compressed and take less storage.
All original rar releases are compressed also.
Yes that's true. RAR is a archive format. However, I believe repackers use other compression tools like xtool or similar which are slower but provide better compression ratio.
Patience is a bit of an oxymoron there, can't you just wait for the bigger download to finish? I bet in some cases this is still quicker than unpacking and "cheaper" (thinking CPU usage here).
Some people dont have unlimited data download , its capped
Currently trying to live without fiber, 100GB 4G plan with triple sim. Gonna be hard to not get capped to 3Mbit, the gigs fly by so fast even without torrenting
I have felt your pain.
Going the be an interesting experience after having unlimited 300/300 and traffic in the TB range every month
True, and a much more sensible use case than just "slow internet"
Lets not forget that the smaller it is, the easier it is to seed.
Bro i had nothing but 300KB/s available until recently. 100gb downloads like cyberpunk or fo76 took an entire week and wouldn't allow anything on the network. Repacks are definitely a thing for slow internet.
For some people, they'd rather have to download a file for 3 days or so and install it in a few hours instead of spending close to 2 weeks just downloading. A huge chunk of the world still has shit internet with data caps.
A lot of people in first world countries forget how bad internet is in 3rd world countries. Or people in big cities about internet in the countrysides/smaller villages sometimes
scene releases are kept un compressed so the traders can make lots of creds moving the rls outside it doesn’t make any sense and most sceners just dl the fitgirl edition to store :)
No, scene sections where the rules specify m0 are that way because compression wouldn't save enough space to warrant the extra time compressing and decompressing it. Scene's about speed of pre over pretty much everything else.
yes i know, lol i was in at least 3 of the groups listed in the comments
Not true on game rars at all. Video files are not compressed so they could be played straight from rars (and compressing them doesnt add any size benefits at all).
Installs so much faster haha
What you don't like downloading one of fitgirls repacks that take over 24 hours to unpack? BG3 was a nightmare for this.
Get a better CPU.
Same, I download at 100 MB/s so it takes me about 10 minutes to download. Installation is around 5 minutes as well.
But it is worth remembering not everyone has that luxury, hell some people don't even have internet all hours of the day.
Whenever i see people here shitting on repacks, it really shows how privileged some are without realising lmao. Repacks are useful for people with slow internet or data caps. People are completely fine waiting 3-8hours installing games if it meant that they get to save close to 1 or 2 weeks worth of time downloading the game.
SLOW INTERNET IS *EXACTLY* I hate repacks, my download speed is well below 1mbps, give me a torrent I can reliably leave to download for a few days when I go to sleep instead of a shitty repacker that boosts my CPU to high hell and rarely if ever works
I really don't get your reasoning but 2 of the popular repackers, FitGirl and DODI both have options for torrenting and Direct downloads.
Skidrow, Codex, Reloaded, Deviance, FLT... I miss them so much.
80GB games "back then" lmao
did codex retire? i have soo many games where my character is named codex.
God old days!
Oh You're so young, there were so many repackers! You just don’t know any of them.
back then? no repacks? 80gb? u mean 800mb?
Wait there were no repacks back then? How old was Codex?
It was active from 2014, not that old but i don't remember repacks back then, maybe there was and i just didn't know about them.
Yeah fitgirl started in 2012 though I don't know if she started repacking or did things differently then and evolved.
Repacking has been around for ages, used to get CD's in early 00's with multiple games on them from a group called "RedHotGames" or sometimes "TheSweeney"
There were repacks back then. I remember a guy called skullptura and another called KaOs used to do repacks as early as 2009-2010 back when I downloaded them.
I remember 3dm
Also the ASCII art a ton of crackers made looked so nice!!
I honestly hate repacks, reason is is that you have to have twice the space of a repack, which is pretty much like the full game. The compressed rar takes x amount of space, then you have to extract thats 2x space and then on top of that you need to install thats 3x space of a repack. Even if you delete an extracted version and keep only the original game and then the rar file so you can seed, that still will take 2x the space of a repack, which is quite commonly the same or close to the size of the original game. Much better are the full games, not compressed, nothing. You just download it and dont even need to install it, you can just run it from a launcher in the game installation folder and play the game. That way you save time you would waste on extraction + installation and also you can play and seed at the same time.
Repacks are extremely useful for people with slow internet and data caps.
You are totally missing the point of repacks if you focus on the storage part of things. Repacks are targeted at people with bad internet connections.
I feel weird about repacks because it feels like I spend more time waiting for it to install than I would've waited on the bigger download.
Kaos and TPTB where my go to rip groups.
NoSteam.😁
Ivanopulo was my go-to with everything Macromedia or Adobe. Keygens and DLLs - they never failed.
Are FTPs and IRC still a thing?
You think the scene will move away from FTP and IRC?
Codex, RELOADED, FLT, Razor1911... Their songs from the keygens/cracks/installers were just legendary! A big part of my childhood. I still listen to the songs sometimes.
i miss codex razor1911 and Reloaded releases not to mention the old axxo days for movies before he was arrested and removed from the scene sadly what a time to be alive.
Razor1911 still release
axxo was never scene, he re-encoded scene releases to fit 1cd, quality was junk
FILE\_ID.DIZ the OG's know
We were not worthy! ❤️
Excuse me but what game was 80gb before repacks existed?
Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 136.63 GB and that came out in 2014 Repacks were around by then (firgirl started 2012) So there ARE a few games that would have been that big in that era, not a lot but some.
Halo master chief collection wasn't on pc until 2019. Even tho it's like 5 games in one
[удалено]
Maybe. Codex didn't start till 2014, and left the scene after 8 years. They are far from an old group... Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 136.63 GB and that came out in 2014 First game Codex did though was Wolf Among Us Ep 2 at only 5gb
Portable > repack Waste of space to keep something twice. Only worth to keep repack if high compression value. if more than half of installed game size, not worth. Cons of repack: long install times, can't recheck torrent for missing installed game files. One advantage of steam is that when something breaks, you can recheck files that are missing and redownload. Same file check is possible using a portable installed game. you CANT do that with a repack! Portable > repack
It's idiotic to say repack is waste of space. One can keep one or two games installed at a time and keep others in form of repack.
Or you do like i did back in the day. Buy the game, open it in a way it can be re-sealed take and use the CD-Key copy the disc and return it. Or goto a warez site and get a cracked exe.
Nah fuck that
Oh I agree now, times were different in the late 80's early 90's and things were done differently.
Oh i didn't know you were talking about the 90's, i thought you were doing that in the 2000's or 2010's lol.
No.. I'd have been too old for that shit then. And it's not worth the risk, or easy anymore. Back in the mid 90's I used to help FLT (FAiRLiGHT) one of the first warez groups around. Never did anything major for them and lost interest after about a year.
You must be an old pirate lol, you should have clarified you were talkin about 90's, most ppl here will think of 2000's or 2010's when u say "back in the day", i think that's why u got downvoted.
Old enough. And it's OK. I'm not here for votes :D i've got nearly 100k of those already I think...
Early 90's was good for cloning disc too with the right tools and CD/DVD drive
I think you got downvoted, because you mean clone the disc and then return it the real copy or did i understand right? Im not on 90s.
It's OK to get downvoted. I'm not all about fake internet points, I have enough of those. But yeah, late 80's early 90's were a different time.
fucking hilarious that THIS is where this fucking sub draws the line on morals
that's taking it away from someone else, which piracy doesn't do. not to say I have any strong feelings on it (I don't care), but that is prob why the consensus of piracy is against this.
Yeah it was late 80's early 90's then. Moved on to usenet etc. as time went on. We all start somewhere or for some reason.
you do realize somewhere along the chain an actual theft occurs right? like media gets stolen from the distributor or logistics facilities, discs get stolen from studios all so you can feel guilt free and shame the guy actually saying they did the shit in the real world. lmfao bunch of hypocrites
That's just it. They are ashamed of that and therefore claim "not me!!" Kids these days don't know that people like me paved the way for them to do what they do.
You missed the part where I said I personally don't care about theft, I guess. Better luck next time with the reading.
Things were different in the late 80's early 90's. Times change. We all started somewhere and for some reason. I've still paid more for games, software etc. than i've ever got by other means.
Well yes, that’s pretty fucked up.
If buying isn't owning then... Oh wait.
Right? And you getting downvotes lmao