This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/piracy by /u/flwwhtrbt on 2024-11-18 02:53:46+00:00.
As someone who no longer partakes in piracy, I might be a bit of a unique presence here on the Piracy sub.
I recently reached out to Masquerade (yes, as the title states), who is a big name in the gaming piracy scene. I wanted to ask him all about...well, everything:
- What makes him do what he does,
- How he sees the scene now and in the future
- Risks, stories and challenges
- Most importantly...what exactly is involved when someone repacks a game
He was lovely to acquiesce to my questions, and shared his replies. I'm just going to share them here with you, so you can (hopefully) get a better idea of the 'other side of the curtain', so to speak :)
Section 1: The Piracy Scene
Tell us all about you, who is ‘Masquerade’? How did you get started with gaming?
Masquerade is just an online personality. The character used in my profile picture is The Masked Gentleman from Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, a Nintendo 3DS game. I've always had a certain affection for masked characters. Behind the mask, I have a scientific career. I'm not very much of a gamer in my personal time. My introduction to gaming was when the Nintendo Wii was around, it wasn't much of an interest to me beforehand. My favourite games to play were the LEGO series by TTGames. They're a fun, light hearted collectable-fest. I like the franchises from which the games are based on (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) and because they're made for kids, they don't take a lot of thought to play. At the time, I wasn't really interested in your typical violet videogames like Call of Duty so I was put off from consoles like the XBOX or Playstation. Alongside the Wii, I also happened to be gifted a Nintendo DS with an R4i card loaded with some popular games at the time. This wasn't my first introduction to piracy, but this was the first introduction to my favourite game series - Professor Layton. Since these simple beginnings, I haved owned an original Playstation, DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U and XBOX 360.
How did you first get involved in the piracy scene, and what motivated you to join?
I like being able to contribute. Piracy has always been an interest of mine, emboldened by being able to provide free media for my friends and family. Very little of the work I do is for personal gain. I signed up to rin forum in 2018. My first major contribution and start to the Masquerade piracy career was with sharing files for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands in late 2019. This is the PC game in which I have the most hours, I enjoy it a lot. I've played over 500 hours of that game. It was rewarding to me to share the files for the game and I knew from there that I wanted to contribute more in future. I certainly never imagined I'd be where I am today. I'll always be thankful to the people I've met and who have helped me along the way.
How has the piracy scene evolved over the years, and where do you see it going?
I don't think I can comment too much on the history piracy scene since I only really started exploring this world beyond surface level in 2017. I think those who are interested in piracy history, especially around videogames, would LOVE the YouTube channel ModernVintageGamer. I cannot recommend this channel enough. The content is all incredibly well researched and presented in such an intriguing way. Some of my favourite videos are detailing anti-piracy measures from early games consoles.
As for where I see the piracy going, I want people to strive to learn some coding skills, even just the basics, and learn to tackle little things like custom triggers. Start off small and work your way up.
What challenges do piracy groups face today that they didn’t face a decade ago?
I think the current state of the DRM scene explains a lot. 10 years ago we saw the first ever game protected with Denuvo, FIFA 15, which was humiliated by Chinese P2P groups and CPY. The warez scene is pretty much the same today as it has always been. Supply, crack, pack and release. The p2p scene perhaps suffers from pressure of demand to share new games. As someone who shares a large amount of games, in the past I have certainly felt a lot of pressure to release more new games. 10 years ago there was no Discord and reddit communities were considerably smaller so the lines between being "in" on the piracy scene and not were a lot less blurred than they are today. One of the difficulties is just how large the game piracy audience is and the challenge this brings is everyone will have various levels of understanding of what is "correct" and incorrect. An example of this is a semi viral tweet attempting to explain Denuvo cracks () which is incorrect on so many levels.
Do you think piracy has had any positive impacts on the gaming industry?
Yes, look no further than Danger Gazers and Repella Fella. Posting pirated versions of their own games worked out really well for both developers. I don't think developers should target pirates in particular, but I do think they should see us as people and understand why we do what we do and reap the benefits of this approach. Start off by getting rid of DRM that affects the real customers too.
How do you balance your love for games with the legal risks of piracy?
I don't love games that much. I have a small collection of games that I do absolutely love. I have taken relevant measures to ensure my security online.
Have you had any memorable experiences with any repackers, developers or other members in the ‘scene’ you might like sharing?
I'd prefer to keep this one to myself.
Section 2: The Repack Scene
What inspired you to join KaOs, and how did the group come together?
KaOs Krew is one of the oldest repack groups in the business along with the likes of Kapital Sin. When I first started repacking, I went solo. I didn't touch torrents much, all of my files were shared via Google Drive. In May/June 2022, Google took action against GDrive abuse and took down a lot of the exploits I was using to store an insane amount of data. One afternoon, I opened my account to learn that I had lost about 17TB of backed up repacks over two Google Drives. Strangely, this is not the sucker punch of a loss it sounds like. I don't feel strongly attached to the repacks, more the work and skills learned whilst making them. After this, I faced a big issue. I had my own website which had no alive links so I'd have to start again, or I could ask to join an existing repacking group and release under a new name. This would liberate me from having an empty catalogue and being swamped with upload requests I could never fill. At the time, my upload speed was still 2mb/s so taking to upload the 7TB I have backed up locally would be a futile task. I had actually been offered a place in KaOs Krew multiple times by KiNG since I had started repacking but the data loss pushed me to join. I don't know much about the origins of the KaOs Krew. I am happy knowing that the group has a clean history and the name is well known amongst those of us who have been in this scene for a long time. KaOs has outlived many others who have came and gone over the years, perhaps even myself one day.
What’s the most challenging part of creating a quality repack?
The main compression algorithms all repackers used have not really changed since 30th December 2018 when the final version of lolz compressor released. Instead, the quality aspect from the release comes from being able to reverse compression methods and rip game data from archives to allow for selective download options. By far the most challenging aspects of repacking for me is when I face a difficult compression algorithm or encryption scheme that I don't have sufficient knowledge to deal with. I have made friends with talented people who can reverse engineer some code and data formats but sometimes achieving perfection is outside of my current knowledge. I hope to learn more about dealing with complicated formats in the future. A lot of Japanese developers have started using encryption in Unity games. Japanese developers love encryption - I wish they would stop already.
Sometimes you will also get seemingly random decompression failures - ancient algorithms can just be a little buggy here and there.
How do you decide which games to focus on when repacking?
I mainly follow the upcoming SteamDB upcoming list. I typically avoid rubbish asset flip games. I like to repack games with a charming art style regardless...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1gtuxjn/an_interview_with_masquerade_of_kaos_krew/
