[Reason077]

"The “Razor1911” crack (1991)

Finally, we get to the only crack that actually works properly. Congratulations to Razor1911 for being the only ones not fooled by the game’s trickery."

No surprise here! I was never all that deep in the Warez scene, but every nerdy kid in the early 1990s knew that Razor 1911 were the most l33t game crackers around. It was kind of a mark of quality on any game. If Razor 1911 released it you knew that not only was it cracked competently, it was probably a good game too!

[GuB-42]

And Razor1911 is still active! Both on the demoscene and on the warez scene.

[miek]

Amazing. Their leader was busted a long time ago so I thought they were toast. Razor, Class, Fairlight, and some others hold a special place in my heart. (I know nothing of their politics)

[RIMR]

To be fair, a lot of those groups aren't any of the same people today.

Fairlight was pretty problematic back in the 90's politically, they even did a fairly controversial nazi-themed demo. Definitely not the vibe they give off today.

[miek]

Article for reference [0]. It's amazing how far people's baggage will follow them (though the impact here is probably minimal). Wild that a former Fairlight member became San Diego Republican Party Chairman.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240406015231/https://www.latim...

[xorcist]

It wasn't always that clear who the members were. Demos and cracks across several machine types were handled by separate people who didn't always know each other.

Especially Fairlight was a pretty loose group which many people were sort of affiliated with, and sometimes would release stuff under that name, and nobody really knew if they were officially members or not. There was a bit of drama as everyone didn't always get along.

[throwaway7894]

Sorry for the lazy question, but would you be able to share some links or pointers to where these guys are active? I've been out of the loop for a few decades but enjoyed the scene when I was a teenager.

[GuB-42]

On the demo part: https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=158

One the crack side, I don't really follow much but you can find the occasional release, for example Red Dead Redemption.

[crtasm]

https://predb.me/?group=razor1911 more active than I imagined, though it looks like most of them are basic steam DRM so no cracking work needed

[anal_reactor]

Nowadays though it's just Empress and everyone else, because Empress is the only one who cares enough to crack Denuvo, but only for selected games, and nothing recently.