this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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It’s not that I don’t trust, but I want to understand. What is actually happening and how do these Repack thingies work?

And why are they called that 😂

Thanks in advance.

Edit: thanks so much for the replies all, I think I got it! :)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why don't the crackers just repackage it? Or is repackaging an art unto itself?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Crackers mostly post the cracks to IRC sites, cs.rin.ru, and private torrent sites. Repackers are the main way releases make it to the mainstream torrent sites.

Repacking isn't that complicated anymore, it's more about reputation. There was a time when games were big and internet speed was slow so saving every MB of size was important. Repackers would reencode video files and find other ways of dramatically reducing the file size. Nowadays they don't do a lot of that, but repackers are still important for casual pirates who just want to easily play pirated games and not worry about malware.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks. So would an appropriate anaolgy be that of a video game software developer vs a publisher, eg publisher takes care of all of the public fronting, advertising, being the 'name' etc etc while the devs (crackers) are the ones doing the actual work on the product?

[–] zsnell02 0 points 1 year ago

Late to the party here, but where are some of these IRC sites?