Quake - The 1996 Beta scandal | MVG 

So rare to see early 90s scene readMe files that I've never seen before

Definitely do more. Blood and it’s early leak of game and source via a computer repair store coke to mind

Yes this is good content please do more

@@raynorpat Yeah, Blood's awesome

I kinda dig it. I'm pretty interested in.

Jason Scott of Internet Archive fame has made a few, definitely recommend watching them!

@@yukisaitou5004 I guess you missed out warez scene in 1980's?

@@V3ntilator ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-50WWFEBsgfk.html

Proper documentaries might be a bit tough given that the subject matter is illegal, and the subjects you'd really like to interview have committed crimes, some of which are within the statue of limitations, but Overlord Gaming has a few videos that give an overview of scene dynamics.

I remember a dude I know taking about 2 days to download a game on CD over dialup… warez newsgroups we’re the bomb.

Totally agree! Let the steak soak in wine!

1000%

I care more about the creative Demoscene than stupid illegal software piracy.

@@Foebane72 Well, one subject is much more "taboo" and even nostalgic for many. How much nostalgia do people have for funny demo-programs when in many childhoods the knowledge about no-cd cracks and so on was the hot stuff? When i became a gamer, i wasn't interested in what you could push the hardware to do... i was interested in games. And i'm leaning out the window here, but i'm sure i'm not the only one...

@@chrisakaschulbus4903 LOL at taboo and nostalgia, even if you cared more about games that doesn't mean everybody did and even pure gamers didn't give shit about who cracked what, cause AS YOU SAID you care about games only, not the crack scene, games weren't made by crack scene! Demoscene has much bigger legacy and true values, it is being added by Unesco as cultural heritage if you don't know. It has huge influence on digital art and future of gaming, probably majority of famous games were created by people from old demoscene. Crack scene biggest acomplishment is distributing games to wide audience and giving birth to demoscene. Crack scene groups were just that, an illegal distributor.

Also applies to the group that was hacking major companies (some government ran ones too.) across multiple countries (mainly Brazil, UK and US,) in the early 2020s. You might best know this group for one of it's core members accessing Rockstar QA and proceeded to leak GTA VI.

Arrr mateys

yes sir

@@Dave-rd6sp that was wrong in the video dupes aren't stolen releases. DUPEs are releases from groups that does the same at the same time ... they are duplicates. The target is about who win the race. There are dozens of variations of a release ... the first working win the race, the others are dupe or iNTERNAL. Sounds obivous DUPE = duplicates ? May it be, that that is the cause of the short term?

@@GUN2kify Yep, but in most cases, it is referenced to the same work and wordings used, ways people code are like fingerprints or leave markers that you were there, as small 1 value changes could be the same but not all are like that.

@@wobblysauce Nope. Then the release must marked as STOLEN via the preDB. That is a slap and can causes bans and other consequences.

Man I wish I was a part of this scene back in the day! I had no idea how cool it all was

My cousin was a part of one and I remember he downloaded 120gb of data in a month and I couldn't believe it. Every weekend he would visit me and bring a few burned CDs with all kinds of random stuff.

I remember becoming buddies with someone called "Mr. Donut" whom on a whim explained he enjoyed having a T3-connection for his company back in the day. Which back then was blazing fast. Suddenly he asked if I knew about "Rosevalley FXP", I said I knew what an FXP was but never heard of this board. "Well, I happen to be kind of a big shot on that board - hey, register here and here". Done so, told him. Suddenly I got promoted including a hidden promotion. I shouldn't "thank" nor "post", or he would have a bit of a problem. Suddenly the gates of warez-heaven opened up to me. Not even talking 0-days, but up 0-minutes, iirc. I saw people having positions in the upper-echelons from warez-groups, posting. I didn't believe what I was seeing! Still wasn't sure if it was one of "the" FXP-boards, but sweet jeez.. I saw releases on there that only came out days if not weeks later onto the public. The one thing I remember, fondly and funnily so, I would ask: "Mr.Donut, are you still playing moo-ing cow sounds in the adult playrooms on camfrog when you steal the microphone in chat?"

@@TheTekknician Wow, what a great story. I have probably had similar access to the good stuff in the past, but maybe not this good. I'm a later generation though. At most I have had access to a certain private torrent tracker most people never get invites to in their lives. I still have it, but I don't use it. (I don't give out invites either, nothing you'd want to get banned for either). It was fun while it lasted. Too many years wasted in front of the computer though. I needed a better life as that was too unhealthy.

Make some videos man

FOR REAL!

Big fan of your gameplay vids! didn't know you were in the scene, wow!!

@@HorrorUberAlles It was a long time ago :P Glad you enjoy the content! :D

Thank you, it was driving me nuts that I couldn't think of where I knew that from.

Yeah no mistaking that soundtrack. One of the most impressive demos back in the 486 days.

@@lsorense I am 100% I had it run on a 368DX40 with a (mono!) SoundBlaster. While the 468 had been out then, the previous chippy did well, too. Well, mostly. For some reason it was of all scenes the bouncing girl on a bear image that brought this CPU to its knees =)

@@fonkbadonk5370 Well I know I ran it on a 486 with a gravis ultrasound when it came out. It had no issue running it of course.

Thank you! That's what it was! It rang so many bells but I just couldn't put my finger on it! 🙏

LOL yeah I noticed that too, Imagine if that were still a thing today: "Fortnite- 0 points (kiddie game).

I was also pausing many times to read haha

I never understood though why they used the .nfo extension instead of just the regular .txt extension.

@@Davivd2 Fortnite was originally played by typical gamers, it only earned its reputation as being popular with kids later on. Since scene groups are all about early releases, they wouldn't have called it a "kiddie game" at the time.

Was a wild time out there. Good memories.

Ive always asked my self did i waste my life playing these games, or i did i do it right ? : /

@@blameusa7082 Any time you are enjoying yourself and not hurting anyone else, you win the game of life.

yeah I had that as well. I was disappointed it didn't have strife. Eventually I found out one of my friends had it and he sold it to me. So Strife was the first ID Tech powered game I purchased legally. Eventually I did buy all the others on steam.

it's thing like this that made me a PC gamer. I grew up really poor & our computer wasn't even that good. But when I couldn't rent a game, things like this kept me occupied.

Same here! Was going to ask for the same type of topic coverage! As a poor high schooler whose parents didn't like or support video games, the Quake Shareware disc was like handing out gold to me as a teenager. Almost the same as when MP3 encoder began to proliferate.

What a stupid move by Id Software 😂 did they think for a moment that it would be cracked?! Nope it didn't even cross their minds.

@@Fernando-Rodriguez they were doing fine, so I doubt they were that worried about it.

oh damn i totally forgot about uharc and the stripped rips. Good old times, MYTH were great.

@Man of the Rain i usually brows around csdb because thats where it started for me... On the Commodore. But i would love to dig down memory lane of the pc cracktros. Any suggestions? I stopped playing modern games years ago btw so all i want are the cracktros

@Man of the Rain Nah i'm not a kid anymore, i have enough money now to pay for the entertainment i'm consuming. Still, as a kid it was great to get a new release ASAP.

ARJ was a popular compression format at the time

@@lordanthrax2417 cracktros? There are vids on RU-vid, but there’s also the pouët / hornet archives going back to 1987 for actual DOS demoscene stuff. Get dosbox and go to town Amiga stuff… Don’t know, interest is kinda dying out

I loved ROTT. I used to deathmatch my GF during that time on that game. Looking back, I should have let her win a few rounds.

I loved the 90s! Zeus and I ruled the original supplier scene.

@@darkminax0174 The whole gaming industry was less toxic in the 90s.. Nowadays you can't purchase a game , you only get a license for it.. And if the company decides to shut down authentication servers, you can't play it anymore..

I know who you are talking about it's EMPRESS , quick note: she's P2P not group... She doesn't follow and any respect on that group .. specially Skidrow which have accused of stealing someone's method to crack the game , CODEX was only group who respects others group like Steampunk , CPY etc. Not empress she's greedy b.. but you should admire her talent who cracked red dead redemption 2 and updates Ubisoft Denuvo games...

@@tamoghnapal6619 these days, company use malware called Denuvo DRM who only hurt legal customer where pirates can enjoy the game After many months with fully patched and updated

@@royalkumar795 Yeah Ik she's P2P , but she's the only one still interested in cracking Denuvo and it seems like she doesn't even want to do so anymore..

And I can hear the music in my head just reading your post 😂

The most amazing one is GBAEmu....GBA emulator that release before GBA even out. I hope MVG will tell the tale next.

i was a trader and for a time a BBS sysop. we usually got contacts into the distribution systems and payed somebody to get us a copy easily. sometimes we hade somebody on the inside of the developer studio. mostly testers or QnA teams. fun times. what i miss most from that time was the copy parties. i got out when people where starting to sell backup tapes of there BBS and when blueboxing got harder and harder and the scene switch to calling cards/credit cards.

@@cyclonmaster isn't that the one that was made by Nintendo?

Closest I ever got to answering those same questions was making a friend who was a courier, gave me a little crash course in what they did but it still left some big questions and of course couriers were the end of a big chain of people. From memory he didn't have all the answers, the files mostly just appeared but I did get a little lesson in how distribution works and it did get me access to an FTP where all the latest stuff appeared - it was a server running in a university lab, universities at the time had the most reliable high speed internet connections... and students willing to hide a server.

Dude. Razor started in the 80's on C64 I think. I remember their cracks since my Amiga days (early 90's), and even then Razor 1911 was already a legendary, one of the most respected group on the scene.

Razor1911 released skyrim one day before the official release

THIS PLEASE!!!

You have great taste

@@Galahadfairlight love your work mate. You with scoopex now? I was a scener waay back.

@@KieranShort Yes, we've been busy porting ST games and cracking stuff that either wasn't done properly back in the day or wasn't done at all. Check out English Amiga Board ;)

@@poetryflynn3712 It's still interesting, though.

Yeah they did. Fairlight who are huge in the demoscene had an arm of the group the did cracking as did a few others. If you go to pouet.net there's actually an archive of cracktros from those groups.

The entire demo-scene started with people making cracktros, which had to both be flashier than anything the other groups were putting out, and also small enough to fit onto a disc alongside the cracked game. I'd be interested to know when the first demos were released separate from cracks, definitely pre-Amiga. Although I'll argue that the best demos were on the Amiga, as it was platform that rewarded programmers who really knew how to make it's hardware sing. I might be biased though ;)

BRO WHAT?!?!? Sumerian is a monster label! That's the same person?!?!?

@@livefreeprintguns yes

UnreaL ][

I think so ... much like that 'tklp' guy from this video, he's still boasting about it while running his 'successful' record label, apparently. - his connections somehow may have helped him along the way these last 23+ years.

So either his band was named after his old scene crew, or by incredible coincidence he fell in with some people who were already doing a band of that name. Either way it’s a great story.

Since you happen to know him personally, let me ask you this here: Do you suspect that he may have acted as a... *"fall guy"* in that scandal back in 1996? According to online sources, he was only 14 at the time... Yet he was *in charge of a cracking group* at THAT age ?? Honestly, sounds like the guys at id just wanted to find someone "guilty" in order to try to scare the sceners into getting the fuск away from their game... The fact that it's never really answered in this vid *HOW exactly he even GOT HIS HANDS on that BETA 3* -- -- and that id officially refuted his own connections with him seems to point exactly towards that idea... .

My original goal in studying Computer Science was to learn how to write a BBS. So much for that idea, huh? I now do web development, but it's not the same feeling.

"Dupe" is just short for "duplicate", which by definition means an exact copy. So, if you just copy someone else's release you're "duping".

​@@fonesrphunny7242 Yes, sure, but what if I get my hands on the same content that someone else has released, but I get it from a different source, and release that? Then I didn't copy the other release, but still my content is a duplicate of, as in 'identical to', the content of that other release. But does it count as a "dupe"? I mean there should be a difference between "you're late" and "you ripped someone else's work off". (I'm not a native speaker, so this may read more convoluted than intended. Sorry)

​@@TheChooseAName123 It's about the content (specifically the cracked files), not the source. If you download a cracked piece of software and share it elsewhere, that's just regular distribution. Hundreds of sites do this. If you modify anything to make it look like you cracked the game, that's a dupe.

@@fonesrphunny7242 ok, learned something, thanks

No,@@TheChooseAName123is absolutely correct. It’s a race between the competing groups, and only the first working release to reach the FTP distribution sites is deemed valid to the scene. Any attempts coming in later are considered duplicates of the first release, and thus “nuked”, aka disqualified. That’s all.

Same here...

tracker tunes are awesome

Well you could still do that with Q3 lol

bullshit