Fourth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

btw feel free to suggest/nominate post titles

Post about fandom! Or whatever! Whether it's a rave about some obscure series, or an essay dissecting every last reason why some internet-famous author should rethink their career, someone will probably read it at some point! We also just chat about life.

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

[Digital Piracy] The Rise of EMPRESS

This is an interesting preddit article chronicling the saga of EMPRESS, a well-known female game cracker who stirred up controversy recently by accepting donations for cracks. (Which is reasonable, but moids threw a fit anyway)

Article here (https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/rowk83/digital_piracy_the_rise_of_empress_how_one_woman/)

Note: regarding Empress and FitGirl, before the bad blood I found some comments from before the spat, love the mention of girl power: https://fitgirl-repacks.site/red-dead-redemption-2/

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

Lmfao, partway through, this is hilarious

> "this is a disgrace. shame on you"

qq moar, DIY then.

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

Finished! Thanks, nonny, fun read. First thoughts are that EMPRESS seems like a made up trolly character by someone with inside info who works at the games studios involved. The last bit makes me think they're from an Indian background and trying to obscure that to better protect their identity. Guess we'll never know. :P

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

Something interesting about that. I had the pleasure of lurking on Empress's private Telegram groupchat a few months back (morbid curiosity). Apart from her unusual philosophies, she is religious and mentioned Allah a few times. Judging by her mannerisms and typing quirks she's most likely not a native English speaker.

I'm fairly certain she's female, considering her visceral reaction to being called a TIM, multiple mentions of that in Telegram group chats, and this recent post: https://www.reddit.com/r/EmpressEvolution/comments/unh2qp/dear_from_software_i_have_fixed_your_elden_ring/

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

I still suspect a dev with some kind of pre-release access to the game images and a talent for creating a bizarre character, tbh (style reminds me of a few trolls I've seen), but I hope the internet legend sticks around and people continue to believe in her, and who knows! Maybe there really is a GC savant pirate with an unfortunate racist streak, making envious men seethe everywhere she goes, and decrypting things in her sleep. Stranger things have happened!

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

I have strong feelings about accepting/charging money for piracy, so I can see why people threw a fit about it. It's one of those things that get murky because most of the time the people complaining just want things for free, but there's ethical concerns like profiting off someone else's IP and money being involved making it more difficult and dangerous for everyone else.

I scanlate and we have a lot of issues with for-profit scanlation groups stealing other groups' work for ad revenue, rushing bad translations to intimidate other groups off popular (profitable) series, and generally starting ridiculous amounts of drama within the community. Big groups making hundreds or thousands a month off donations also attracted copyright holders who were previously more willing to let us fly under the radar, and now small non-profit groups have to deal with being DCMA'd or having our services terminated. On top of that, the people who do actual work in scanlation (i.e. translators, letterers) aren't getting a cent of the donations. It all goes to the group owner for 'costs' (read: lining their own pocket).

Doesn't entirely apply in this situation since the cracking scene is fairly different from the scanlation scene, but it's not just a man thing to have issues with accepting donations.

Re: Interesting Things

[(Anonymous)]

Those are definitely valid concerns. I do wonder if scanlations arose because of the lack of official translations being digitized? (for more obscure works) Personally, I'd choose the VIZ translation over a fan-made one every time, although I can see the appeal as a passion project.

IMO the same for-profit issues would affect the warez scene less so, considering that you need a very specific and deep set of skills to be able to crack DENUVO games. I'm relatively certain that a not-so-small part of the backlash against her also had undertones of sexism (assuming that she must be a man, your standard gamer misogyny, etc)

So I can't blame her for getting fed up with being one of the only people actually cracking Anti-cheat games and being no credit for it/being slammed online, to start asking for donations.