#I probably got a good few facts wrong or framed them in a misleading manner

[quinndae]

A Small Look Into 0xEmpress

Alright so I was a little bit bored so I did a dive into a figure I thought was... interesting, to say the least. If you know the name 0xEmpress, you probably already know what you’re in for, but for those that don’t:

CONTENT WARNING: A LOT OF TRANSPHOBIA/HOMOPHOBIA AND SLURS

OVERVIEW

Alright so recently Hogwarts Legacy was cracked by a pretty infamous figure in video game piracy, 0xEmpress (Empress for short).

Empress is a Russian games cracker (as in they crack video games, I'm not sure if there's a better operative for this, sorry) who accrued attention in the games piracy scene for their specialty; routinely bypassing Denuvo DRM. A feat which no one had been capable of doing until, or since, Empress.

A DRM (Short for Digital Rights Management) is something added to a piece of software to prevent or restrict unauthorized redistribution. This is usually in pieces of code which check digital certificates which, if not present, will prevent the software from operating.

DRM is known for being annoying, even to players who play games legitimately. To pirates, though, it is the major obstacle they need to overcome when cracking a game. And with how often DRMs are updated, this makes the challenge an active battle between the creator and the pirate.

Cracking is simply the act of making the game not limited by this DRM and putting it into a state which allows it to be pirated and distributed.

Empress is known amongst video game pirates specifically for her ability to bypass Denuvo.

Denuvo Anti-Tamper is a DRM developed by Denuvo Software Solutions and is notoriously the toughest DRM to bypass for most pirates. 

This is due to the methods Denuvo used, being “integrated into the games code” and “assigning a unique authentication token to each copy of the game” according to Empress. That, coupled with just how frequent Denuvo updated made any attempt at bypassing the DRM hopeless.

Very few had cracked Denuvo games, and none did so frequently. Until Empress.

Every game she cracks uses Denuvo. Her refusal to share her methods also means she practically owns the market when it comes to cracking those games.

Other than being free copies of otherwise expensive games, Empress’ cracks of Denuvo games have been reported to actually speed up the performance, as the DRM seems to be rather CPU intensive on games it is installed on. 

Her ability to crack impossible DRM quickly and efficiently has given Empress a reputation as a one-of-a-kind legend in video game piracy circles.

So Empress is, in short, incredibly good at cracking games. She's gotten past the worst of the worst when it comes to DRM and publishes her cracks online for the masses.

Except, like many of history's greats, Empress is fucking insane.

NFOS

Within a lot of pirated games are included specific types of files, .nfo files. NFO, short for info, is a type of text file created by a videogame cracker which contains information about the game and the specific pirated copy, such as language changing options.

Like many text-only formats, the users of NFO files have gotten creative, drawing elaborate ascii art within the files as a way to distinguish themselves. Empress is no different.

Empress' NFOs include her name in giant bold letters, held up by pillars which stretch the entire length of the file. Additionally, she includes boxes of text with a distinguishing calling card.

--EXPRESSES--

ALL HATE & INSULTS

--DEPRESSES--

ALL DENUVO SCUM

--IMPRESSES--

ALL PIRATES ACROSS THE SEA

This is followed by a mention of the game's title, the type of DRM the game had/has (For example, Denuvo v10, Steam, Epic, VMProtect), as well as the emulator a game may be using.

Below the info are Empress' donation links to various cryptocurrency wallets, such as BTC, ETH, and Monero. These donations are said to "fund further DRM research and cover living costs."

Donators of $500 or more are able to request any game they want a crack for, so long as it has Denuvo DRM.

Further are contact links, including e-mail (notably protonmail), qTox (a secure instant messaging service), as well as her subreddit link.

The penultimate section of the NFO are the ~Release Notes~ and ~Install Notes~, which detail methods for installing the game onto a machine, as well as what DLC or edition of the game is included.

The final section, however, is the reason her NFOs are special. Aptly titled ~Special Notes~, this section is for any personal messages Empress wishes to send out to readers.

~SPECIAL NOTES~

Empress uses this ~Special Notes~ section to communicate with her audience, wax philosophical, and generally ramble to a non-specific audience. Often, these are related to videogame drama and events.

This section of the NFO is where Empress will break formality, switching to her signature typing style. Her RANDOM capitalization of WORDS she uses for either EMPHASIS or just GENERAL SHOUTING, her fondness of profanity, the creativity in her insults, ending a large amount of her statements with (middle finger), "quotations, both for emphasis and to actually quote general statements."

This typing style truly makes the ~SPECIAL NOTES~ stand out, especially since a lot of her rambles are utter nonsense.

It is comprehensible, yes. It has a point it is trying to make, yes. It is not as if she is being silly for the sake of it. She is unhinged.

Many of the NFOs are, to put it lightly, mean. Within a good amount of her NFOs, she includes messages to the companies who created the games, as well as Denuvo.

For example, the following was included within the Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak crack.

"Message to capcom:

How dare you charge $430 for 98% worthless DLC

How dare you even charge to make edit to the

main character in the game?

FUCK YOU A THOUSAND TIMES YOU GREEDY FUCEKRS.

It didn't really help paying like little SLUTS

to denuvo to protect your DLCs, did it?...

It also didn't help that you made retarded DRM

of your own on top either, did it?...

Next time, please don't waste more of your

money and don't shame yourselves - focus on the

actual game instead, FAGGOTS.

Message to denuvo:

With this release, I have just proven that I 

CAN and I WILL destroy your pathetic protection 

no matter what you do. And now you can kindly 

go fuck yourselves because your "Anti-Tamper" 

has been TAMPERED with by me once again, and 

is completely destroyed, LOSERS (middle finger)."

You may have noticed how she ended the statement to CAPCOM. Empress seems to hold many of the same opinions as the far-right gamergate crowd (i.e TheQuartering, Rags, etc.), bashing newer games with representation as "gay garbage".

"Games like: 'Gays Gone, Spidershit, Gay of War" get very high scores. Every fucking gay garbage comes out and you all love it..."

Except, seemingly, female representation. In her Dying Light 2 NFO, she states:

"STOP COMPARING 'SR' to 'GTA' you 

DUMB PIECES OF SHIT. And I am 

already aware of the "pre-hate" on 

GTA 6, just cause people learnt it 

will feature a 'female' character. 

What the HELL is WRONG with that, 

you sexist motherfuckers?"

Additionally, within the NFO for Dying Light 2, she praises the Saints Row reboot, stating it "is the BEST saints row game made." Saints Row, of course, being a series known for featuring gay relationships.

Despite this, Empress claims to be "bi-sexual and fully lesbian." The following statement was also included in her NFO for Maneater:

"3-Yes, I think any game without a female protagonist to be either gay or garbage. And YES,

I fucking hate most female characters in games whom are skinny and skeleton figure.

Big 'FUCK YOU' to every developer who thinks a skinny female is beautiful."

From these details, it can be inferred that Empress is a person with complicated and downright bizarre political views.

Though, this does not compare to her stance on trans people. A stance which has garnered her a bit of attention as of late.

FITGIRL

Fitgirl is a Russian-born repacker, responsible for repacking and distributing a large number of pirated games.

Repacking is the act of taking a game's files and compressing them down into something smaller, while still playing as normal. Repacking can be done to legitimate versions of games, however within the pirating community repacking is an essential practice as it reduces file sizes of cracked games for easy internet transfer.

So while repackers are distributors and do work with cracked games, they are not the ones to crack the game. This is a common misconception, many people believing Fitgirl is the one to crack the games. This results in a lot of people thinking Fitgirl is behind the cracks, thanking her specifically for the game.

Empress does not enjoy this fact. At one point during 2021, Empress got into a feud with Fitgirl. She intentionally limited the download rate of her crack to 200kb/s in an attempt to stop Fitgirl and other repackers from accessing it.

This was under the belief that repackers "steal the spotlight" from her work. After this, Fitgirl made a statement saying she would not be repacking any more Empress cracks.

The drama did not end here.

In 2023, the developer build of Atomic Heart was leaked, a developer build which used Denuvo as its DRM. As such, Fitgirl made a statement that, since Empress is the only person who knows how to crack Denuvo, she would not be repacking the build.

In a post on the r/piratedgames subreddit, a user posted a screenshot of Fitgirl's statement and asked why "Fitgirl is butthurt." A comment on this post, notably with more upvotes than the original post, stated:

R-Slur warning:

"FG (Fitgirl) is not ,butthurt'

Empress was the one who got butthurt and went full retard."

Empress, in a move which probably didn't help to clear the "butthurt" label, responded to this comment in a 436 word reddit post on her subreddit r/EMPRESSEVOLUTION. The full post is quite long but contains quite a few accusations against Fitgirl, as well as the typical flavorings of Empress ranting. Notably, Empress does not capitalize the start of her sentences like in her NFOs.

To summarize, Empress claims:

Fitgirl was pretending to have actually cracked the games that Empress herself had done as a way to boost her image.

That Fitgirl is actually a man, along with some transphobic language around that (Sissy and faggot, specifically). (This claim is difficult to prove as no proof was given. Fitgirl uses a picture of a french actress to represent herself online. As I cannot validate the claim, I will stick to she/her pronouns for fitgirl.)

Fitgirl was locking any post about Empress. (I am assuming she meant reddit posts on r/piratedgames, but Fitgirl does not seem to be a moderator so it's unclear if that is what she meant)

Fitgirl was begging for money, including a screenshot of Fitgirl's donation page. (A notably hypocritical statement)

The second point is particularly important because it leads into-

RECENT EVENTS

Her latest crack, Hogwarts Legacy, is a divisive game. To say even that much would be an understatement. It also includes Denuvo DRM, which made Empress the only one with a method of cracking it. Coupled with the fact that it is a popular triple-A release, there was no doubt it would be Empress' next target.

Less than two weeks after the game's official release, Empress announced the game had been cracked. The crack, which was quickly distributed across the internet, contained another one of Empress' rants in its NFO.

This ~SPECIAL MESSAGE~, which is 549 words long, details Empress' support of JK Rowling and virulent hatred of trans/WOKE people, though is surprisingly more legible than most of her other rants. This is not to say that the words she said had any actual weight to them.

The rant contains all the workings of an Empress NFO. Unhinged, half-baked philosophy wrapped with a bow of profanity. The only thing lacking compared to most of her other NFOs is a particular anti-corporate sentiment. Empress even tried her hand at poetry towards the end. It isn't good.

Not long before the Hogwarts Legacy crack was released, Empress made a certain post to Reddit, seemingly trying to “call out” trans people as well as a generalized leftist sentiment. The whole thing is full of logical fallacies and blatant bigotry. Unsurprisingly for Reddit, this had consequences. If you have paused reading this at any point to look up r/EmpressEvolution, you may have noticed a little notice.

"r/EmpressEvolution has been banned from Reddit.

This community was banned for repeatedly violating Reddit's Moderator Code of Conduct."

Her reddit account, unsurprisingly, got the same treatment.

In what I assume was a revised version of the NFO for the latest update of Hogwarts Legacy (And thus the latest crack of the game), she added:

"To reddit admins: hey, keep collecting TRASH and

don't be ashamed whenever you drop yours pants in

a BACKLASH.

To reddit slaves: suck it harder bitches, you are

not doing good ENOUGH. Keep on it and do try to

forget the CUFF."

DENOUEMENT

Honestly, I can't think of a great way to conclude this. It's like stopping a story half-way through, since Empress seems to be going strong, as well as how much I glossed over in just trying to get this much out.

There were a lot of details I could have gone into, such as,

Empress' Dark Souls 2 fever dream which got her into cracking games.

Empress' self-proclaimed cult.

Her weird obsession with calling DRM a "Cancer" (which might relate back to her Dark Souls 2 fever dream)

Whoever the fuck Mr_Goldberg is.

The true extent of Empress' weird philosophy. I glazed over it a lot but she's really into pretending to be a philosopher.

Her hatred for Stray. Like she really fucking hates that game.

Her "cult" having a $10k entry fee (I think it's a bit weird in how she words it)

People think she's actually a guy a lot and that infuriates her.

Empress got arrested at some point??? and she blamed Fitgirl??? This one is pretty hard to verify for a number of reasons.

The Sergiu situation

She might possibly include viruses and mining code in her cracks? Difficult to verify as I only saw it from a single source.

Is Empress real? Is this a persona she puts on to attract a cult of personality so people notice her more? Or is this truly how she is, a one-of-a-kind video game piracy expert with incredibly strange worldviews? Either way, she's become an icon, not just because of her skill, but also due to her controversy and unordinary but enrapturing personality.

I would like to say that, while I did write all 2655 words of this document, I do not in any way support Empress. I mean don't get me wrong, piracy is ballin'. But Empress as a person is just... gross. Her views and ideologies would make even some alt-right pundits look meek. However, I think you can admire a person for being strange and bizarre, as well as captivating, while also acknowledging their many, many flaws.

Links (CONTENT WARNING: SLURS, TRANSPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA):

A github of all of Empress' NFOs.

https://model-map.github.io/EmpressNfo/

A timeline on the CrackWatch subreddit of Empress. I actually didn't find this until I finished writing this (and tbh cannot be bothered to verify most of the stuff I've said through it) but if you want to do more reading, here it is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/lqibnh/empress_there_and_back_again/

Fitgirl's statement about Empress.

https://fitgirl-repacks.site/my-statement-about-empress/

The post/comment of Empress and Fitgirl being called butthurt.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PiratedGames/comments/1171usf/comment/j99oueq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Empress' response to being called butthurt.

https://www.unddit.com/r/EmpressEvolution/comments/117e8tz/important_message_to_rpiratedgames_moderators/

The post allegedly by Empress claiming to have been arrested. Again, this is pretty unverifiable.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/lqs91b/finally_caught_by_the_police_goodjob_everyone/

List of a bunch of recently archived Empress activity. https://justpaste.it/8c1w0

Same thing as above. https://pastebin.com/uhF3JiWu

The reddit post she made that got her banned off the site.

https://www.unddit.com/r/EmpressEvolution/comments/117ywff/the_top_tier_contradiction_hypocrisy_of_the_human/ https://archive.vn/856Do

Wiki page for Denuvo, featuring a little mention of our problematic fave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo

Wired article about Empress.

https://www.wired.com/story/empress-drm-cracking-denuvo-video-game-piracy/