The games cracking group – CODEX – has called it quits, officially shutting down for good. This is truly the end of an era.
CODEX Cracking Group Officially Shuts Down!
The CODEX cracking group announced their retirement in the release notes of “The Sims 4 My Wedding Stories”.
It was not due to legal troubles (arrests) or internal conflict, but the team felt they had already achieved their goal.
A CODEX short story
CODEX was founded with one and only one goal in mind: “to give the dominating PC games group at the time, RELOADED, some serious competition.”
A highly motivated and hard-working group of veterans and rookies alike banded together and created a new name to achieve that goal. It was a fun and sometimes dirty ride with lots of give and take on both sides. Bud sadly, it did not last very long and RLD started to crumble and slowly fell apart, making the scene less interesting.
What was left when they finally surrendered and the dust settled?
The blade has been dull for a long time. Quality, tradition and pride was slowly fading to darkness.
Of course, there is a particular group that uses an old name without permission. From the first day they started releasing in the PC section, they have worked hard to shamelessly destroy the reputation of a once iconic group tag when they really should have closed down years ago after all the spectacular fuckups they are responsible for.
Since then there have only been people resurrecting and adopting old names from previously busted groups instead of creating something new and unique on their own. Starting from nothing to slowly build up a reputation for themselves through hard work was obvious too much of a hassle and recycling old identities to get a head start was their way to go.
Still, even with that, this did not lead to any serious competition with two traits we pride ourselves on– a strong continued effort and a good amount of quality output on more than just DRM-free games or simple Steam protections.
CODEX cracked a large variety of protections like Steam (Stub+API+CEG), Arxan, XboxLive, UWP, Denuvo, Origin, Play, Bethesda.net, Battle.net and custom protections on games like Grim Dawn, Street Fighter V, WWE2k20, Croteam games, BigAnt games, Minecraft Dungeons, and many more.
So now, years after reaching our initial goal, we feel that it is time to move on. We thank everyone who accompanied and supported us on our journey.
Have a good time… Bye from CODEX!
CODEX Ends 8-Year Run At The Top
Since they burst into the scene in 2014, CODEX has been at the forefront of cracking and removing game copy protections.
They were able to consistently crack even the strongest copy protections like Denuvo, and release major game titles soon after their launch.
That made them the bane of game developers and publishers, potentially costing them millions of dollars in revenue.
On the other hand, CODEX gave less fortunate people access to games they perhaps would not be able to afford, and a DRM-free copy to gamers who already paid for a particular game.
More than a few hardware reviewers also relied on the latest CODEX-cracked games to run benchmarks.
Perhaps their greatest effect was to convince at least some game developers to eschew paying for “strong” copy protections, and offer DRM-free games through platforms like GOG.
Warhorse Studios, for example, released Kingdom Come: Deliverance on Steam, only to have CODEX release a cracked copy within hours. But Warhorse quickly offered a DRM-free version on GOG.
In the end, Warhorse sold half a million copies of Kingdom Come: Deliverance within two days, and a million copies by the end of the week. By its first anniversary, two million copies were sold, even though a CODEX cracked copy existed on launch day.
Warhorse Studios director and co-founder, Daniel Vávra, even printed and put up a poster of the CODEX NFO of their cracked game.
Among posters with some classic old school games, we put this poster on a very special spot 😂 #KingdomCome #release #nfo #warez #codex pic.twitter.com/7HEUtq6RYQ
— Daniel Vávra ⚔ (@DanielVavra) January 8, 2020
Now that the CODEX crew has officially retired, new PC games cracking groups will inevitably come to the fore, possibly “taking over” their famous name.
But they will likely not be able to come close to their quality or prolificacy – CODEX released some 7,000 game titles in the past 8 years.
This is truly the end of an era in the scene.
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