Hello scene members and fans of T H E (C)hallenge (O)f (R)everse (E)ngineering
CORE has broken the 10.000 releases barrier (over 6700 keymakers). We are very proud that we have achieved this goal and we would like to thank everyone who helped CORE on its way to one of the top positions in scene's hall of fame.
When we introduced a lot of internal standards to the scene no- one thought that a lot of CORE's intern rules would become later scene standard. Siteops called me crazy when I dropped all Couriers and encouraged a complete script-based release system. Core's X-Release system was born and our scripter has done an awesome job over the years by developing scene's best release system. It's probably the most complex release-system ever created. And look at today's groups - everyone is using pre- scripts on the sites which is today just a small part of our release system.
Even tho one may question the time we've wasted nights over nights by bringing the end-user software for free, I have to say that we had a lot of fun. And we received in our best times about several hundred emails per day from all over the world. In the last 2 years especially mails from countries like India, China, african states, south american states, etc. reached us! A lot of people thanked us for providing them keygenerators for free- registrations as they would have never been able to afford the license fees.When we messed a crack up, we always tried to fix it (at least in 99% of the cases).
We opened sub-divisions like COREUTiL for fun to annoy old-school "util" groups when they opened their mouth too wide. I remember the days when we raced PWA with the finals of Win98SE,Office 2000 and Windows 2k (all versions) - and we did win the race. PWA was totally suprised - even their intern was- hehe. Well, it was pure stress and I'm happy that these times are over for me.
We opened COREPDA to enhance our free-service onto the pda scene. Later other groups followed the groupnamePDA example.
All in all CORE just had about 2-3 bigger (but short) flame wars with other groups (usually when other groups did steal/rip our keygens), which is pretty low for that long time - probably because I've kept CORE always very silent & underground.
I guess no other group got more threats and flames from program- mers, BSA, SPA, etc. CORE was subject in several news magazine articles, but our members always stayed out of the public. And I guess no other group stopped more often cracking a specific product's future versions than we did - when an author asked us nicely. I won't enter now the discussion about what's wrong or right - a lot about cracking is wrong - a lot about cracking is right. It always depends on your point of view.
I would like to congratulate everyone involved into the process of developing the CORE idea.Our best times are over for sure - no need to deny that (we've lost a lot of people simply due normal development in people's lives), but the fact that we still exist functional as such a small group (low number of members) proves how perfect CORE got build up as an optimal scene group.
The warez/cracking scene is a place where you can have a lot of fun. But it's also a dirty hole where you always meet people that try to commercialise warez once they smell money. You also meet people with lot of other criminal energies that do really bad stuff besides warez/cracking/whatever you want to call it. So, try to be a normal guy beside your software-madness and don't shut your eyes - always accept reality and don't get lost in illusions about power. The scene loves to forget about its own past. But scene is like a circle - everything repeats after some time. There are just some very rare exceptions - and I think CORE is/was one of them.
One day we will simply disapear by closing down our factory. That day is not today nor tomorrow nor next week. But it will come sooner or later. I hope that you all enjoyed our work. Take care!