3DM is a Chinese

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

piracy group A warez group is a tightly organised group of people involved in creating and/or distributing warez such as movies, music or software ("warez") in The Scene. There are different types of these groups in the Scene: ''release groups'' and ''courie ...

– a group of individuals specialized in cracking the

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted work ...

(DRM) applied to commercial PC video games. It was "one of the world's biggest" such groups in and around 2016, according to ''

Kotaku ''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ...

''. Their founder and leader is reported to be a woman using the pseudonym "" (). Unusual for piracy groups, 3DM's members have public profiles on the social network

Sina Weibo Sina Weibo (新浪微博) is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily ...

, and use a blog to inform the public about their activities.

History

3DM made gaming media headlines in January 2016 when (Phoenix) wrote that she anticipated that in two years no more cracked games would be available, attributing this shift to new DRM technology by

Denuvo Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Austrian software company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of Irdeto. The company also developed an anti-cheat counterpart. Hi ...

, then being adopted by many games publishers. The group also announced that it would quit cracking games for a year, and later claimed it had defeated Denuvo's technology. In 2017, Japanese game developer

Koei Tecmo is a Japanese video game, amusement and anime holding company created in 2009 by the merger of Koei and Tecmo. Koei Tecmo Holdings owns several companies, the biggest one of those being its flagship game developer and publisher Koei Tecmo Game ...

won a lawsuit against 3DM in a Chinese court. 3DM was sentenced to $245,000 U.S. dollars in damages, and to cease distribution of pirated versions of Koei Tecmo's games.

References

External links

* 3DM Warez groups Clubs and societies in China {{videogame-culture-stub