I really wonder, do all kids and younger people become parasocial today?

You see it everywhere you look.

People obsessing over influencers.

People obsessing over celebrities.

People obsessing over politicians.

And now, people obsessing over warez groups.

Can't we just have a normal relationship to something, without putting it onto a pedestal?

Warez existed long before R2R, and will continue to exist long after they are gone.

They are a good group, and that should be the end of that.

But, under every, single, R2R release lately...

"OMFG R2R SLAYYYYYYYYYYYYY"
"OOOOOOOOO SEXY WITCHESSSS DOOO IT AGAIIIINNNNNNNN YESSSS"
"I FEEEL THE WITCHES X BECAUSE OF Y" (because my parasocial brain started creating fiction slop about them)
"OMFG R2R I LOVE YOU HAVE MY BABIES PLEASE I CANT HANDLE MYSELF REEEEEEEEEEE"

You get the point.

 

More interestingly, will there be a kind of black market AI that can do all of the things R2R currently does but in a the blink of an eye? Maybe it can be trained by reverse engineering the software and the keygen/hacking method used by R2R... But it's always been a war so I'm guessing software companies will use stronger encryption, maybe even the blockchain. Pretty sure R2R will be using AI already, and the software companies in response to that. If quantum computing arrives encryption (and the blockchain) breaks pretty much instantly. Then what?

 

What a funny thread: This is the kind of question that only a little fanboy would think about.

To answer briefly:
Nothing will happen because R2R isn't (and never was) the only game in town. There are other groups that will take the lead and that's it.

 

R2R is a never ending line of succession!

 

A quantum computer is very expensive. People will be careful about who is allowed to use it. Experience shows that intelligence agencies are usually the first to try to spy on the secrets of other countries, powers, and companies to gain an advantage. I think a major danger comes from criminals who will use AI to deceive you and get your money or data.

If your system is hacked, your company secrets are gone, your online account is plundered, others have your secrets, or your entire resume is publicly available online.

I'm relying on three-factor authentication. The three-factor model is a proven concept for authenticating individuals.
It is used in security-critical areas to clearly assign access rights. The model is based on three independent categories:

Knowledge (e.g., password, PIN) & Possession (e.g., key card, token) & Inherence (e.g., fingerprint, facial recognition)

 

They are not our plugins, but then "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."

 

I'll subscribe to that notion!

 

If R2R doesn't find a successor because its intellectual level can no longer be reached due to a lack of intelligence and knowledge, some will probably have to pay for the plugins they need with their labor, i.e., their hard-earned money. Since everything will become expensive, they will remain poor or be poor. Perhaps they'll lease their plugins. As Klaus Schwab/WEF once said: They will own nothing and be happy.

I can already see them trading on the black market: "Hey, I have a copy of Cubase, will you trade for FabFilter? Do you also have the keygen?" "Yes, even the latest one from Team R2R." If things get really bad and electricity is rationed, they'll download illegal blueprints for wind turbines from the sister site.

 

I'm taking good laughs on this thread

 

When that happens I will certainly be making a few good backups.
As long as we have a computer to run it, we have all the software for offline use for along time.
That's been true for a long time, as those running Win7 can attest.
In 2019 I had 3 DAW machines: Win10, Win7 & WinXP, all with different versions of stuff that worked on them.
Alas, I moved countries and had to abandon the older ones.
But they would still run now.

But I am unashamed to be a fan of some things.
I used to be quite cynical, until I was kicked in the balls by reality and I realized I was NOT judging things as they are, but by how I felt...a result of not looking at things carefully enough.
Of THAT, i still feel a bit of shame.

Well, I am still a cynical bastard, but now i know much better what deserves cynicism and what deserves almost childlike enthusiasm.

 

The main driving motivation of the warez scene is the attention, street cred and good will releases give the people involved. I find it hard to imagine responses that would count as over the top or inappropriate, especially for a team with tens of thousands of releases

 

Well kids... you know... back in the days there was a team, they called themselves Radium.
But let me begin at the beginning.
There was a time before the existance these legends. These were dark ages. Very dark.
There were groups and there was audio warez but to be honest, releases weren't really usable back then.
Steinberg and Emagic had really proper protection on both sides of the ecosystem. Mac and.. Atari, of course.
But on the other hand, there hasn't been a huge demand either. Like when just one (cheap (!)) (hardware) reverb sets you back 700 bucks and one (hardware) sampler with 16 voices is 5000 bucks you don't care that Notator or Cubase is another 379,-
But then an old fellow had a face lift, a heart transplant and moved in to the neighbourhood.
He formerly just got very boring office jobs, but after lifting some weights he was more and more asked to do media stuff.
I'm talking about PC of course.
Companies were eager to port their software to that 'new' platform but brought what they've learned about copy protection.
At the same time gen x who started their journey on c64's SID or Amigas Paula with trackers or similar tools meant for game development came to age and switched over to PC or Mac. These people were spoiled. There were warez everywhere for those commodore machines. I personally don't know anyone who paid for Soundtracker II or Sonic or Deluxe Music or whatsoever. And because they now were teens and mature enough they wanted use the 'proper' stuff. They wanted to use Cubase or Cakewalk or Logic.
Legend had it that Radium was looking for cracks of music software because they just wanted to use it. But all they found was crappy, badly done patches and none of the releases they found worked properly.
So they decided to do it themselfes.
In my opinion, this jumpstarted music creation on PC in general.
I personally know of people who sold their macs back then to get a PC because the warez situation was better there at that time.
Now why am I telling you this?
Because everything has it's time and everything comes to an end eventually.
And so did Radium.
Needless to say we paniked.
BUT, and this is what I've learned back then: Live finds a way.
After Radium, we suddenly had a new renaissance. Instead of one team, we had two, sometimes 3 battleing about the best, most recent or most stable releases. Suddenly we had new legends like Air or H2O.
So: Fear not! There will be a time after R2R, but that will not be the end of the world.
The worst that will happen ist that you have to be patient.
And use the releases you already got for a little longer.
But knowlege is out there and it will be taught and it will be learnt.

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM

The goal has long been achieved: Practically speaking, we could shut everything down tomorrow and everyone would have enough cracked software to make music. I think we already have more than enough of everything: VSTs, presets, samples, software are available in abundance!

Steinberg.SyncroSoft.Teaser.v1.0-H2O warez scene music video ripped and upscaled from 320x240.

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2026 at 3:50 PM

The day after R2R disappears will be the day that Serum v2.0.245468479845 crashes due to a time bomb.

 

There is nothing wrong with posting two words for your favourite people and R2R's releases are usually perfect, so there is so little to discuss. If I were in the R2R, I would definitely appreciate and enjoy a few of such comments.

 

I absolutely agree with you. After all, I think they're the best team ever (I could be wrong, but... that's what I think).

//Edit: Why are they the best team to me? Because of their super stable releases, less CPU load than legit releases and because they could make happen things that others could not...

 

Posting "Thank you" is very different than the behavior I described.
And people do not just post thank you, people wonder what R2R is thinking, how R2R is feeling, creating vivid fiction slop with R2R as the anime protagonist or hero.

It's very far from "two words of appreciation".

R2R has many botched releases, (I could make a list of just the ones I've downloaded, but I've got better things to do with time).
Fixes that need to be reapplied every time some hardware parameter changes (Triaz, every time I restart my computer), because they kept too much of the original protection system.
Whereas other groups just remove the whole system and that ends up functionally better.

I can already hear the torches and pitchforks. THEY ARE NOT BAD. But they are far from perfect.

The only thing R2R does, that other groups don't, is create this silly narrative, basically writing their own lore in NFOs. Where they go far too in depth about technical details of cracks, that nobody really understands, but makes everyone feel like Braveheart just exposed his bare ass to the developer and everyone screams "FREEEEEEEEEEDOOOOM" as they smash the download button.