Shortly after the Starcraft 2 Digital Download was made available by Blizzard, it was allegedly cracked by "vernam7" from the StarCrack team. You can check out the details on the Nibbits.com forum.


He says he can install the game and play all Single Player campaigns (cannot connect to B.Net obviously.)

Unfortunately, he's not allowing anyone access to the crack until the official release date (07-27).

This has resulted in a lot of anger and seething frustration amongst the Nibbits.com forum members, while others are applauding vernam7 for his choice not to release the crack.

Chances are that someone else will crack it before 07-27, someone always does. Although I'm not condoning this (I'm buying on 07-27 myself), please demonstrate precaution and be very careful what you download out there, there are plenty of people that will be releasing malicious code and keyloggers in the guise of a Starcraft 2 Retail Crack. Because of the mass anticipation, lots of people will be installing without confirming it's authenticity first. =]


A little background on vernam7:

He's the creator of the "sc2ALLin1 (Current Version: v9.9.0) Offline Starcraft 2 Beta Launcher/Tool". It's a user friendly launcher tool that allows you to play the SC2 beta offline, without CD-keys, load skirmish battles and watch replays. If you are in the beta, it also allows you to play WAN and downloads updates manually. He has been called a trusted member of the SC2 cracking scene by the Nibbits forum community, so there's a good chance that he has indeed cracked the digital download. Guess we'll find out on 07/27 though, or if it was all one giant crack-tease.

What's funny though, is that he really wanted to tell everyone that he cracked the Retail version but had no intention of giving it to anyone. We live in a society of instant gratification and self-entitlement, and he must have realized how the community would have reacted. It looks like he's getting a little upset and just wants everyone to drop the subject now though. =]



Forum User "Duke" writes:

For those that are waiting to pay for the retail version, here's a link to the Official Digital Download.

It's a 7GB installation package by the way.

If Blizzard was smart, though, they would have made the digital download a large (but incomplete) component of the total package and left critical files absent that would be downloaded as "updates" when the time comes. So, it would be possible to "crack the installer" to start the install the software, but it would still need to be download critical components of the package (ie, to decrypt the .MPQE files) or download key game-related files (without which, the game could not run at all.) Or maybe even a combination of both, so if the .MPQE files were decrypted, it would have been a complete waste of time since everything is time-locked at the server end anyways. (Unless they can patch the retail back together using beta files.)

Update (07/16/10)

Looks like a couple other individuals have also claimed to have cracked the Digital Download version of Starcraft 2. I'm waiting for confirmation (they say it's very simple process, but there's no automated executable at the moment.) However, they might be referring to just cracking the install package. The scene groups haven't started working on the crack yet. Meanwhile, Vernam7 is being criticized on the Nibbits & Darkblizz forums for not releasing the crack, but has provided basic instructions on what he did to crack the retail version.

Update (07/19/10)

Vernam7 has created a forum to discuss questions related to the SC2 retail crack, unfortunately most of his time seems to be spent deleting troll posts. Link: http://sc2.nibbits.com/forums/29/view/907/about-starcraft-ii-retail-crack

Yesterday, he wrote: "soon an anonymous user will upload a retail crack......."

Update (07/20/10)

Has now been two days since Vernam7 promised that an "anonymous user" would release the retail crack. If he could elaborate on what "soon" means, that might be helpful.

Update (07/22/10)

Vernam7 has been "cleaning house" on all of the Starcraft 2 forums, and removing various posts related to his crack and promises. It appears that hundreds of forum posts have suddenly gone missing. How very disappointing..


I'm guessing what probably happened was that he simply changed the appearance of the installer (.xml edit) and believed he had suddenly made progress in "cracking" the game. He got so excited, he posted his news to everyone on the forums before fulling testing. But then he realized shortly after words that he still couldn't install the game, and because he had already posted the news (and got everyone excited) and didn't want to disappoint his fans or apologize - so he simply claimed "ethical reasons" not to release the crack. Funny how someone's personal ethics are so easily malleable: it's ethical to hack one version of SC2, but not another version. =]

As Nu would say, "This is my belief! At least for now..."

Update (07/26/10)

Still no word from Vernam7, not that it matters now that the Retail DVD is out. It's really too bad - I had such high hopes that Vernam7 was indeed telling the truth about the digital download crack. But since he hasn't been able to provide a shred of evidence to back up his claim, it doesn't appear that is original statement was accurate.

Just a note to comment posters, please don't attach Retail Authentication codes or links to the new retail crack. I'm just reporting on Vernam7's claims, because it's interesting news. 

But, I already have my SC2 pre-order and didn't want any pirated material in this post. =]
Vernam7 is currently testing a means of using the SC2ALLIN1 tool with the retail DVD (ie, tricking the beta launcher into loading the retail maps.) It's not a crack for the digital download as promised, but for those that are comfortable with registry tweaks, it might make it possible to play some of the map files that come with the retail DVD. Save function may or may not work, it still requires testing - and other than that, you're pretty much just loading map files like the beta launcher so you're not really doing the proper single player campaigns. Now that the retail DVD is out though, you should see a proper crack for it from the scene groups.

Another update:

He's currently writing in the forums that there is no launcher nor any crack for the retail yet. 

He's working on creating one right now. So.. if he's starting to make a crack now (that he finally has the retail), I guess that confirms that his announcement made almost 2 weeks ago was indeed false.

Update (07/27/10)


It's not exactly clear whether this will fully unlock SC2 Digital Download or if it just allows skirmish play. However, he did mention a full automatic crack being worked on over the next few days.

Another update: The manual crack is now available on his webpage (for enGB only, the rest will be released after he gets some sleep) and there's a lot of excitement (e.g. "Ha! Told you he could do it!" etc.), but I really hope it's not the executables from the Retail DVD. He promised a crack for the Digital Download that he already had as is. Sil3nt-de4th has been posting a link to Vernam7's crack on various torrent webpages, so you'll see plenty of links to the crack in the wild.

(Funny Note: Silentdeath has been accused many times on the forums for being Vernam7's alias. Not sure if there's any truth to that though. There's always been a lot of drama on the Nibbits forum for some reason..)

So anyways, if anyone can test the manual crack and confirm, please let me know if it fully unlocked your Digital Download - allowing full Campaign play, with cinematics and Save/Load features. (Not a "Guest" account, or simply a map/skirmish launcher like the current SC2ALLIN1 Beta launcher.) I'm sure others would like to know..

Confirmed: Save/Load and other critical features are not working as of yet. He'll be working on it later.

Yet another cleanup of the forum posts is being done. All of the "bad" posts are being removed (ie, features not working, crashes, can't quit, etc.) and all of the "good" posts are being kept. Vernam7's crack is now on several torrent webpages, however some other individuals are taking credit for the crack. So, exercise caution if you download from torrent webpages, they're not the original and may contain malicious code.

Update (07/28/10)

The "final crack" has been released on the Nibbits forum (there's a link since they removed the file from the forum so that they're not hosting the file anymore). All languages are supported and save/load are supposed to work using a work-around launcher to get into the campaign missions. No word on a scene release of the Retail DVD. It's too bad the Digital Download was never actually cracked back when it first came out.. it required the boxed retail package to come out before anyone really attempted cracking the software.

Update (07/28/10)

The RELOADED crack is now out, it opens up full offline functionality of the software (e.g. save/load, quitting the game, campaigns, cutscenes, map editor, multilanguage, etc.) So, no more worries about registry tweaks and crashing/bugs from the modified beta launcher.

Summary

So, it looks like my guess has been confirmed. The original Digital Download was never actually cracked by Vernam7, he simply bypassed some install menu items by editing unencrypted .MPQ files to show a different display. Vernam7 later confirmed on the forums that he didn't actually start work on the crack until he received the real Starcraft 2 Retail Box which he pre-ordered and received the day before 07-27 (which is when he _really_ started work on the crack.) He utilized his existing beta launcher and tricked it into thinking the retail package was still the beta software, allowing him to launch campaign maps.

Another interest note. In his "I have ethics" post, he stated that he would never give out any spoilers (screenshots, etc). However, he started posting on the forums that he would Private Message select Nibbits users with spoilers. Talk about contradictory. The "select users" were obviously excited, thinking that he had provided them "secret information" from the game - but it was actually data pulled from the official SC2 Manual that was stored in the unencrypted .MPQ file and from the online SC2 Cinematics on Youtube. ALL of the ingame SC2 cinematics were available on YouTube on July 24 by the user "christos75". Let's just say there were a LOT of big spoilers. He later had to pull all of the videos because of a possible DMCA complaint.


.. and so ends the history of Vernam7's crack. A wonderful tale of a troll who kept everyone on the edge of their seats for almost 2 weeks waiting for some form of confirmation, and when a semi-functional-tricked-out-beta-launcher was finally released, it was ultimately stolen and taken credit by another individual calling his group "LIBERTY".

This (now boring) period of history shall now be forgotten in the dim recesses of time.