The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has submitted its latest overview of “Notorious Markets” to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).
These submissions serve as input for the USTR’s yearly overview of piracy ‘markets’ which helps to shape the U.S. Government’s global copyright enforcement agenda going forward.
The ESA, which represents video game companies including Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, and Ubisoft, hopes that the interests of its members will be taken into account. In the report, the group lists various pirate sites that enable the public to download games for free.
FitGirl Repacks
The most notable newcomer in ESA’s overview is FitGirl-Repacks. The site, commonly abbreviated as “FitGirl” publishes slimmed down copies of pirated games which are easy to distribute and share. These repacks are in high demand and, as one of the most famous repackers, FitGirl became a brand in and of itself.
At this point, many gamers associate FitGirl’s supposed likeness (image above) with piracy, instead of the film Amélie, from where the image was originally sourced. Yet despite being active for well over a decade, FitGirl-Repacks shows no signs of slowing down.
Admittedly, the site’s domains have been blocked in several countries, including Italy and Spain, but rightsholders have yet to identify the person or people who run the site.
According to ESA, FitGirl continues to serve an audience of millions of visitors today. The site doesn’t host content directly but links to pirated content hosted on third-party platforms.
“In July 2024, fitgirl-repacks received 22 million visits, offering visitors access to ESA member personal computer (‘PC’) game titles. Internationally, this website has been subject to scrutiny for its failure to comply with takedown notices reporting infringing content,” the ESA writes.
More Newcomers
Seeing FitGirl listed as a notorious piracy site comes as no shock; it’s more surprising that it was never mentioned in earlier years. The same can be said about Dodi-Repacks, another new entry on ESA’s list this year.
Dodi-Repacks hasn’t been around as long as FitGirl and the site doesn’t have as much traffic, but ESA notes that it poses a significant threat nonetheless.
“The site operator is non-responsive to ESA take-down notices and runs a backup version of the site at dodi-repacks.download. Both domains utilize a CDN,” ESA informs the USTR.
Other newcomers highlighted by the ESA are cosmocheats.com, a relatively small cheat seller with a few thousand daily visits, and the online marketplace eldorado.gg that sells game accounts and virtual items without permission.
Emerging Threats Disappear
ESA’s list of notorious pirate sites and services includes other familiar targets, such as torrent site 1337x, hosting sites 1fichier.com and megaup.net, as well as other dedicated game pirate services.
Interestingly, the game companies no longer mention last year’s “growing trends”, which included malware and cryptocurrencies. These issues haven’t disappeared overnight but ESA, apparently, doesn’t feel the need to separately focus on these again.
ESA’s mention of Scene release groups and highly skilled hackers also disappeared from the latest USTR submission. However, according to the group, repackers were part of this category, so this mention might have been replaced by the FitGirl and Dodi listings.
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A copy of ESA’s submission for the 2024 Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf). An overview of the (online) threats is listed below. The bold entries are new, and the ones with a strike-through were listed last year, but removed in 2024.
Hyperlinking Websites (“Linking Sites” or “Link Sites”)
– nsw2u.com– Game3rb.com
– fitgirl-repacks.site
– dodi-repacks.site
Hosting Websites (“Cyberlockers”)
– 1fichier.com
– megaup.net
Torrent Indexing Websites
– 1337x.to– Solidtorrents.to
Cheats
– unknowncheats.me– mpgh.net
– cosmocheats.com
Unauthorized Online Marketplaces
– playerauctions.com– G2G.com
– eldorado.gg
Malware
Cryptocurrency
Scene Release Groups
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Source : Game Companies List ‘FitGirl-Repacks’ as a Key Piracy Threat
