For months, the crack scene was silent. Users on Reddit and cracked gaming forums kept asking the same question: “Any news on The Last Guardian CPY?”

But CPY had gone quiet by then. The group had effectively disappeared in 2019.

But when it comes to The Last Guardian —Team Ico’s 2016 masterpiece about a boy and a giant, dog-bird-cat creature named Trico—the story of its crack is almost as emotional as the game itself. First, a quick history lesson. CPY (short for "Conspiracy") was a warez group at the top of the scene from around 2014 to 2019. They were famous for breaking Denuvo—the infamous anti-tamper DRM—when almost no one else could.