They need somehow a way to earn there living expanses ?

Crackers don’t do it for a living lol
They’re normal people with normal, often 9-5, jobs; who just bought a gamr and want to help more people get their hands on that game even through pay walls and region restrictions.

That would earn them a percent of a percent of what they would through donations or running ads on their site. And they would be able to do it only once.

Back in the early days we did it for competition/sports and maybe “fame” . Not for monetary reasons. Most of us never knew financial problems due to employers fighting over us 😁

Can’t speak for the modern crews. But it’s still unlikely. Other crews would find out, call out and their reputation would be done for. Not worth it as there are other options to get some bucks out of it

Now that I know a bit more about security and obfuscation I rather not use any pirated games/software anymore

Then don’t and pay every streaming service, game and software.

If they know how to crack/reverse engineer some complicated stuff, you can be sure they add some shady stuff in it.

The most pointless, baseless and factless argument ever.

They need somehow a way to earn there living expanses ? It’s a service we think it’s free but nothing comes without a counterpart.

If you genuinely think crackers earn lots of money through cracking games, you sure are uneducated.