I was a member of Razor back in the day. I noticed that he mentioned he wouldn't say how he got Quake released before release date. I can share how I participated in an early release: I had befriended the manager of Electronics Boutique because I bought frequently there for many years prior to getting into pirating games. He would give me games that arrived but weren't on the shelf yet. From there, it was uploaded to an FTP server and a cracker would go to work removing protections, it usually took hours or less, unless the protection was novel. They'd usually push a release without a lot of large assets (FMV, cutscene type stuff) to make releasing it faster, and follow up with a full release after it was all packaged up.
I saw lots of folks get arrested/busted back in those times, and there was a key difference of outcomes for two groups: adults vs minors. Minors always got a slap on the wrist/fine (I remember TKLP from was it... RoR? had to pay out $1200 to AT&T for hacking a PBX... because he was 14 or so), and adults got sent to jail and had their lives ruined. I stopped being involved just before turning 18 and it was a very smart decision in retrospect.
I saw lots of folks get arrested/busted back in those times, and there was a key difference of outcomes for two groups: adults vs minors. Minors always got a slap on the wrist/fine (I remember TKLP from was it... RoR? had to pay out $1200 to AT&T for hacking a PBX... because he was 14 or so), and adults got sent to jail and had their lives ruined. I stopped being involved just before turning 18 and it was a very smart decision in retrospect.