User:Undefishin/Draft/Benjamin Samson

Undefishin/Draft/Benjamin Samson

Crusty Windows bootleg author
Country of Origin	India
Year of start of bootleg career	2008
End of bootleg career	2010
Is currently active?	No
In any group(s)	Reckons International Team
Length of being in said group(s)	2008-2010
Bootleg count	10+

Benjamin Samson is a bootlegger and ex-member of Reckons International Team, a group which he founded in 2008. He is most known for his Windows Vista bootlegs, both inside and outside of the Reckons International Team. He also made bootlegs of other OSes, such as Windows 7 and Windows XP, but Windows Vista is the primary OS he uses for bootleg making. His releases, especially his earliest ones, are notorious for being extremely difficult to find.

Known groups

Reckons International Team

Reckons International Team, known as the Rockers International Team until 2012 (and initially Black Edition Team in 2008), were a group of prominent Windows bootleggers, which was formed in 2008. They are primarily known for making Windows Vista/7/8.x bootlegs and creating the RT Seven Lite tool. Their releases tend to use GPU companies in their titles (like NVIDIA, ATI, AMD, etc). Some of their early releases are very rare.

The group was originally started by one person, Benjamin Samson. It was named simply "Black Edition Team", as his newest bootleg at the time was, well, Windows Vista Black Edition. It was his first bootleg to be based on Windows Vista, instead of Windows XP. His prior bootlegs did not have any of his team's branding on it at the time, and were originally solely solo bootlegs, but he decided to inherit them when he made the group. But as time went on and he began releasing more bootlegs under this brand, on September 21, 2008, he changed the team name to just "Rockers International Team", for technical reasons.

He also hosted the website for Rockers International Team, which you can access here. Alongside the site, there was also a long since abandoned blog he owned where he would link his bootlegs, forums and even a live radio. You can also access the group's catalog of all of their releases, which is accessible here (all bootlegs from December 17, 2008 to April 12, 2009). They also had their affiliates, one of which the owner was an administrator of.

Later on, there was another Rockers website, entitled rtwincustomize.net.

As can be seen here, the group was largely a free-for-all endeavor, as anyone could join the group and make bootlegs. 2 bootlegs made by people other than Benjamin himself are known to exist:

• "Rocker Team's Windows XP Ultimate Service Pack - 3", by Smartflower (taken from All Windowses DVDs Editions, from All Windowses CDs & DVDs Editions)
• "Rockers Xp Royale Pro Lite Tweaked SP3", by Dibola

As for their whereabouts, that remains to be seen, as is a common theme in the Rockers' world. Dibola was notably an administrator of the Rockers International Team forums.

Despite Rockers International Team heavily specializing in Windows modifications, they didn't exclusively make bootlegs. They also specialized in distributing pirated software (warez), games, movies (and even Christian movies), and music.

The team's notable members include:

• Benjamin Samson, as seen in Windows Gamer ATI Edition 2009 and Windows 7 Eternity 2009. He made a vast majority of the early bootlegs of Rockers International Team.
• Nishant, as seen in Windows 7 Underground 2012 and Windows 8.1 AMD Evolution 2016. He was a newer member of the group. He replaced Benjamin as the sole bootleg maker afterwards.

Later on, their original website's domain expired and eventually got parked. Around 2012, they rebranded to Reckons International Team. Their domain got moved to reckonsteam.com, as part of the rebranding. There would be Wayback Machine links here, but sadly the domain is excluded from it. The domain is since dead now as well.

The final bootleg known to be made by this team was Windows 8.1 AMD Evolution 2016, which released in March of 2015. As of January 2016, the group is defunct. The original owner of the group eventually got bored of making bootlegs, to then pursue a professional career and soon become a CEO of a giant company, and Reckons International Team would fade into obscurity.