I’ve always bought my games on steam or OFFICIAL key resellers (GMG) since I was an adult, but sometimes it has got really expensive.
Do you consider ‘cracked games’ safe for your PC, your data, and finally your privacy?
You should always support developers, but it’s not always possible.
Running any binary that you can’t examine the source of (and confirm it was built from it without modification) is risky. It’s mostly a balance of trust and risk. Even developers have been known to insert what we could malware.
That said, if you get your cracked content from a trusted source, I’d say it’s generally safe. Otherwise, exercise extreme caution.
Is GMG an official reseller? Maybe I am out of the loop, but I thought they operated in the grey market.
GreenManGaming is a legitimate reseller, in a similar fashion to humble bundle or similar sellers.
I also do not like them because their keys if you are buying on sale for a new launch, their keys are usually UK based as they are UK based and they will not let you play on sooner launch dates, as I learned with Mirrors Edge Catalyst’s release when I wanted to play on day 1 and should have bought direct through origin, but instead now I had to wait a week, and they did not offer a refund policy.
So instead I bought the game again on origin and gave away the other key as a free giveaway to spite them 😂
Probably G2A you’re thinking of, I’m pretty certain GMG are official.
I only trust two things when I pirate games: official GOG installers and FitGirl repacks.
Have a dedicated gaming pc that you never login to any of your real accounts with. Keep it off the network you use with the rest of your machines. Install windows and all the legit software you need. Create an image of your disk. Install pirated games and play them. Every so often wipe your disk and reset to your image.
hmm… lets see. Do I buy and download the game filled with a rootkit or download the version that doesn’t have one?
If it’s a “trusted” source, as in a popular one, such as a certain link from a certain girl that is fit, yes.
Otherwise another option I’ve done for a while was buying cheap keys from greymarket type resellers, though for those I only did them from AAA publishers never putting their games on sale and on a second account (idea being you minimize risk and if something did turn out to be a stolen key, which was a problem for a while on those kinds of sites, a chargeback isn’t going to hurt a AAA publisher as much as an honest small published in house indie dev team).
Well, since I run them in Linux, they’re basically sandboxed in an environment that most malware isn’t made for, so as long as I’m downloading from reputable sources like Fitgirl or DODI, yeah. I figure my chances of picking up a virus from a source like that, given my setup, is highly unlikely.
That is not entirely true. You can still get windows viruses true wine. And wine isn’t sandboxed.
I think he mean bottle(flatpak) when he talk about sandbox
I would say that online games anti cheat systems are probably about as bad as it gets for privacy.
As others have said its more risky to use pirated games from a digital security perspective especially if you are running it as an administrator. So its good to try and find a source you trust and monitor your system for suspicious activity.
My bet is most users here do not practice good data security and assume their “common sense” will prevent them from malicious files.
DODI repacks 4 lyf
Also FitGirl. Often she repacks DODI’s repacks, but makes them much smaller for those with slow connections or limited bandwidth.
💯 been using FitGirl repacks since 2014, never ever had any issues.
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depends on the source, but generally no, run the game in a vm or container
do you need a powerful PC for that though?
for a vm yes, but depending on the game you can just firejail and block internet access
You do, especially if its a new game.
I had seen other comments mentioning the same and had considered mentioning that is out of reach for a lot of people but then didn’t.
Like my PC is running STALKER 2 great on the lowest settings, but if I had to run it through a VM first I would lose a lot of performance and probably dip below 60fps.
Most games people want to pirate are brand new so telling them to do something like reformat their (probably only) PC to run baremental Linux with a Windows VM for the game is just silly and unreasonable. At that point you may as well just buy the game if you need a whole extra computer to pirate it safely.
I couldn’t possibly run brand new games in a VM and I only have one computer that can even play modern games. Silly suggestion.
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Short answer: no.
Long answer: hell no.
thats why i always run close source software in bwrap. not only cracked games.
“cracked games” are different from “pirated games”.
I’d be wary of cracked games. Pirated games that aren’t cracked, much less-so
Yeah, i haven’t had anything go wrong in at least a decade.
GOG digitally signs their games and have no DRM, thus no need for cracks.
If you can get a hold of a GOG version, you can check its validity.
For games outside the GOG ecosystem, they are all unfortunately at risk.
I played Baldur’s Gate 3 via a pirated GOG version on release with friends until I was able to afford my own copy, then moved the saved game over to the legit copy.
