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.
Search for this keyword : “Fmhy”. It the acronym of free media heck yeah and It’s a curated list of safe sites. Fitgirl repack are the safest you can get.
how do you know they are safe? who is auditing the binaries?
The users themselves. Everyone that use cracked software know the binaries could potentially contain malware, so the people that share these cracked software need to build trust from the community before being called “safe” and get recommended. If ten if not hundred of thousands people use the binaries from a specific “site” or “repacker” without ever getting a virus, then it’s most certainly safe to use/download. Fitgirl is the safest and most known repacker ever (as long as you download from the official site and not some shady copycat, that is)
Considered safe only because people haven’t noticed anything malicious happening? Yeah, that’s still a no go for me; just because people haven’t noticed, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
I hope you compile all your own software from verified sources then rather than downloading a ready-built Linux distro with binary packages.
If You can afford to pay, then cool. Most people that pirate can’t afford the games/apps anyway, so it’s not really a matter of asking if it is safe to pirate but what site are safe to pirate from. Also, Pirates tend to be tech savvy from getting screwed a few times when they were younger (Ex: me), so a good chunk most certainly know how to detect viruses.
You think you know how to detect a virus, but you only know how to detect a virus that doesn’t hide it’s actions.
It’s not about paying for software or pirating it. It’s about if you pirate software, should you run it on bare metal, a VM, or on a machine with nothing else on it.
I think pirating software is perfectly fine, but I’d never run it on bare metal on a machine with other stuff on it.
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.
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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.
Nothing is ever really safe. If a developer or publisher gets compromised, an attacker could put malware in an official release and push it through Steam. https://outshift.cisco.com/blog/top-10-supply-chain-attacks
You should always use protective measures like antivirus and dropping unnecessary privileges, and use extra measures when running anything from a less trusted source.
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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.
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
“cracked games” are different from “pirated games”.
I’d be wary of cracked games. Pirated games that aren’t cracked, much less-so
thats why i always run close source software in bwrap. not only cracked games.
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