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.
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.
thats why i always run close source software in bwrap. not only cracked games.
I would say that online games anti cheat systems are probably about as bad as it gets for privacy.
As of 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.
GOG Torrents if you are that paranoid
depends on the source, but generally no, run the game in a vm or container
do you need a powerful PC for that though?
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.
hmm… lets see. Do I buy and download the game filled with a rootkit or download the version that doesn’t have one?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: hell no.
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.
Probably G2A you’re thinking of, I’m pretty certain GMG are official.
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.
Yeah, i haven’t had anything go wrong in at least a decade.
“cracked games” are different from “pirated games”.
I’d be wary of cracked games. Pirated games that aren’t cracked, much less-so
I only trust two things when I pirate games: official GOG installers and FitGirl repacks.
Plundering in the early-mid 00’ was dicey but in the last ten years I think the only problem I’ve had was getting a tarbomb once and even that could have an honest mistake on the part of noob coder. I am a little wary of games that have online hacks and normally block all online features. Honestly you have to be more careful with torrent client than anything. Most of them try to back door a ton of garbage when you first install them. And yeah always use a vpn or you’ll get angry messages from your isp.
Run them in a sandboxed VM?
VM escaping is not impossible, but its probably outside of the ability of most cracked games with malware.
Even better; Go with a bare metal linux install, and then use a sandboxed VM.
Even less malware is going to be able to VM escape and then also have any idea of what to do in a linux environment, purely because the vast, vast majority of exploits are designed to fuck up Windows.
Is this perfectly safe?
No, but nothing is.
Any legitimately purchased game with closed source, kernel level anti cheat could be doing literally anything to your PC, and you wouldn’t know.
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.
