Fitgirl repack? What exactly is it?
I apologize if this is already answered somewhere but I'm curious what exactly a fitgirl repack is? I know it's a pirated version of a game but like is it just an installer or something? And if you imported the game into steam for example can you be "banned" or VAT (idr the term)
It's a compressed installer to be precise. Usually crackers only put up the patch files, which is pretty useless for anybody wanting to pirate a game. Fitgirl repackages (and compresses) the game files together with the crack patches into a cracked installer, hence "repack".
Nope, though it will look funny in your Steam Status there is nothing to worry about. After all for all Valve knows you could be using a renamed version of a legitimate App, for non-steam entries in steam only the .exe name is known, nothing else.
Just a word of warning: be careful when torrenting the games, while Valve will not ban you for using them game publishers are known to sue when catching you torrenting them (usually the upload part in the torrent is what gets people but the downloading is not 100% safe either). You should definitely look into how to safely torrent stuff before committing to it in order to avoid any nasty cease-and-desist letters flying in your door.
The warning part totally Depends on where you are . I'm not American nor Europeans. I'll continue sailing the high seas 😎
Arr, me heart be green with envy, it be!
I never torrent unless my windscribe is on which is bound to qbittorent
A man of culture. Whatever we write on th wind is anonymous.
The compression was already explained - I would add that if you're not deep into scene groups, popular repackers are in general a safe choice, i.e. no malware included. Of course it's never 100% safe, but in my opinion safer than picking from a list of torrents what could be the scene release.
I never had issues with fitgirl and Dodi, maybe other users can drop some more names that have proven to be reliable over a long time.
I'll add that if you want to archive games forever, storing repacks is a good idea because of their extreme compression. From what I've observed, Fitgirl trends towards heavier compression while DODI trends towards faster install times.
KaOsKrew is another respected repacking group that you can trust.
I like how Kaos installer show you how much CPU, RAM and SSD is being used
Has anyone done a true up between those and a system specific hw monitor? If I was going to hijack CPU and download a shit ton of malicious binaries I'd want to obfuscate that, and adding a CPU monitoring window with fake values is a great way to deflect/create false confidence
Any sort of malicious activity that's not bitcoin mining can be disguised easily within the background noise of normal CPU usage. If you're getting pwned, assume you're getting pwned for longer than the duration of the install program - any strenuous pwning could be spread out across hours or days if they really wanted. If you're ultra-worried about whether repackers are trustworthy, you can always source clean game files and crack the game yourself.
Idk man dodi's releasees seem to have the same size as fitgirl while also install faster and less CPU intensive when installing
No way we're downloading the same repacks, it's rare to see anything as small as fitgirl's releases in my experience. Your CPU had better be ready to step up to the plate though.
I've had random errors, lock ups, etc. with Fitgirl's repacks, however Dodi's repacks have been incredibly smooth. Miles Morales installed in less than 4 minutes, using his repack.
So I should get games from kaoskrew?
They're available as an option. You can source from any of Fitgirl, DODI, or KaOs if they have the game you want. Other repackers do exist and they're all generally trustworthy, but those 3 put out a lot of content and have a good track record. ElAmigos is another good one that puts out a lot of releases.
So I just download game from over, run installer, and that's it?
Yeah. What repackers do is they source the game, source all the updates, source the DLC, and source the cracks, then put it all together, make sure it works, compress it into an installer, and distribute it. As an end-user you run the installer to decompress the game and then click play. Repackers don't actually do any of the cracking themselves, they just put it all in one package and make it easy. The installer will run CPU-heavy while it decompresses their heavy compression so don't be alarmed by that.
It's a cracked version of the game that has been heavily compressed to reduce download size. This is why the installer will eat a lot of CPU resources during installation. While you probably won't be banned, I would generally avoid playing these games through steam as a precaution. Usually multiplayer doesn't work normally anyways.
Playing through steam might be useful for linux users, because proton is on there (but idk if it works with self-added games).
It works amazingly well for me, I install fog games with proton and it just works.
I tried with lutris and bottles but I was always having issues.
Fitgirl repacks rarely work with Linux
Always worked just fine for me
I'm sure they work for some but if you check online (Reddit for example), there's loads of issues and the general recommendation is against them because of the issues
That's because you get an error a lot of times if you use proton-ge or wine-ge in lutris or bottles when installing. The trick is to use system wine for installing and then switching to wine-ge when the install is done.
I've just had poor success with any wine, it just has that error. Others might be more successful but it's definitely a common problem, which is why I think DODI repacks are preferred
I meant to say pirated games in general, sorry for not clarifing.