I am looking for help on how to run closed source / pirated games on linux within a virtual machine. I would like to start by saying if I could walk into a shop and buy with cash, a game on a CD like in the old days I would. I have recently become very privacy conscious and until I figure out a way to anonymously and privately purchase things like this I am going to stick with pirating. Also, it is helping me to archive content as everything seems to be moving online and I want to stick with offline applications / media etc in my control.

Now, I am familiar with virtualbox but of course, it is no good for gaming. I have read about other applications that offer much better performance with support for GPU passthrough or similar (but how does this affect the security side of things when running pirated games). Forgive me, this is all quite new to me.

What I want is a virtual machine capable of gaming so that I can more safely run pirated games on linux. Also, I am very new to linux and some help in how I should actually go about running games on linux in the first place. I do not want to just install steam because it has closed source elements and being more privacy conscious now, I’m not sure I want to. Though I am aware I can use the proton layer to enable gaming support which I believe is fully open source. For my purposes lutris sounds like it may be the route to go. Thoughts on this welcome.

As a side note, I am thinking of signing up to GOG as they, to me, seem like a better alternative to steam where I can actually own a DRM free copy of a game that I buy. On a pirating note I thought locating signed, hash checked GOG installers to be a good option for security for dipping my toe into pirating games on linux. I am much, much more comfortable with detecting and removing malware in a windows ecosystem. Linux, completely foreign. So I am trying to be careful.

Once I get fully set up I plan to buy the games I enjoy on GOG, I think that will be the path I can be most comfortable with. At the end of the day I will own a DRM free copy of the game itself. That is the best I can do where I cannot get it on physical media I think. I already do this for CD’s and DVD’s etc.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

. . . I almost never buy anything from amazon, but they had a translation of a short story that was only available there and nowhere else (and no, not on Anna's Archive either).

So anyway, I purchased it, downloaded the Kindle app from the Aurora store to my phone, signed in using Mrs. Erinaceus's account (still trying to get her to delete it, but that's another story), brought up the book, and then went on to screenshot every "page" (I thought maybe the app would prevent my phone from doing screenshots, but fortunately not). Sent the pngs to my laptop, used ImageMagick to mogrify them into PDFs, merged all the PDFs into one and OCR'd it using ocrmypdf.

I think there used to be a way to do this with some calibre plugins, but it required rooting around for a kindle key file, which I didn't feel like doing, so I just did it this way. This is for a short story that is only 22 pages; for something longer this would of course be quite labor intensive.

But kind of just goes to show what ridiculous lengths publishers (and some authors) will go to to protect their stuff, turning off potential readers and punishing actual ones. Why not just do things the bandcamp way? It's easy, it's fair, it's instant gratification—it's fun! Anyway, preaching to the choir here, just thought I'd share.

In what's partly an effort to push back against domain seizures and blocking efforts, Z-Library has upgraded its mirror infrastructure. Users of the shadow library can now create custom-branded, login-only mirrors of the site, creating a network of stealthy, white-label pirate sites. Running a mirror site comes with costs and legal risk, but Z-Library offers to share a 20% cut of its donations as compensation.

. . . since the relatively recent changes they made to their site after the recent legal kerfuffle? I'm assuming the answer is no. And yes, I know, Anna's Archive, but IA has recently added some books that are not on AA. Does this mean that IA is for all intents and purposes now unscrapable?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48030395

I've been downloading legally purchased ebooks (ascm files) and using Calibre to trick it into thinking that it's Adobe Digital Editions and then removing the DRM. lcpi seems like a new format, and I don't know what to do with it. Any suggestions?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/60014953

There are a lot of games missing from repack websites, and others like SteamRIP only offer direct downloads.

What website do you use for torrenting newly updated game versions that are not on FitGirl Repacks or DODI Repacks?

I’ve been using Fear No Peer for a couple years and just got an email that it is shutting down permanently today.

Suggestions (invites?) for a good private tracker with US and UK movies, TV, and hopefully music as well?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/28220728

https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-official-repository-0-9
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-official-repository-a-f
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-official-repository-g-k
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-official-repository-l-p
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-official-repository-q-u
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-official-repository-v-z
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-static-website
https://archive.org/details/magipack-games-torrent

All of the links above are down.
Their IA profile page is cleansed: https://archive.org/details/@magitompg

Message from MagitoMPG:

Let this be a lesson that the Internet Archive isn't a reliable ally in terms of game preservation.

P.S.: I still have a copy of MagiPack_Games_Torrent_Archive_28-July-2025 and MagiPack_Games_Static_28-July-2025.zip. Unfortunately I don't have the official torrent files or magnet links for these anymore or I'd make sure to seed them.

I am into torrenting movies- alas no money to get a VPN, What else can I do? I don't really need a VPN because I live in a third world country and I don't get no lettters if I sail the seas, I was searching for any other ways to hide my IP address from the swarm, without loosing much speed?

I came across this Tribler client, I don't know if its good, Should I try Socks5 proxy or something like that?

Or tell me if the only good method is using a VPN, in that case I should wait out a couple years until I make money and remote torrent by making like 15 accounts in TorBox.

I will apologize, if I said something stupid in advance because I severly lack any knowledge in what I am talking about.

I'm an old fart who decided to get back onto the high seas following the enshittification of all paid services. I have the arr stack running nicely but I find it hard to get a hold of niche and new music.

Any tips would be much appreciated, as I'm new to this new type of piracy please explain any abbreviations and assume I won't understand what you're talking about.

Many thanks!

released at Revision 2026

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_1911

1. Original have different no. and types of files like .apnx , .azw , .phl
2. then it's deDRMed (it may vary) to .awz, .jpg, .opf
3. then DRMed AWZ is unpacked to folder
4. then that folder is converted to pdf or epub (KF8 to ePub)

Maybe this is also more DataHoarder oriented but how does torrenting actually work? I know this is probably a question that is stated quite often, but with all the terms and everything is there any good resource to start getting into it and FULLY understanding the concept? I want to do my part and seed some niche things that interest me but idk how to do it safely especially because of location (Germany). I also already heard of usenet, how does it differ from normal torrenting?

I just want to seed torrents. I am not planning to run plex or anything like that. I would like a budget friendly one around $5 to $7.

Hello,

I'm a huge fan of DND and of dinosaures.

So the dnd supplement Dr Dhrolin's Dictionary of Dinosaurs was really the best thing that could be in my suggestions.

For a time they were an Anyflip version, but it has been deleted.

I know i should support the author, but 27$ for a pdf is not in my budget... sometimes i feel that buying food is not in my budget either...

If someone can explain me here or elsewhere how i could get it, it would be very nice.

Minecraft is easy to pirate...but why? Well to answer you: there is 0 effort to pirate it, download the client.jar from mojang official APIs (which is totally FREE) and run the jar without using any valid session ID, done! What...that's too easy, were is the catch? Well you can't have a skin, you can't play minecraft servers that don't allow un-authenticated users and anyone can use the same user without any password
Is that really piracy? I mean i am using a free thing, not messing with microslop shit and servers - yes i did read mojang eula and no- it's not against it.
So i wonder: can we not call it piracy? Dunno...i leave the words to y'all!

Edit: i don't think it's piracy because when you buy minecraft they give you an account to login in their auth servers, but you don't even need to use the auth servers to access the game, just to use realms, access servers that don't allow non authenticated users etc etc