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I wrote an Update Checker script for my pirated games. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by solofroto@lemmy.ml to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Edit: Everyone is asking for the code, so here it is. Keep in mind, this code assumes a few things:

You'd need to specify the virtual environment path for Python.
You'd need to specify the directory for which the games are located.
You'd have to put a "game_info" file in each game's root directory.
You'd need to have steamcmd installed.
The format of the game_info file is like this (I use CS.RIN.RU):

build: 17601020
steamid: 548430
csrinru: https://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=81377

Hope I'm not breaking any rules. This is my first post on Lemmy. I tried to post on garbage-ass Reddit but apparently being a new user means you can't do fuck-all. So, I'm gonna try to make Lemmy a home.

Anyway, I pirate games. Mostly because I'm broke, and somewhat because I hate spending money on a game and then hating it 15 minutes into it. But anyway..that's neither here nor there.

The entire purpose of this post is just to share this neat little thing I created. I'm not promoting it -- it isn't released. I just wanna share nerdy shit with other people.

The issue that I was having is that I figured, over time, my pirated game collection will get quite big. It will become increasingly more time-intensive to check back to the piracy forums for updated pirated versions of the game.

So I came up with a solution. Whenever I download a new pirated game, I will create a file called "game_info" in the directory which will include three little bits of data.

The build number of the pirated game
The Steam App ID
The link to the forum topic about that game from the piracy site I go to.

I wrote a script that will scan my games directory for each game_info file. It will then use steamcmd to check SteamDB for the latest patches released and compare that to the current build number in the game_info file. Obviously if they don't match -- there's an update. And it will inform me. This way I can quickly check if there are any updates available for a game, then I can go to the piracy forum and check to see if anyone has released the updated version yet.

I thought it was cool. Anyway, just thought I'd share some nerdy shit.

Feel free to degrade me.

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[-] Glide@lemmy.ca 103 points 5 days ago

Feel free to degrade me.

Are you okay?

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 93 points 5 days ago

They said they’re new to Lemmy, so they’re probably used to redditors, and anyone still on that platform is very much not okay

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I managed to be 10 years on reddit in niche hobby and nerd communities and it feels like I lived in some parallel reddit all the time, reading about how toxic and broken it is supposed to be.

Same with YouTube. There are nice channels with less than 100k Views per Video or even just a fraction of it, producing amazing informative videos.

Gotta find the gems in the dirt.

I have a nagging feeling the platform is not or only a part of the problem, but collective human nature is. When enough people join a platform to be a representative sample, you get the representative shittiness of the literally median person on the internet.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago

Yep, George Carlin said it best. Individually, people are amazing, but when they start to group, they're awful -- the begin to sacrifice their individuality for the sake of the group.

[-] freeman@feddit.org 3 points 4 days ago

So fashism bad, antifa good

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

FOKIN WOT M8?!

[-] princessnorah 3 points 4 days ago

What I will say is that over the last ~15yrs, globally, we've seen a hard shift towards the right wing of politics. But a lot of that has happened on the internet in specific spaces where folks have been radicalised, and if you get into niche enough communities then you just don't see it really at all.

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I wonder how much it was manufactured and how much is just the worst of human nature self amplifying. Probably bit of both. It's just easier to spread hate and fear than make people chill the fuck out and respect each other.

Any human community that tolarates bad behavior and does not sanction it appropriately will eventually fail and degenerate into a pile of shit, i.e. simply implode. The paradox of tolerance. Good social spaces are like gardens, they need to be maintained and weeds need to be removed. Otherwise it happens what happens.

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[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

Just marry me already.

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[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

Omg Reddit is so bad. Genuinely bad. And it's hard for me to be disgusted.

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[-] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 4 days ago

don't worry he likes it

[-] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago

It's just a tip.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago

Call me a masochist q:)

Nah, I'm just fuckin' around.

[-] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 45 points 5 days ago

Hey man.. We don't degrade in these parts. We give constructive criticism or say dope that's awesome!

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago

Hehe I can deal with a bit of trolling because I'm an old school IRC nerd. So I take friendliness and shit-talking all in the same boat. Sometimes it's a bit humorous.

[-] undone@lemm.ee 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Totally agree with "We don't degrade in these parts. We give constructive criticism or say dope that's awesome!"

The one exception being people teasing us badly without sharing their code.

Edit: nevermind... just saw your edit. Nice job! Thanks for sharing :)

[-] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

That's understandable I just see no value to that. If you don't have anything nice to say, say something constructive, else say nothing at all. Ideally be nice and constructive

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Try a venv or miniconda and use the universal shebang:

#!/usr/bin/env python

Edit: you've activated my brain shrimp, so I'll be back with an interactive setup script in a bit

Edit2:

Sorry I know it's GitHub but codeberg doesn't support gists yet and I can't fully test this by myself. Seems to work fine on Linux mint. I'll do some testing on Windows later

https://gist.github.com/pyr0ball/c6a608fbdd401903f1ff6faf14a065ce

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

You're my fucking hero.

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Happy to help! Let me know if you run into any problems and I'll see if I can debug

[-] theblips@lemm.ee 2 points 4 days ago

What does this accomplish?

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 4 days ago

It allows users to run the script on any installation of Python no matter where it's located, as well as allowing a user to set up specific Python package versions separate from the system-native ones.

Basically for flexibility and easy setup

[-] Pyro@programming.dev 24 points 5 days ago

That's pretty cool. Why don't you share your script?

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I thought about it, but it's very specific. For instance, I only intended it for myself -- so, you have to manually specify the games directory within the script, and you also have to manually propagate the game_info file. I suppose I could change that -- but unless it's going to be a widely used script, I don't see the point. Kind of why I posted it here -- to see if it could be useful to other people or if they're interested.

[-] Pyro@programming.dev 11 points 4 days ago

Thanks for adding your script to the post. I wouldn't worry too much about it being specific for your setup, no one expects you to generalize it for everyone. It's a great starting point for someone else to customize it for their system. The only aspect you should make sure is that it doesn't leak any of your sensitive information.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago

Of course. Maybe someone will find it useful :D

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 days ago

Honestly I'm planning on using it on my legit games for my headless streaming server, which is what got me interested in building that auto install script.

I've got a little library of similar installation scripts I've built over the years so it was just a matter of modifying it to meet this scripts' requirements

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[-] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml 18 points 5 days ago

I've always thought gaming piracy is losing out a lot on comfortability (like how movie pirates has sonarr, music pirates have lidarr), but this is also very cool.

[-] Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 days ago

There are things like the Hydra... application found on github. I was gonna call it a store front.

[-] ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works 13 points 5 days ago

Cool! And welcome to Lemmy! 😁

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago

Thank you so much!!

[-] AnotherPenguin@programming.dev 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Nah you're cool, have a nice day

[-] RedSnt@feddit.dk 9 points 5 days ago

That's a clever solution indeed. I assume you're SSH'ed into something, but where? And what scripting language? Bash?

[-] dan@upvote.au 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Windows has a native SSH server (bundled with Windows but has to be manually enabled), so they might be SSHing into their gaming system. Or, their gaming system could be a Linux system running something like Bazzite.

[-] RedSnt@feddit.dk 5 points 4 days ago

Huh, I never knew Windows had SSH server capabilities - besides WSL of course :D

[-] dan@upvote.au 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It's a fork of OpenSSH, with tweaks to make it work on Windows (e.g. using Windows auth instead of Linux PAM). It's been available since Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh/openssh_install_firstuse

The source for Microsoft's fork is here: https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable

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[-] aeno@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 5 days ago

I always like me some CLI fancyness! ✨ Well done

[-] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 days ago

Nice stuff. But one nitpick: with steam you can get a refund within two hours of playtime if you realize you bought a crap game.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

Yeahhh I know about that, it still sucks to have to do that, but it's great that it's an option, at least. I'm just old now and it's very hard for me to find a game that I enjoy. But 9 times out of 10, when I do, I go ahead and buy it.

[-] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago

Just making sure. I don't think it was always an option on Steam, anyway.

[-] ladloss@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

GOOD

[-] Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

That's cool man, big up.

[-] arararagi@ani.social 2 points 4 days ago

Damn that's cool, I was using steamdb's RSS for patch notes to keep track of Inzoi's updates, but I can see how it would become cumbersome for a big collection.