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

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 104 points 1 week ago

Feel free to degrade me.

Are you okay?

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 95 points 1 week 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 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 13 points 1 week 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 4 points 1 week ago

So fashism bad, antifa good

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

FOKIN WOT M8?!

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 3 points 1 week ago

The platform is definitely part of the problem. Bending over backwards to serve the desires of the Trump administration and the executive class

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Compared to say the Meta networks, reddit always felt to me like a platform where I can still control what I see. The feed is only filled by stuff I actively chose to subscribe to.

Sure it is a part of the problem - it's the reason I joined Lemmy. And I wonder how long it will take to become the same kind of wasteland of trash. Not sure that the "smaller community and less viral incentives" approach will be enough to keep it more civil than the "offers" by the commercial attention economy.

Just as a reminder, before the internet was privatized, people were on self hosted forums. Some were good places and some were toxic shit holes. Really depends more on the moderation and community than anything else if you ask me.

That said, surely I am distrusting any platform owned by some oligarch to have policy in the interest of the user base.

[-] princessnorah 3 points 1 week 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.

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[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

Definitely an atypical experience. Most subs, especially those that are tangentially political, are incredibly toxic.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And I feel like many ex-redditors that turned to lemmy where also very political.

My only gripe with Reddit is nowadays how the UI is slow af and thr interaction is very limited.

Example of a Lemmy user turning a non-political comment political:https://feddit.org/comment/6326797

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Well I mostly never used any kind of social media for political things until very recently. Just read news on the respective newspaper websites. Maybe that did the trick.

And just wow. Yeah well, some people are just always trying to pick up a useless tribal fight or stir up some drama, or just mess with others i.e. troll...

That's why good mods are worth their weight in gold.

Just check a sub like /r/askhistorians, they might sometimes appear harsh but they managed to keep that place true to its vision and purpose (accepting only high quality responses by people who know what they are talking about). But sure, that is rather the exception.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

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

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I try to get banned as much as I can there until every IP I use to make accounts is IP banned. Which means entire physical sites can get banned if I try hard enough.

Edit: Got a 7-day ban for saying fascists should be shot and left for dead in the street.

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[-] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago

don't worry he likes it

[-] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

It's just a tip.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

Call me a masochist q:)

Nah, I'm just fuckin' around.

[-] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 45 points 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 1 week 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

[-] Pyro@programming.dev 24 points 1 week ago

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

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week ago

Of course. Maybe someone will find it useful :D

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

S***, I don't even pirate steam games and I love the script thank you.

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[-] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week 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 1 week ago

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

[-] AnotherPenguin@programming.dev 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Nah you're cool, have a nice day

[-] ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago

Cool! And welcome to Lemmy! 😁

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago

Thank you so much!!

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 1 week ago

You're my fucking hero.

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[-] RedSnt@feddit.dk 9 points 1 week 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 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 1 week ago

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

[-] dan@upvote.au 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

I have a server. It's just a laptop running headless Debian Linux. On my gaming PC, Windows 11, I share the directory with my pirated games, then I mount that on my Debian server. Then I SSH into that server and do my scripting. The program is written in Python.

[-] aeno@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 week ago

I always like me some CLI fancyness! ✨ Well done

[-] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week 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 1 week 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.