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.
Yo OP, in case you couldn’t get GPU passthrough to work; vm-curator makes that a piece of cake, somehow even with a single GPU.
First of all, don’t expose yourself to danger. Get your pirated games from reputable sources.
Most games only need a Steam emulator like Goldberg’s to run without license, and you can get clean steam files from cs.rin.ru. You don’t need VMs for this, it’s literally the original game.
If you need an actual crack, you can also look up on cs.rin.ru and try to gauge the reputation of the uploader. You can also check fitgirl or dodirepacks, they are both highly reliable. These are unlikely to have malware, but it’s not impossible.
If you want to use a vm because you still don’t trust the pirated game in question (reasonable), then there is no shortcut. Use the arch wiki to learn how to setup a VM with GPU passthrough, even if you don’t use arch it’s always a good place to get started.
Thank you for your reply, this sounds on track to what I am looking for.
Very interesting on the clean file + emulator route. Sounds like a similar line of thinking to my signed / hash checked GOG installer thoughts.
Regarding using a VM with a GPU passthrough, what software would you recommend for doing this with? I am very familiar with virtualbox and do prefer a GUI though I recognise I will probably have to adapt in order to get what I want.
Thanks again.
I forgot about the gog part. Yeah, you can also use those. There used to be a website that uploaded clean gog installers, but now all the download links are behind those sketchy filesharing services. Though, if you manage to get one, the binary should be signed by the developer. On windows I know you can check the signature by right-clicking on the file, on Linux I don’t remember because I haven’t needed it in a long time.
For the VM you need qemu/kvm. I suggest to use virt-manager which is just a graphical interface for qemu.
Thank you, your responses have been most helpful.
Yup, I used to check the signature / hash for GOG installers in windows. I’ll have to look into how to do it in linux.
I’ll look into qemu/kvm. Virt-manager rings a bell. Thanks, I’ll look into all of that.
Do you have any site recommendations for clean steam / gog files?
For steam I already told in the previous comment, cs.rin.ru. You need an account to access the clean files threads.
For gog unfortunately not anymore. Check the r/piracy megathread, see if you find something
Thank you for your response.
Apologies on missing that it was you that mentioned those sites, new to lemmy and viewing through the unread messages area where it only shows the current comment, not the thread. I am struggling to see something I can click to bring the message up in a thread so I can see the message flow.
Thank you for the clues, I shall disappear down a rabbithole some time following your breadcrumbs.
Btw, I just remembered.
You said that “if you could go to the store, buy a disc with the game, like in the good old days” you would prefer that over piracy.
I do encourage you to buy games on GoG (Good Old Games), download the installer, and burn it on a blue ray disk for you to keep.
I shall most likely be doing so. It is a means of owning the original install files for the game. From a privacy standpoint, still not as good as buying it in a shop with cash but it is most certainly a step in the right direction. There was a time when I pirated simply because I wanted to try things out for free when demos became less popular. Then it led to why bother buying it now. However, as I have matured I am happy, moreover I want to pay for something I have tried and enjoyed to support the creator so long as I have ownership and can do with it what I like. I do not want to support the conditional ownership systems that are developing, telling me how I may use something that I have purchased. Or that I do not truly own it such as is the case with most digital “purchases”.
You seem very relatable in several areas I have identified, like minded and able to comprehend my point of view. Able to explain without condescension. I am new to socialising online (in general really, trying to step out of my shell). I found the fediverse on my travels to escape big tech, see my original post here. If you do not mind sharing your thoughts, where would you recommend looking for someone socially awkward, very concerned over privacy but not to the point where that becomes the central point of discussion as it can be a little triggering, a place to discuss things intellectually yet open and respectfully of one another?
I am just curious to hear your thoughts on this point. Thanks.
Regarding using a VM with a GPU passthrough, what software would you recommend for doing this with?
KVM Passthrough, e.g. with https://looking-glass.io/
However, it’s way too much hassle. Just run Steam in a sandbox, e.g. Firejail.
Is there anything for linux with the ease of gui setup that comes with virtualbox, that supports gpu passthrough. Wherever I look there is a need to dive into the terminal and use multiple applications to get things running.
Thanks.
This is the best guide you can find.
Thank you, I shall check that out.
You can use Gnome Boxes or virt-manager, but in the end you’ll still be fiddling with config files, as GPU pass-through is not really easy to do, or recommended in this case.
It’s only worth the hassle if you need Windows to play some games, and even then will Kernel-level anticheat still ban you in online games.
It’s much less hassle to use Firejail (or similar). That one just needs a few lines of config and already has predefined configs for Steam etc., however you might need to tweak them a bit if you store games and savegames somewhere else than your homedir.
Thanks for the reply. I have been progressing down the virt-manager route as it seems to come up a lot when talking about pass-through. Firejail is definetly on my list to research. Thank you.
tldr: use firejail. I already answered in your other thread: https://feddit.org/comment/13927222
You know you can cross-post so it shows up as cross-posted in other communities? You just need to hit that “copy” button once you posted the first one.
I’d have answered here instead of !piracy if I had seen that it’s a crosspost.
Thanks, I’ll look into crossposting for going forwards.
I’ll check out firejail. Thanks for the recommendation.
you can with GPU passthrough. not a simple process though, and not all hardware supports it.
plus you need a dedicated gpu for the VM.
I just use a different user with no privileges to run any pirated or suspicious software.
Thank you, that is something to consider. What are your thoughts on sandboxing vs using a user with no privileges?
Flatpak sandboxing is weak. For truly untrusted software like pirated games I’d definitely go for a different user which in Linux provides a very strong isolation.
What about firejail vs a separate limited user account?
I’m not familiar with firejail, sorry. I guess that firejail (or regular containers with podman) can be ok for CLI tools which only need access to very specific paths, if any. But for graphical applications like games you probably have to grant a lot of access.
Using a separate user is simpler and it’s guaranteed that the software can only write to the home dir of the user (and other temp paths like /tmp that you don’t care). In case of problems, just wipe the home dir and you are good.
This sounds like a good idea. Thank you for taking the time.
I’m running everything that is proprietary (Steam for example) on a second user that is a not an admin account. Heroic and the like are installed via Flatpak that is sandboxed. Sometimes games contain malware, even on Steam. If something goes badly wrong, I purge that second user.
Sounds like a good idea, thank you for the suggestion.
OP, FYI: GPU passthrough isn’t riskless (OpSec-wise), unfortunately. This Hacker News thread contains pointers if you’d wish to read up on that.
Thanks for the link, I think nothing is riskless. All just a game of chance, just trying to minimise those risks to a reasonable degree.
If piratded games have malicious files its most likely for windows users, you can install repacks on Linux very easily though.
When you say repacks, are these repacks of files designed to be used in windows with pre-installed cracks etc or is it more specifically a repack designed to be run under linux?
They work on Linux like they do on windows. Use heroic games launcher add any repack, make sure to DISABLE “WOW64” mode because it’ll make your repack stuck on a certain point, so disable it.
This is something I’ll have to look into further as I do not fully understand the whole concept of what is happening when running windows games under linux and how something is repacked to only work on linux. Thank you though.
