I’ve always bought my games on steam or OFFICIAL key resellers (GMG) since I was an adult, but sometimes it has got really expensive.
Do you consider ‘cracked games’ safe for your PC, your data, and finally your privacy?
You should always support developers, but it’s not always possible.
Running any binary that you can’t examine the source of (and confirm it was built from it without modification) is risky. It’s mostly a balance of trust and risk. Even developers have been known to insert what we could malware.
That said, if you get your cracked content from a trusted source, I’d say it’s generally safe. Otherwise, exercise extreme caution.
Is GMG an official reseller? Maybe I am out of the loop, but I thought they operated in the grey market.
GreenManGaming is a legitimate reseller, in a similar fashion to humble bundle or similar sellers.
I also do not like them because their keys if you are buying on sale for a new launch, their keys are usually UK based as they are UK based and they will not let you play on sooner launch dates, as I learned with Mirrors Edge Catalyst’s release when I wanted to play on day 1 and should have bought direct through origin, but instead now I had to wait a week, and they did not offer a refund policy.
So instead I bought the game again on origin and gave away the other key as a free giveaway to spite them 😂
Run them in a sandboxed VM?
VM escaping is not impossible, but its probably outside of the ability of most cracked games with malware.
Even better; Go with a bare metal linux install, and then use a sandboxed VM.
Even less malware is going to be able to VM escape and then also have any idea of what to do in a linux environment, purely because the vast, vast majority of
exploits(I should say malware, not exploits per se) are designed to fuck up Windows.Is this perfectly safe?
No, but nothing is.
Any legitimately purchased game with closed source, kernel level anti cheat could be doing literally anything to your PC, and you wouldn’t know.
GOG digitally signs their games and have no DRM, thus no need for cracks.
If you can get a hold of a GOG version, you can check its validity.
For games outside the GOG ecosystem, they are all unfortunately at risk.
I played Baldur’s Gate 3 via a pirated GOG version on release with friends until I was able to afford my own copy, then moved the saved game over to the legit copy.
No.
I pirate everything, but am very very reluctant to do so with software or games.
I only pirate in cases where the company involved is just too gross to support (looking at you, Adobe), or if there’s absolutely no other option.
But I consider pirated software and games absolutely suspect 100% of the time, because I’m old enough to remember when every keygen was also a keylogger, and every crack was also a rootkit and touching any pirated software was going to give you computer herpes without fail.
So maybe it’s not that bad anymore, but I mean, do you fully trust in the morals of someone who would spend the time helping you steal someone else’s shit to not add just one more little thing to it for themselves?
every keygen was also a keylogger
Always worth rolling those dice - think of the amazing trackers jams!
Exactly my thoughts. I already missed a deal on GMG twice because they’re not super clear when they’re discounts ends, and I were too late. I won’t buy a game full price on steam so unofficial key resellers are probably what I’ll use.
Since the money won’t go to the developers for sure, I thought I may as well pirate it, but yeah I’m a bit concerned about safety tbh. It isn’t anime or netflix we’re talking about.
IsThereAnyDeal.com helps a lot with knowing when it’s worth to buy a game.
