Highly recommend FitGirl's repacks, which is listed there. I don't pirate many games these days, but when I do, her releases have always been clean and working for me, even running her installers under Proton on Linux worked without a hitch (for Sims 4, I think? was probably the last game I said "no I'm not fucking paying that").
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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FitGirl rings a bell — thanks for mentioning!
I'm particularly fond of steamrip.com
Nothing to install. Just download and play.
How do we make sure there are no viruses or malware?
Scan it with the antivirus you're already using. And take regular precautions like not disabling essential Windows security features like UAC.
I don't use an antivirus on Windows 11, except for the free one included in Windows.
And I feel it may not reveal all kinds of virus
My solution is to play on Linux haha
That's funny but be aware that some malware can wreak havoc even on WINE
If running it via Lutris or from the command line you can use as command prefix a proper sandboxing application like Firejail so that wine itself is launched inside a sandbox.
For example I have it set up in Lutris so that by default all my games run with networking disabled.
As per your point, Wine is just an adaptor layer not an emulator or sandbox, so a Windows binary running in Wine can try and load Linux libraries and start doing Linux stuff rather than Windows stuff if it succeeds (in other words, it's perfectly possible to make Windows malware that acts as Linux malware when it detects its running with Wine)
Good to know!
What kind of games are you looking for?
There are several high profile gaming classics on archive.org:
Here are several Valve games:
https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Valve+Corporation%22
Here you have some Bioshock releases:
https://archive.org/search?query=bioshock&tab=software
I read that Epic released Unreal Tournament 2004 on Archive.org a few years ago shortly after they killed the master server:
https://archive.org/search?tab=software&query=unreal+tournament
There are plenty more to find over there
I keep on forgetting how many beautiful things are on archive.org. I was primarily looking for new’ish AAA titles, which usually get DMCA’d into oblivion. However, I will take a look at archive.org again, because I wanted to look at some MSDOS classics, too.
I wouldn't, simply because most game publishers favour Windows, and Windows is the least secure OS out there. While some legitimately purchased PC games do contain malware (such as rootkits — typically, these are used to ensure you are not cheating in online matches, but some are also used to ensure only people who paid for the game can play it), the fact that hobbyists are volunteering their time to bypass these checks and either injecting their own code in, or having you run a program that does so on your machine (a cracker), you have to wonder if they are entirely altruistic. Sure, there are some the community trusts, like FitGirl. But you never know.
What I like is when people share the GOG installers. For those who don't know, GOG is a game storefront that used to be part of CD Projekt Red (The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077) but has since spun off on its own. More importantly, their installers are DRM free and work offline. If a game is available on GOG and there's also a torrent of the cracked Steam version or whatever, I would be VERY wary of the latter, since the game already exists DRM-free. So you have to ask yourself why you should run third party code. Sure, it may be that the cracked version came first, but if it's on GOG, the cracked one should just go away. It's fine that the crack was accomplished, but there's simply no need to trust the cracker to not infect your system, when the game is already available DRM-free. And, in my experience, the GOG installers are pretty easy to come by. And, IIRC, you can verify their checksum against GOG itself to verify the file has not been altered.
Thanks for your valuable input. I am a Linux user and would run the games only via Proton/Wine. I am very careful when it comes to cracked games, as I had too many viruses during my Windows times.
DRM free games are the best choice, obviously, which is why I always buy those games on GOG. And to make it clear, I still love to spend a lot on games, just not on EA, Ubisoft, etc. The only exception here is Bethesda, because I am a TES addict.
Keep in mind that Wine is not immune to Windows malware, which is always a possibility with pirated software.
You can use Bottles, which runs sandboxed on flatpak and in my experience works better than adding executables to Steam as a "Non-Steam game".
Linux isn't inherently safer. It's only less of a risk to run pirated games on it, because fewer people are using it.
Linux has much, much better privilege separation, and builtin tools like selinux and apparmor.
Steamrip is your friend
Gazelle games is a really good torrent site if you can get in. It's where I get most of my pirated games.
The same way as anything else: find a torrent tracker, download, install, play.
He asked how to pirate games, not how to get keylogged and ransomwared.
You know, I have been pirating since eDonkey times and I have my fair share of experience, which is exactly the reason for me to ask here. It is easy to find something to download. But as mentioned by others, I’d rather have a clean system, with working software, without any hidden keyloggers or cryptominers.
But you do you!
You asked "how", not "where".
So your task is just finding a tracker you can trust enough. There are many ones with rather serious moderation where catching some "virus" is an extremely rare event.
And yet you still were not able to help me in my quest to find those “good” spots, so I am unsure what your goal is here.
DM'd, I've got a few private tracker invites