this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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

  1. You'd need to specify the virtual environment path for Python.
  2. You'd need to specify the directory for which the games are located.
  3. You'd have to put a "game_info" file in each game's root directory.
  4. You'd need to have steamcmd installed.
  5. 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.

  1. The build number of the pirated game
  2. The Steam App ID
  3. 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 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Feel free to degrade me.

Are you okay?

[–] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

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 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's a lot of things honestly. For example, it's not surprising that education continues to be attacked so much in the US, as it reduces the prevalence of right wing opinions based off all polling. I think it's a big cause of the shift to the right among Gen Z, and I think the only thing that's going to fix it critical media literacy, which it might be too late for a bunch of that generation, and even some of Gen Alpha.

[–] solofroto@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Just marry me already.

[–] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

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[–] solofroto@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 pbysical sites can get banned if I try hard enough.

[–] Pirata@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

Really tells you the alignment that Reddit has, when a comment like this gets you banned.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

/r/conservative gets a pass on a lot of shit. Admins don't like it when they get called out for it.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

It's just a tip.

[–] solofroto@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Call me a masochist q:)

Nah, I'm just fuckin' around.

[–] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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 year ago (1 children)
[–] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)

What does this accomplish?

[–] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year 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

[–] garret@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The original pastebin does not exist anymore. Is this now the best code available for this solution to work? :)

[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] solofroto@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cool! And welcome to Lemmy! 😁

[–] solofroto@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you so much!!

[–] Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

That's cool man, big up.

[–] arararagi@ani.social 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] ladloss@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago
[–] AnotherPenguin@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah you're cool, have a nice day

[–] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Pyro@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] solofroto@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Of course. Maybe someone will find it useful :D

[–] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year 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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[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

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