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.

    • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachtsEnglish
      6·
      25 days 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.orgEnglish
        3·
        25 days 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.mlOPEnglish
          4·
          25 days 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.

        • Mike@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          24 days ago

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

          • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            24 days 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.orgEnglish
              1·
              24 days 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.

      • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        24 days 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.

        • Mike@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          24 days ago

          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.worksEnglish
            1·
            24 days ago

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

  • slacktoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    25 days ago

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

    • solofroto@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      25 days 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.

  • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    25 days 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.

    • Sixty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      25 days ago

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

  • pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    24 days 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

  • nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    24 days ago

    is it safe to install pirated games? how do you determine if a release is genuine and safe or not? i am an old man

    • Psythik@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      23 days ago

      I’ve been doing it for over 20 years and I’ve never had an issue.

      The piracy scene is very good at keeping everyone in check. If someone bundles in malware with their release, another cracking group is going* to call them out on it. These cracking groups have a reputation to uphold; none of them want to get caught sticking something nefarious in the install.

      If you’re getting all your content from a popular torrent tracker and not just some random sketchy website, you have nothing to worry about at all.

  • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.mlEnglish
    01·
    25 days 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.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      25 days 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.