Hacker News Reader

Comment by everyone | Hacker News Reader

What? I get all my games on Windows DRM free from the likes of Gog and Itch.io. If there is a game I want to play that has DRM I get a nice clean pirate copy.

View on HN

> nice clean pirate copy

While I abhor DRM, I also am averse to the potential malware lurking in there. There may be password and credit card sniffers.

I only play non-DRM and open-source games.

I trust the pirate community infinitely more than I trust any big corporation, Microsoft, EA, Steam etc.

Imo it's more common for the "legit" copy of the software to have dodgy spyware and such in it, which is removed by the cracker.

That corporate spyware won’t steal your credit card. I’d rather have my data stolen than money

Well, you give them the card for a free trial, then end up forgetting to cancel, and the effect is similar.

I'm curious now. I have actually never heard of malware of any kind being put into a release by a reputable scene group, cracker or repacker. Eg. Empress, Fitgirl.

Does anyone have any links to instances of this happening?

I don't have an example from reputable crackers, but the could exit-scam at any point.

Here's an example of malware delivered via purportedly cracked software.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ransomware-hits-research-facility...

Cheers for link! but there is almost zero info about the cracked program or malware, its not really a data point at all imo.

Also, from the description there is, it kinda sounds like guy just googled and downloaded a random exe from internet.

"If there is a game I want to play that has DRM I get a nice clean pirate copy."

Surely you understand that people who work in building games don't exactly like that attitude ;) So they might decide to release exclusively on Switch and not do a PC port, if pirate copies are plentiful on PC but rare on Switch.

BTW, I believe most of the games I've played recently are Switch-exclusive:

- Super Smash Bros.

- Super Mario Odyssey

- Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Wars

"Surely you understand that people who work in building games don't exactly like that attitude ;)"

I am a game dev.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com