Pirate games on linux
While cracking and piracy hurts Linux a lot, some of us just can’t afford it. I switched over to Linux full-time a few days ago and have gotten the basics down. This guide is for those who are also just beginners in Linux. It took a while for me to understand the process behind cracking in Linux and everything it involves which is why I’m making this guide so it wouldn’t be so hard for you. Truth is, it’s not that hard.
Step 1: Look for LINUX cracks
Don’t always turn to Windows cracks. As the gaming scene is rapidly evolving on Linux, so is the piracy scene. A good place for these Linux cracks are 1337x.to (look for user johncena141), Torrminatorr.com , RuTracker (the forum hurts my eyes but you can probably find something), SCNLOG and RLSBB.
Once you find something, it’s as simple as download, extract & play.
Step 2: Can’t find any linux cracks?
If that’s the case, you’ll have to use a Windows crack. First of all, some tools you’ll need. Install Wine if you haven’t already. Wine, simply said, is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications.
Install Lutris too. Lutris is a game manager which will make your life a little bit easier.
Before anything, you should check out the game on ProtonDB . Look at how many people can run the game, how well it’s supported, what problems other people have had, what problems you might encounter, how you can fix those problems, etc.
If the game you’ve downloaded has a setup.exe you can simply open your terminal, type in wine and simply drag&drop the setup.exe into your terminal (skip this if you’ve just got the game files instead of a setup.exe). This will point to the file path of your .exe and actually tell wine what to run. After you’ve pressed enter it will start spitting a bunch of gibberish into the terminal and launch the setup.exe. Install the game, doesn’t really matter where. Once the setup has completed, make sure you UNCHECK «launch after closing» or anything similar. Now, open Lutris and click on the little plus button top left. The name and release year don’t matter. Select «Wine (Runs Windows games)» from the runner list. Click on the «Game options» tab and next to «Executable» click «Browse» and browse to your game/launcher.exe. Do the same for «Wine prefix» but instead of the game/launcher.exe browse to the game directory where the game files are along with the .exes and what-not. Click «save» and press play. If all goes well, your game will launch and you’ll play. If not, check out the game in ProtonDB and look for clues on how to get it to run if you haven’t yet. It’s your best friend at this point as people will tell you what worked for them, what didn’t work, what versions of wine/proton they were using, etc.
If nothing works, as a last resort you can Steam to run the cracked .exe through Proton. Make sure Proton is enabled and installed (Steam > Settings > Steam Play > Enable Steam Play for supported titles & Enable Steam Play for all other titles). Now add a «Non-steam game» by clicking ADD A GAME bottom left of Steam and browse to the .exe of your game. Right click on the game in your library, go to properties and force it to use Proton under the Compatibilty tab. (Thanks u/jaKz9!)
Sometimes though, you’ll have to accept defeat. I wanted to play Cartel Tycoon, but when I saw that 75% of the people on ProtonDB couldn’t even run the game legit through steam, I knew that I won’t be able to either. Sometimes you get lucky, but in situations like these where it’s a new game, badly supported and there aren’t many reports to give you more info, it’s best to leave it be for now and wait for a new crack, better support or more reports. Applies to SCUM as well. I even have the legit game bought on Steam but since the support is still quite bad and it’s not a massively known game, I can get about 10-12FPS MAX on low settings with an i5-8600k and a GTX 1660 Ti.
And that’s pretty much all there’s to it! There’s some more advanced ways of doing it like installing PlayOnLinux , downloading a custom version of proton and replacing the wine version in POL with the downloaded proton version. You can also look up the game in Lutris, install it, download a cracked version of that game and installing the cracked version on top of the Lutris installation to apply the crack. Lutris creates wine prefixes that are pre-configured for that game which gives you a higher chance of getting the game to work but I haven’t tried this.
If any big brains have suggestions or something to add I’ll make sure to edit this post with them. Thank you for reading and hope this helps!
Pirate games on linux
Alternative: gitlab.com/dataprolet/linux-crack-tips & lemmy.world/c/linuxcracksupport — Formerly known as the place to share and discuss everything about the intersection of Linux, Gaming and Piracy.
Linux is foremost about freedom to do what you want so feel free to ignore all my advice in here and experiment on your own.
Here is a simple guide of how to best pirate windows games on Linux. I assume before reading this guide that you know how to copy paste commands into a linux terminal and that you know the basics of how to pirate games on windows. This is why this guide only focuses on getting the game files and then running exe files on linux because I assume you already know how to do simple obvious things like apply a crack. I wrote this guide because the other ones I found don’t work very well or require using steam.
Step 1: Obtaining the game.
Your first step is to get the game files of the game you want to play. Even though you are on linux it’s still very important that you get game files that are trusted. Linux offers some protection against windows viruses but they can still affect you. For example a malicious exe that deletes or encrypts all your files will be as effective on Linux as on Windows because software run with wine will have permissions to your entire home directory. There are some ways to «sandbox» software by running it as another user for example but this will not be explained in this guide because it would be too long.
Things I recommend downloading in order of most recommended:
- Gog releases
Gog installer exes are very easy to find. The exe can be verified with osslsigncode and there is an option to verify the integrity of the other installer files when running the installer exe so they can be downloaded from even non trusted sources without any issues. Gog releases also don’t need any cracks. Some cracks especially older ones might not work very well on wine so avoiding them is good.
Verifying gog executable signatures:
osslsigncode verify gog_installer.exe - Scene releases
Scene releases are usually very easy to find on torrent and other websites. Some even have a hash in the nfo that you can check to make sure that the scene release has not been tampered with. Scene isos should be mounted with the mount command like:
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/iso
sudo mount scene_iso.iso /mnt/iso Then you can go in /mnt/iso and run the installer with what I explain in Step 2. In case the installer does not work the .bin in the iso is usually a freearc archive that can be extracted with freearc .
Empress releases also fall in this category even though they are not really scene releases. - Steam files from cs.rin.ru
An amazing source of both uncracked and cracked files for games. The only issues are that you need to register an account to access links and the clean files are sometimes uploaded to file hosts that have quota issues. You may also need to spend some time getting familiar with the forum. These do not come with cracks but there is usually a crack in the same thread if you look around. It is also an amazing source to find game updates. Just use general precautions like don’t download files that were just posted from a just created account and you’ll be fine safety wise. - Linux repacks from LinuxRulez.
These are simple to use repacks and the guy making them seems cool. You should be able to just run the installer and then play without any tinkering with wine needed. The main issue with them is that the torrents are on websites that need an account to access and that they might not be well seeded so download might be very slow. The other possible issue is that if you download an older repack the version of wine/proton might be outdated. Wine/proton is something that always improves so it might be best to always use the latest version to get the best performance. - Windows Repacks:
Windows repacks are not generally recommended. There is nothing wrong with repacks themselves and if wine was as good as windows there would be no issues with using them.
The problem is that these repacks are made for windows, are tested on windows and might have issues installing on wine. This is why I recommend using another option if you have the choice. If they work for you that’s great but don’t complain if one of them doesn’t install properly.
If you really want to use repacks keep in mind that more complex repacks like Fitgirl are less likely to work than simpler repacks like DODI but this is just a general rule that might not apply all the time.
They also usually don’t contain the original game files which might limit your debugging options if things do not work.
Step 2: Running exe files on Linux
Wine is a compatibility layer that lets you run windows exe files on Linux. Valve has its own fork of wine that they use called proton. In this guide I will be teaching you how to use proton because it’s the thing that is most likely to work.
Proton ge is a fork of proton that can be easily downloaded from github which is why I’m using it in this guide. These steps probably also work with the official valve proton but the set up steps will be slightly different. Normally proton is used with steam but with the following instructions you can use it without having steam installed.
Note that this installs GE-Proton7-31 which is the most recent one as of writing this. I recommend you always use the latest one from https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases and adapt these instructions for it. Make sure to replace GE-Proton7-31 with your proton version in all the following commands.
Open up a terminal and run this:
mkdir -p ~/proton
cd ~/proton
mkdir -p compatdata
#Note that this should be replaced by the link to the latest release from: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases
wget https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/download/GE-Proton7-31/GE-Proton7-31.tar.gz
tar xf GE-Proton7-31.tar.gz
cd GE-Proton7-31
rm files/lib64/wine/x86_64-windows/lsteamclient.dll files/lib/wine/i386-windows/lsteamclient.dll
Running the game (or installing it):
Open up a terminal in the same directory as the exe and:
SteamAppId=480 STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH=$HOME/proton/compatdata/ STEAM_COMPAT_CLIENT_INSTALL_PATH=/ ~/proton/GE-Proton7-31/proton waitforexitandrun executable.exe
executable.exe is the executable you are trying to run.
GE-Proton7-31 is the proton version. Make sure to change it to the right folder name if yours is different.
Replace the 480 number in SteamAppId=480 with the steam game appid if you are running a steam game. This is how proton will know which game it is so it can apply specific fixes if needed.
Pirate games on linux
im playing simcity on linux using this method and it’s working good.
What you need:
Wine
Play On Linux
Steam Proton (optional but games will work better)(im not gonna show how to install steam proton because there is many tutorials on internet how to do it. If you played some steam games before you might have it already)
Step1 download needed software (im not gonna show how to do it because it might be different for each distro, if you want to play games on linux you should know how to download this things)
Step2 (if you dont want to use proton skip to step 3)
Move folder proton x.xx from /home/youruser/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/ to /home/youruser/.PlayOnLinux/wine/linux-amd64
Now proton should appear in playonlinux in /tools/manage wine versions/wine versions(amd64) (if you cant see it restart playonlinux and make sure you moved folder to right direction)
Step3
Download some game (it must be setup, playonlinux only support setup installers, so preinstalled games wont work with this methods)
Step4
Click /file/install press button/link in the left corner
click next couple times, enter the name of the game you want (in my case simcity) click next, select setup file and wait for game to install
Step5 (only if you downloaded proton before)
Play On Linux might not select proton by default so select your game, press configure and change wine version to proton
Some games might start in wrong resolution. Just go to ingame settings and change resolution)