As a Loonix enjoyer I prefer a pre-installed game folder compressed in a 7z archive or whatever instead from cs.rin.ru, it just werks. In Lutris.
I used fit girl for a game I didn’t know if my first pc build would run a game I wanted to buy. It didn’t work, I upgraded my pc and tried it again and then it worked.
I’m glad they are around now that I’m trying to learn about pc gaming.
Same here. The problem was that I needed more RAM. 🙃
Folks here are like “everyone uses it. Eventually all gamers realize it’s better”
Me, having never even heard of this in my 30 years of gaming: 🫣
It’s a catch 22. If everyone uses it, game companies get it shut down, and then it doesn’t exist, and then nobody uses it. The only existing methods of piracy are little known. That you’ve never heard of it is expected.
Same. I had no idea what the title meant at all. Interesting though.
Yaaarggh! Fuck you auto mod, I’m trying to be helpful. >:(
Just FYI: Links to such sites are a liability for the instance operators.
Wait fitgirl is actually a female? Been using those repacks for a very long time. A legend among the scene.
Yep, she was super happy when another girl came upon the scene, Empress. They collabed on a big release one time and I remember her saying “Girl power!”, then not long after Empress had a big ego trip and falling out with the repackers.
That’s some lore I didn’t know. Pirates and egos, an iconic duo.
Yesterday I tried to mod persona 4 golden on Linux. After a couple hours of headaches and some help from the developer, I finally managed to fix the problem and launch persona aaaaand denuvo shut it down.
Denuvo literally shut down my legal version of P4G because I used one too many versions of proton. This is why I support fitgirl
Yeah, Denuvo registers every version of Proton as a different computer. So when you cycle through a bunch of different versions, Denuvo sees you booting it on a bunch of different computers back-to-back. IIRC Denuvo’s ToS allows for 5 different computers to boot a game within 24 hours. So it locks you out for 24h, as an anti-account-sharing measure. It has hit the spotlight a few times recently, because of the Steam Deck users needing to cycle through Proton versions.
Same thing happened to me with Street fighter 6. I was just trying to get it to run and kept switching proton versions and it got locked.
Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn’t taking less important files out of the game, she’s compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs
- do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression.
- give no flying fucks about players, who might have really slow connections.
And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong? …nah.”
do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression
I’ve installed one game from FitGirl so far. It took three hours to unpack while hammering all the cpu cores, failed, and required another three-hour go to install properly.
So you’re saying that all games should install like this?
So you’re saying that all games should install like this?
Given other people addressed the same point, but unlike you they aren’t disingenuously assuming words into my mouth, I think it’s pretty safe to block you as dead weight.
Wow, very mature.
“Developers should do compression like FitGirl does.”
“Oh no I didn’t mean developers should do compression like FitGirl does.”
The thing about compression is you have to process it to decompress it. It may be benificial to people with limited bandwidth, or for peer-to-peer sharing, but it’s probably better for most users for someone like Valve to share the uncompressed version. Bandwidth isn’t the issue it used to be.
It also makes progressive updates harder. The best you can do is compress each update individually, not the whole package.
I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.
Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:
- to 10 GiB, and it takes 2min to unpack it in a certain machine
- to 3 GiB, and it takes 8min to unpack it in a certain machine
FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.
And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)
Tagging @fiestorra@discuss.tchncs.de, as it addresses what they said too.
I don’t know any that take a long time to unpack from developers. They do have to pre-compile shaders, but that’s different. Maybe I just don’t pay enough attention, or maybe it’s just because I don’t play many big budget games.
From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don’t think it’s just the Linux version.
Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl’s site, found EU5 instead, and she’s complaining about the exact same thing:
Installation takes 5-12 minutes (depending on your system, mostly on your drive speed – the game has more than 49000 small files, Paradox never learn from their mistakes)
I did play EU5 (and 4 ages ago) and didn’t notice the issue. I guess I just don’t pay attention to it.
I did because my older computer was a potato, so it was kind of obvious the game took a bit too long to install.
I wouldn’t really say that. The kind of extreme compression Fitgirl does comes with the tradeoff of really long decompression times. Depending on which games, nearly 45 minutes (with a 7800x3D)
Some games lack compression but I would not want those long install times by default, if you have a speedy internet connection they usually take longer to install than to download. Don’t get me wrong, for people with really slow internet those repacks are a godsend but they are not “better” on every aspect.
Steam gets around this problem by doing the decompressing on the fly as you download. Go check out your CPU usage next time you install a game.
Edit: I think this is also why it defaults to not downloading while you game. Steam doesn’t want you to have a bad experience from the decompression.
More like check your hdd. Steam goes like this for me download, download, download, pause downloading to extract and smash my hdd, download, download, downloand.
Yeah I think it ends up waiting for slower storage if your cpu or HDD are too slow. I experience that with slower sdcards on the Deck.
But on a decent NVMe with a balanced CPU the download and disk are full bore and the CPU usage goes really high.
Ahh yeah this could be. My system isn’t by any means crazy but it is modern. A tuned 5600x (draws about 115W at full load) and an nvme 3.0 ssd. I’m being bottlenecked by internet bandwidth at the moment.
Is this why steam is so insanely slow to download games.
It can be, spinning iron has pretty bad throughput.
Could be a variety of things but yes. It also depends on the game and how compressible it’s assets are.
Honestly I can’t remember the last time a fitgirl release took longer to install than an ‘official’ copy.
And pretty much as long as I’ve had a computer it’s been “bottom of the barrel” hardware.
It’s more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.
Fair point. I guess it would be more accurate to say “development studios” (you know, the organisation… including the bloody boss) instead of “game devs”.
This implies fitgirl is doing it properly. Which it’s trade off faster download longer install times or vice versa.
Decompression during install is generally less of a bottleneck than network bandwidth, so fitgirl is doing it properly.
No it’s making a choice. Faster decompress times. Considering a lot of their customers have fast speeds it doesn’t really matter.
Bingo. And this means they’re effectively choosing who their games are for. And then complaining the ones they didn’t choose decided to pirate it.
God bless Fitgirl
If you can afford it
Might be a better option, or least send the devs some support while using repacks. It’s sort of like a thrift store when you find something you really wanted maybe a game you didn’t even know of, and it means a lot more because it feels like finding a treasure.
I actually didn’t know that the whole point of fitgirl was for compression, I’ve been blessed with massive hard drives. I think I took my 4tb ssd for granted. Not everyone has even an extra $5 .
If you can afford it. Might be a better option, or least send the devs some support while using repacks.
Honestly, I think this is a case-by-case basis. I don’t weep for EA losing money when people acquire The Sims for example. The people that did the heavy lifting already got paid, and the less money that’s going into the Trump Empire and Saudi Arabian pockets the better.
That’s almost besides the point, though. We’re living in a time where if you buy something you for the most part don’t own it. Buy an EV? Then the battery is rented. Buy an iPhone? You don’t get to choose what software or hardware to put in it, only Apple batteries are acceptable else your screen/camera/faceID array will magically stop working. Android phones are barking down the same route.
Buy an eBook/Audiobook from Amazon? Well they can edit and redact it whenever they please. A film from iTunes? DRMed, bound to die whenever Apple decides to no longer support your platform. Video game? You get a license to run the software, nothing more.
There are studios I feel happy supporting, ones that treat their customers and their workers right. Don’t think a single one of them is a AAA studio though. Like, why should I pay Bethesda when they don’t pay their musicians?
My logic is buy the game, now you have a perpetual license. I bought Abe’s Oddysee on the PS1, I can now download any roms, any re-releases, any ports. Buy all new games, and if it gets taken off of steam, free reign to pirate.
I don’t know which stores exactly are listed there. But at least with some shady key resellers, piracy might actually be better than buying from them according to some indie devs: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48908726
I actually didn’t know that the whole point of fitgirl was for compression
The whole point of view of the article is about people from countries that can’t afford the modern AAA price, internet bandwidth… and even PC capable to run the game decently (AAA the full price always take in account hardware that runs on “Ultra settings”; not the customers running it at very low).
As aside note, piracy isn’t even about piracy itself anymore: someone who buy an AAA videogame on “exclusivity store” (such as Epic)… soon or later will discover that’s easier to store a fitgirl copy of his purchase to run the same game seamelessly across all the PC in their household (good old: Install > Next > Next > Finish) … rather having set up those 2+3 launcher per PC.
The best option is piracy. Do not engage in capitalism where you can avoid it.
Excluding Indie devs, sure. Stardew Valley will always have my full support.
It probably has the same deals as your website, but I use https://gg.deals/. It shows keyshops with the various risks that might be associated with them, too
it’s consistent, quick, and dependable. There’s no reason to use anything else. I get the original purpose was for people in countries with slow internet connections but now everyone just uses it.
Which is kinda positive because that mean faster torrents
It’s harder to use on Linux, and lower-performance devices. I would prefer prefer having dumps of the pre-installed game folder to use on a steam deck, for example.
I’d suggest having a look into LinuxRuleZ! repacks, maybe not for lower performance devices but at least it’s like 2 clicks and you’re up and running for basically any game.
Even games that are notoriously difficult to make work pirated, like Forza Horizon 4 and 5.
I use it all the time on linux, what problems did you have?
EA: please take it out of the game.
I mainly had trouble on the steam deck, in the early days. Most people recommended unpacking on a windows PC and transferring the files back then. It might be easier now, but it is more trouble than a game dump.
What’s your process for running the unpacker executable? Maybe it depends on the game, but I set up a wineprefix through Lutris and always seem to run into issues getting it to complete properly without any unpacking errors.
Here are some tips for FitGirl installers on linux:
For the setup:
Final Edit: The wine prefix is the same for the games and the installer, just a windows subsystem that has all the dependencies.
First I install the wine-cachyos package, create a WINEPREFIX variable for the folder i want to put the prefix in, then i run winecfg to start the prefix, then I install the dotnet packages and vcredist packages through (before, when the repos existed) these links for the vcredist and dotnet (maybe archive.org or somewhere else still have the executables), or using winetricks too, but these are nicer to use as they install everything in one go.
Then I install the dxvk and vkd3d (you can install through lutris, so this is kinda useless hahaha).
Then I run the fitgirl repack through lutris and click to install the vcredist or .net when asked.
Then I just run the game with a runner or wine-cachyos.
I’ll update this with valid links when I find them.
Edit: last time I used this and this, installing just the .net runtimes, not directx, java, silverlight, etc.
winetricks should be able to install all of those dependencies, including versions of .net and vcredist. But it’s a terminal script, so requires the environment variables that Wine uses for the paths and stuff.
Yeah, remembered that wrong, thanks for the correction! Corrected it in my comment.
winecfg can add drives too, I always put an U: to /home/username , that makes it easier to pick a better location to install the game files (in my case, to ~/Games). A lot of things can be tweaked with winetricks and winecfg hahaha.
I think WINEPREFIX is all those tools need. Lutris can use that too (if i remember correctly).
The last time I used one, I had to edit some paths in a .md5 file to get the hash verification to work.
You’re missing the point. The other user is highlighting why your typical player would go with those repacks. And, well, your typical player doesn’t use Linux (…yet - Microsoft is fixing this real fast.)
(I typically use johncena141, but I don’t recall having problems with FitGirl.)
I also have problems on Linux. I’ve tried a few different methods, but ultimately, they always end up seeming to freeze and make no further progress after a certain point.
As someone trying to move to Linux this year, what issues are there? I’ve heard this before, but I never see an explanation on what makes it difficult.
Proton can handle the game files but not the installer. So you have to install in wine and it’s a hassle. I install the games on my windows pc, zip them and then transfer them to my deck.
At that point perhaps it’s easier to just not use FitGirl’s releases.
Since Fitgirl’s installer just unpacks stuff, I just use the same prefix for all installers. Protontricks/wine lets you specify a path in the Z:/ drive as well (the linux base system), so no need to move stuff.
I even made a dummy exe file that does nothing and added that as a non steam game that works as a catch-all prefix for whatever I need to run without adding it as a non steam game first.
Huh? I add the installer to steam, use proton and install. No problem.
The fitgirl unpacker and installer? Tbh I never tried, everyone on the web simply said it didn’t work.
They seem to work fine for me on Linux? Only thing is that stupid isdone.dll error but that’s easily fixed using a different runner
The repacker* is great but there’s also ElAmigos and DODI.
They crack, she repacks
They crack, she repacks
This is just not true. Both DODI and ElAmigos are Repackers.
ElAmigos repacks are actually pretty good from my experience.
I only use DODI when there is no Fitgirl release. DODI torrents are always behind spam/scam link gates and the installer is horrible. In the DODI installer to start it for some reason you have to press the up arrow or something. Just… why? It’s like he saw that feature on his phone lock screen and decided to add it without asking himself what purpose it serves. The installer is also totally broken if you have changed windows scaling so every time I want to use it I have to go into the properties and disable scaling.
DODI works better on Linux tho
Ah, alright alright
DODI torrents are always behind spam/scam link gates
There’s a bypass script for this and should be on the DB0 megathread list (or at least in the PiratedGames megathread).
and the installer is horrible. In the DODI installer to start it for some reason you have to press the up arrow or something. Just… why?
Honestly, I never found this to be an issue. But can understand it could be a bit annoying.
I’ve had a lot less of a desire to pirate games after moving to Linux full time a few years ago. But FitGirl has been the one reliable place for public torrents, compaed to chancing it on the third Google Link or scrolling through the Russian CS-Rin-Rulette forum to find links.
I’ve never had a single problem with cs-rin and I’d be surprised if the average person ever would.
Why would you ever use google to find torrents?
It was 5-10 years ago, not too hard to find and a little before Google intentionally made things harder to find. I’ve used many public and private trackers, but it’s just that these days my interest in movies has disappeared almost completely, and I’m happy with most of the games I have.
If you ever get back into it, look into jackett. Consolidates a large number of trackers (some some setup) which makes life so much easier.
I prefer Prowlarr personally but yes Jackett is great.
I have zero trust installing pirated software, especially when they go out of their way to break it when using wine on Linux or running it in a vm.
You must’ve stumbled on some bad sources I’m afraid.
They don’t go out of their way to break it, they just don’t pay attention to it (yet). There was an interesting interview here a few months ago: https://lemmy.world/post/32441387
i’m surprised, i just thought if you couldn’t afford a game these days you waited till it was 90% off on steam
I thought there was something like patient gamers who only played games a year after release or something like this but I can’t find it
I used to, but steam is based in a banana republic where I don’t want to send a single avoidable cent anymore. I stopped buying anything from steam months ago. Haven’t gotten a new game since, but I will look into gog, who are based in Europe if I am not mistaken.
What do you mean?
He’s boycotting US business.
^
Steam doesn’t release every game in every market, do they?
That’s me, I have a MASSIVE wait-list on Isthereanydeal.com and buy most games at strong $5, including triple A games, assuming I haven’t already gotten them for free from Epic, Amazon or Good Ole Games.
However, if I know it’s NEVER going to go down or it’s from Nintendo, torrents all the way.
Still is more than a dollar so would rather play first and pay later when I’m not having to go to the food bank.
I was checking this year and most of the things I want from a few years ago are still at 50%. But I don’t have enough time to play everything so I won’t likely pirate new stuff even though I very much know how to do so safely.
Hell, new games aren’t even competing with just each other- I’ve had a blast playing a lot of PS2 and PSP this year. When you don’t give in to hype and peer pressure, you’ve got near limitless options for entertainment.
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The article is using it because FitGirl uses it.
Yeah i seen that… so i just deleted the comment. It’s still weird to me that they are using it, but I love the movie so maybe it will generate exposure for people to watch it.
