I am looking for help on how to run closed source / pirated games on linux within a virtual machine. I would like to start by saying if I could walk into a shop and buy with cash, a game on a CD like in the old days I would. I have recently become very privacy conscious and until I figure out a way to anonymously and privately purchase things like this I am going to stick with pirating. Also, it is helping me to archive content as everything seems to be moving online and I want to stick with offline applications / media etc in my control.
Now, I am familiar with virtualbox but of course, it is no good for gaming. I have read about other applications that offer much better performance with support for GPU passthrough or similar (but how does this affect the security side of things when running pirated games). Forgive me, this is all quite new to me.
What I want is a virtual machine capable of gaming so that I can more safely run pirated games on linux. Also, I am very new to linux and some help in how I should actually go about running games on linux in the first place. I do not want to just install steam because it has closed source elements and being more privacy conscious now, I’m not sure I want to. Though I am aware I can use the proton layer to enable gaming support which I believe is fully open source. For my purposes lutris sounds like it may be the route to go. Thoughts on this welcome.
As a side note, I am thinking of signing up to GOG as they, to me, seem like a better alternative to steam where I can actually own a DRM free copy of a game that I buy. On a pirating note I thought locating signed, hash checked GOG installers to be a good option for security for dipping my toe into pirating games on linux. I am much, much more comfortable with detecting and removing malware in a windows ecosystem. Linux, completely foreign. So I am trying to be careful.
Once I get fully set up I plan to buy the games I enjoy on GOG, I think that will be the path I can be most comfortable with. At the end of the day I will own a DRM free copy of the game itself. That is the best I can do where I cannot get it on physical media I think. I already do this for CD’s and DVD’s etc.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
First of all, don’t expose yourself to danger. Get your pirated games from reputable sources.
Most games only need a Steam emulator like Goldberg’s to run without license, and you can get clean steam files from cs.rin.ru. You don’t need VMs for this, it’s literally the original game.
If you need an actual crack, you can also look up on cs.rin.ru and try to gauge the reputation of the uploader. You can also check fitgirl or dodirepacks, they are both highly reliable. These are unlikely to have malware, but it’s not impossible.
If you want to use a vm because you still don’t trust the pirated game in question (reasonable), then there is no shortcut. Use the arch wiki to learn how to setup a VM with GPU passthrough, even if you don’t use arch it’s always a good place to get started.
I just use a different user with no privileges to run any pirated or suspicious software.
Thank you, that is something to consider. What are your thoughts on sandboxing vs using a user with no privileges?
Flatpak sandboxing is weak. For truly untrusted software like pirated games I’d definitely go for a different user which in Linux provides a very strong isolation.
OP, FYI: GPU passthrough isn’t riskless (OpSec-wise), unfortunately. This Hacker News thread contains pointers if you’d wish to read up on that.
I’d like to think that attackers making malicious pirate releases will focus on the large Windows userbase rather than the 1% of the 1% running them inside passthrough VMs but I get the point.
