301

I wrote an Update Checker script for my pirated games. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) by solofroto@lemmy.ml to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

62 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Edit: Everyone is asking for the code, so here it is. Keep in mind, this code assumes a few things:

You'd need to specify the virtual environment path for Python.
You'd need to specify the directory for which the games are located.
You'd have to put a "game_info" file in each game's root directory.
You'd need to have steamcmd installed.
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.

The build number of the pirated game
The Steam App ID
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.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours 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

[-] theblips@lemm.ee 1 points 4 hours ago

What does this accomplish?

[-] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 hours ago

It allows users to run the script on any installation of Python no matter where it's located, as well as allowing a user to set up specific Python package versions separate from the system-native ones.

Basically for flexibility and easy setup

[-] ladloss@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago

GOOD

[-] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours 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

[-] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Bruh you serious

[-] Psythik@lemm.ee 5 points 3 hours 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 doing 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.

[-] Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 hours ago

That's cool man, big up.

[-] arararagi@ani.social 2 points 9 hours ago

Damn that's cool, I was using steamdb's RSS for patch notes to keep track of Inzoi's updates, but I can see how it would become cumbersome for a big collection.

[-] Glide@lemmy.ca 96 points 1 day ago

Feel free to degrade me.

Are you okay?

[-] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 10 hours ago

don't worry he likes it

[-] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 hours ago

It's just a tip.

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 90 points 1 day 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.org 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 hours ago

What I will say is that over the last ~15yrs, globally, we've seen a hard shift towards the right wing of politics. But a lot of that has happened on the internet in specific spaces where folks have been radicalised, and if you get into niche enough communities then you just don't see it really at all.

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I wonder how much it was manufactured and how much is just the worst of human nature self amplifying. Probably bit of both. It's just easier to spread hate and fear than make people chill the fuck out and respect each other.

Any human community that tolarates bad behavior and does not sanction it appropriately will eventually fail and degenerate into a pile of shit, i.e. simply implode. The paradox of tolerance. Good social spaces are like gardens, they need to be maintained and weeds need to be removed. Otherwise it happens what happens.

[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 6 hours ago

I think it's a lot of things honestly. For example, it's not surprising that education continues to be attacked so much in the US, as it reduces the prevalence of right wing opinions based off all polling. I think it's a big cause of the shift to the right among Gen Z, and I think the only thing that's going to fix it critical media literacy, which it might be too late for a bunch of that generation, and even some of Gen Alpha.

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yep 100% agree, and it's not just the US. I don't want to even say that this is necessarily some kind of capitalist-fascist conscious conspiracy (in the early stages), but in a capitalist society there always is the push to strip the state to the minimum, lower taxes, privatize infrastructure and well, stripping education to the minimum needed to produce workers that perform just well enough for "the market" so they are not too qualified and do not have to be paid too much and are quickly and cheaply available.

Instead of focusing on developing well rounded human beings, education is reduced to a factory of cheap labor. With that comes the intellectual decline. German public schooling is facing a growing crisis as well and soon will get to the abysmal level of what one hears about the US.

Well and if you do that for a generation or two, society is too dumb to vote in their own interests or see through bullshit (which requires a certain foundation with respect to natural and social sciences). And NOW you have opened the door to the really bad actors who abuse the shit out of the weakened society. Which is the point where we are now.

And here we go, we got political from an initially non political discussion.. Well, I guess there is some truth to the saying that everything is political, and right now it looks like most of the big problems have the same political cause.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago

Just marry me already.

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 2 points 12 hours ago

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

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours 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.org 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours 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.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day 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.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

Omg Reddit is so bad. Genuinely bad. And it's hard for me to be disgusted.

load more comments (3 replies)

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago

Call me a masochist q:)

Nah, I'm just fuckin' around.

[-] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 44 points 1 day ago

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

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day 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.

[-] undone@lemm.ee 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Totally agree with "We don't degrade in these parts. We give constructive criticism or say dope that's awesome!"

The one exception being people teasing us badly without sharing their code.

Edit: nevermind... just saw your edit. Nice job! Thanks for sharing :)

[-] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 4 points 23 hours ago

That's understandable I just see no value to that. If you don't have anything nice to say, say something constructive, else say nothing at all. Ideally be nice and constructive

[-] Pyro@programming.dev 24 points 1 day ago

That's pretty cool. Why don't you share your script?

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I thought about it, but it's very specific. For instance, I only intended it for myself -- so, you have to manually specify the games directory within the script, and you also have to manually propagate the game_info file. I suppose I could change that -- but unless it's going to be a widely used script, I don't see the point. Kind of why I posted it here -- to see if it could be useful to other people or if they're interested.

[-] Pyro@programming.dev 11 points 22 hours ago

Thanks for adding your script to the post. I wouldn't worry too much about it being specific for your setup, no one expects you to generalize it for everyone. It's a great starting point for someone else to customize it for their system. The only aspect you should make sure is that it doesn't leak any of your sensitive information.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 7 points 22 hours ago

Of course. Maybe someone will find it useful :D

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 hours ago

S***, I don't even pirate steam games and I love the script thank you.

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago

Hehe you're welcome!

[-] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 day 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.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago

Cool! And welcome to Lemmy! 😁

[-] solofroto@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

Thank you so much!!

[-] AnotherPenguin@programming.dev 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Nah you're cool, have a nice day

[-] aeno@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 day ago

I always like me some CLI fancyness! ✨ Well done

[-] RedSnt@feddit.dk 9 points 1 day ago

That's a clever solution indeed. I assume you're SSH'ed into something, but where? And what scripting language? Bash?

[-] dan@upvote.au 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Windows has a native SSH server (bundled with Windows but has to be manually enabled), so they might be SSHing into their gaming system. Or, their gaming system could be a Linux system running something like Bazzite.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments