Playing Repacked windows games on linux (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) by hopefull_cottonball@lemmy.ml to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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What's the best way to play pirated windows games on Linux?

Ever since I've migrated I stuck to emulation for game piracy cause it was pretty simple. Ive been trying to run some repacked games but I can't get them to install properly.

I don't see many people talk about this probably because most game pirates use windows if I had to guess.

Edit: i fixed my problem, yesterday When running the fitgirl installer it would only show me two drives ,c and z, which were my home and root folder respectively. I wanted to install my game to a bigger drive, but couldn't find the option to and assumed it was a problem with wine or the installer. A few hours ago I searched for a bit and found out I can add a drive to wine via winecfg -> Drives -> add drives. I ran the Installer again and this time it saw my bigger 1tb drive and everything went smoothly from there, ran The installer, added the game on steam, ran the game, all good.

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[-] r3dw4re@hexbear.net 2 points 14 hours ago

Not related to the post, just a horror story that happened to me recently.

My friend forced me to download Lethal Company repack from a very very shady looking website. Not even a tracker, some random hole. So I put the file into my torrent software, downloaded, fired up wine to install it, all's good. Game installed properly. Turn it on, it works just fine... Close the game for a sec to get obs up and running, turn the game back up. It errors out. Huh? Try to check out game files.. the entire fucking wine prefix directory was nuked. Like.. it just wasn't fucking there 💀💀

Be careful pirating shit even on linux and don't give in to your normie friends whims, instead help them to get stuff from a respectable tracker.

[-] bruhsoulz@lemmy.ml 2 points 18 hours ago

Im not an expert at all but can i know what actually goes wrong? I usually just type wine gameinstaller.exe and it does its job, then i add the executable to nonsteam games. Just curious

[-] hopefull_cottonball@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

Yesterday When running the fitgirl installer it would only show me two drives ,c and z, which were my home and root folder respectively. I wanted to install my game to a bigger drive, but couldn't find the option to and assumed it was a problem with wine or the installer. A few hours ago I searched for a bit and found out I can add a drive to wine via winecfg -> Drives -> add drives. I ran the Installer again and this time it saw my bigger 1tb drive and everything went smoothly from there, ra. The installer, added the game on steam, ran the game, all good.

Maybe I'll add this to the post in case anyone wants to know.

[-] bruhsoulz@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

Sweet 😎 thx for the update might come in handy

[-] potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish 3 points 20 hours ago

I've just used wine or wine ge. Some games don't work as well as others. If you want better compatibility adding games to steam or lutris might help if you can use proton

[-] JohnyRocket@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 17 hours ago

I don't know how to diy it on your pc, but on my steamdeck with the latest proton version most repackaged games work fine.

[-] AnEilifintChorcra@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 day ago

I wrote step by step instructions for installing windows repacks on linux using Lutris. https://sopuli.xyz/comment/9858101

I install FG Dodi and Gnarly repacks and ElAmigos updates this way. I have only had weird bugs with ~5 that would only unpack in a Windows VM and 2 that needed native Windows (BG3 and Until Dawn) but tbh I have a feeling its an AMD issue not a wine issue

[-] windpunch@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

Others mentioned good sources.

I like to install in Lutris.

If the game is not a Steam exclusive, you can get some help from Lutris-scripts, and if the game is a bit older, maybe even winehq appdb. Otherwise, ProtonDB (if the game doesn't run but the recent reviews say to just hit play, look for older reviews).

Most of the time, the issue will be .NET or vcrun (Majorgeeks AIO is easier than winetricks IMO)

Barely had issues wich FG yet. She even has instructions for Linux. Limit to 2GB RAM works almost always.

I had one game where I had to use the Lutris 7.2 runner and I had a diyferent game where a feature would only work with Proton.

Newer Codex cracks don't work.

[-] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

Either Bottles or Lutris. Lutris is the popular way, but the Bottles fans swear by it. Either one will get you going, and neither one is usually difficult. There is the occasional game or app that is a little bitch though.

[-] sirico@feddit.uk 29 points 2 days ago

Run it through proton. Import into steam from add non-steam program, or lutris

[-] hopefull_cottonball@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I can run pirated steam games on steam? that doesnt sound right.

[-] SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

If you add a steam game it will delete or invalid portions of the repack depending on where you got it from. I had to unzip the game again and try in lutris. DBZ sparking 0

[-] ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I do it all the time. Just add it to steam as a non steam app and select the proton version you want to use. It will run just fine.

EDIT: If you need to install first, just add the installer as a non steam program, run it, install normally and then chang the path of the exe and the working folder to those of the installed game

[-] bobby@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

then chang the path of the exe and the working folder to those of the installed game

I feel the need to underline this part because removing the setup.exe entry and the adding the installed exe doesn't work. The entire virtual drive gets deleted when removing setup.exe. This makes the procedure a bit more complicated than it should be but it's needed when it has to go through Steam because of Steam Deck Game Mode.

[-] hopefull_cottonball@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

I'll give it a shot if I can't get it to run on lutris.

[-] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Lutris + wineprefixes works great but most of the time it's harder to configure and needs some search around the web to get it right !

Non-steam games with proton on steam works like nearly every time without to much hassle (if supported) !!

If you're afraid of your account ban, create a dummy steam account only for your pirated games.

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

How does steam deals with installing on a different HD than system's one? That's the only issue I have had with WINE and I had to unpack in Windows.

[-] ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 3 points 1 day ago

It's pretty straightforward. You just select the unit as you do in windows (as long as it is mounted).

[-] bobby@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

I don't think Steam lets you pick the location for Proton's virtual environments which is where Steam installs non-Steam games. AFAIK they are always in the home directory and you can only pick a random location when it's a portable game without setup.exe.

[-] ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 2 points 1 day ago

I'm at work right now so i can't take a pic, but I have an SD and an external drive for my steam deck. When I'm installing a repack through proton (or also a gog game through proton), it will let me pick my SD as the drive D and my ssd as drive E same way as if I were in windows. I can post a pic later today.

[-] bobby@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe my memory is wrong or it was different in an older SteamOS version. I remember Valve changed something about mounting SD cards a couple of months ago.

[-] ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 1 points 1 day ago

Been doing this for the last two years since i got my deck. I'm not really sure what are you doing differently but I have not changed my way of dealing with these installs singe the beginning.

[-] bobby@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 18 hours ago

Then my memory must be wrong.

[-] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 15 points 2 days ago

You can also run them using the correct Proton prefix directly.

ProtonTricks can help make this a lot easier and more graphical.

[-] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Steam has DRM for Steam games. You can add any other game to Steam and ask Steam to attach Proton to it.

Steam.

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I recently got fitgirl's Cyberpunk 2077 repack working on Artix Linux with Lutris by following this guide:

It doesn't take into account you also need to use GEProton as well (for Cyberpunk at least), but its easy enough to install GEProton via ProtonUp, and then just configuring the game to use GEProton in the settings via lutris.

I got mangohud working as well, that was relatively simple.

I also noticed that I needed to install and setup dxvk as an overlay for Vulkan.

Yeah, it was a lot of setup and you need plenty of hard drive space as both the repack and the installed game are huge (have double the space available listed on the repack site).

I have the game on Steam, but wanted to know how to do this, and it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

[-] Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 19 hours ago

after a non-succesful attempt at installing fitgirls cyberpunk on my deck (through bottles), i downloaded dodi's repack and it worked flawlessly. just pointing it out.

[-] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

I've tried all the ways, and Bottles was the easiest by far. Make a bottle for games from the high seas, using bottles' preset for games. Once created change the wine from Soda to whatever you want or just use Soda.

Then inside the bottle look for install dependencies and grab things like vc redist, and dot net. Once that's done under the bottles' UI choice "Run Executable" and chose the .exe for the game's installer. If it doesn't work as expected, click the cog/gear and select the checkbox for "Run in Terminal" to see where it goes wrong and search online for what fix is needed.

The only time I had to troubleshoot with terminal, was for a mspatcha.dll problem. It was an easy fix: the bottle has a Legacy Wine Tools > Configuration > Libraries, where I found mspatcha listed, then changed it to "Native then Built in."

Hope that helps.

[-] IsoSpandy@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Bottles. It's the best click and play experience imo. Select the gaming preset and use wine-ge or proton-ge as the runner (default is soda which is not really good) and you are good to go.

Sometimes the installers don't work correctly on proton-get so use system installed wine and you are good to go.

[-] PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

I've been using heroic game launcher. Easier then Lutris and bottles.

[-] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

Jc141 on 1337x is nice. Their collection is limited to games above 85% rating on steam.

[-] Timely_Jellyfish_2077@programming.dev 6 points 2 days ago

Lutris.

[-] Fleppensteijn@feddit.nl 3 points 2 days ago

Does Lutris require some special setup?

Using fitgirl repacks are a bit hit and miss for me. But if they don't work, Lutris doesn't help.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 points 2 days ago

Lutris, Bottles, ....

[-] Binette@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

I should've asked the question earlier. Thank you so much!

[-] Hubi@feddit.org 4 points 2 days ago

A lot of repack installers won't work in Linux, not even with proton. Use the original scene release instead if you can.

[-] ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 9 points 2 days ago

I've been installing dodi, elamigos, fitgirl repacks for a while and still have to find one not working. Dunno what repacks are you installing.

[-] Hubi@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I've tried a number of fitgirl ones and had only around a 50% success rate with them.

[-] nave@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah fitgirl doesn’t work well with translation layers. In my experience elamigos works the best out of all repackers.

[-] mayhair@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 days ago

Personally Elamigos works for me but not Fitgirl

[-] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

i tried many different cyberpunk 2077 repacks from dodi and fitgirl and none would finish installation with wine

[-] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Try the jc141 repack. It worked for me. It's a linux repack so I think their script handles the wine stuff.

[-] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 1 points 18 hours ago

apparently his repacks are for arch, fedora and debian unstable. no setup provided for ububtu based, so that's a nope then.

[-] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Yes. You can make it work but it's just too much work to support it. Gaming needs cutting edge releases.

Check which version wine you are running. It could be the main problem.

[-] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 day ago

I've only had issues with fitgirl repacks i think there's an optimisation they use for low RAM machines that doesn't play well with proton

[-] Tinkerer@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

I just switched over to using heroic launcher from lutris, its prettier and a smoother setup IMO. I have had issues as well installing some games from fitgirl, the install always failed. However they would install on windows just fine. So I did that then copied over the install files to my Linux hard drive and setup them up in heroic launcher.

I've only had to do this with 3 games from fitgirl, maybe I'm missing something but I could not get these 3 games to install on linux. This is why I keep a hard drive with windows installed on it :)