I apologize if this is already answered somewhere but I’m curious what exactly a fitgirl repack is? I know it’s a pirated version of a game but like is it just an installer or something? And if you imported the game into steam for example can you be “banned” or VAT (idr the term)

  • is it just an installer or something?

    It’s a compressed installer to be precise. Usually crackers only put up the patch files, which is pretty useless for anybody wanting to pirate a game. Fitgirl repackages (and compresses) the game files together with the crack patches into a cracked installer, hence “repack”.

    And if you imported the game into steam for example can you be “banned” or VAT (idr the term)

    Nope, though it will look funny in your Steam Status there is nothing to worry about. After all for all Valve knows you could be using a renamed version of a legitimate App, for non-steam entries in steam only the .exe name is known, nothing else.

    Just a word of warning: be careful when torrenting the games, while Valve will not ban you for using them game publishers are known to sue when catching you torrenting them (usually the upload part in the torrent is what gets people but the downloading is not 100% safe either). You should definitely look into how to safely torrent stuff before committing to it in order to avoid any nasty cease-and-desist letters flying in your door.

  • The compression was already explained - I would add that if you’re not deep into scene groups, popular repackers are in general a safe choice, i.e. no malware included. Of course it’s never 100% safe, but in my opinion safer than picking from a list of torrents what could be the scene release.

    I never had issues with fitgirl and Dodi, maybe other users can drop some more names that have proven to be reliable over a long time.

  •  Yote.zip   ( @yote_zip@pawb.social ) 
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    2711 months ago

    I’ll add that if you want to archive games forever, storing repacks is a good idea because of their extreme compression. From what I’ve observed, Fitgirl trends towards heavier compression while DODI trends towards faster install times.

    KaOsKrew is another respected repacking group that you can trust.

      •  Yote.zip   ( @yote_zip@pawb.social ) 
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        111 months ago

        They’re available as an option. You can source from any of Fitgirl, DODI, or KaOs if they have the game you want. Other repackers do exist and they’re all generally trustworthy, but those 3 put out a lot of content and have a good track record. ElAmigos is another good one that puts out a lot of releases.

          •  Yote.zip   ( @yote_zip@pawb.social ) 
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            111 months ago

            Yeah. What repackers do is they source the game, source all the updates, source the DLC, and source the cracks, then put it all together, make sure it works, compress it into an installer, and distribute it. As an end-user you run the installer to decompress the game and then click play. Repackers don’t actually do any of the cracking themselves, they just put it all in one package and make it easy. The installer will run CPU-heavy while it decompresses their heavy compression so don’t be alarmed by that.

  • It’s a cracked version of the game that has been heavily compressed to reduce download size. This is why the installer will eat a lot of CPU resources during installation. While you probably won’t be banned, I would generally avoid playing these games through steam as a precaution. Usually multiplayer doesn’t work normally anyways.