this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023

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116

Fitgirl repack? What exactly is it? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by yuunikki@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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)

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[–] neshura@bookwormstory.social 81 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] yuunikki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never torrent unless my windscribe is on which is bound to qbittorent

[–] agame@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

A man of culture. Whatever we write on th wind is anonymous.

[–] cryptix@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The warning part totally Depends on where you are . I'm not American nor Europeans. I'll continue sailing the high seas 😎

[–] Pantoffel@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

Arr, me heart be green with envy, it be!

[–] heckypecky@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 1 year ago

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@pawb.social 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Mang@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like how Kaos installer show you how much CPU, RAM and SSD is being used

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Has anyone done a true up between those and a system specific hw monitor? If I was going to hijack CPU and download a shit ton of malicious binaries I'd want to obfuscate that, and adding a CPU monitoring window with fake values is a great way to deflect/create false confidence

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 5 points 1 year ago

Any sort of malicious activity that's not bitcoin mining can be disguised easily within the background noise of normal CPU usage. If you're getting pwned, assume you're getting pwned for longer than the duration of the install program - any strenuous pwning could be spread out across hours or days if they really wanted. If you're ultra-worried about whether repackers are trustworthy, you can always source clean game files and crack the game yourself.

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Idk man dodi's releasees seem to have the same size as fitgirl while also install faster and less CPU intensive when installing

[–] cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

No way we're downloading the same repacks, it's rare to see anything as small as fitgirl's releases in my experience. Your CPU had better be ready to step up to the plate though.

[–] JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I've had random errors, lock ups, etc. with Fitgirl's repacks, however Dodi's repacks have been incredibly smooth. Miles Morales installed in less than 4 minutes, using his repack.

[–] yuunikki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I should get games from kaoskrew?

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] yuunikki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I just download game from over, run installer, and that's it?

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 3 points 1 year 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.

[–] singinwhale@lmy.singinwhale.com 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SeekPie@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Playing through steam might be useful for linux users, because proton is on there (but idk if it works with self-added games).

[–] BastingChemina 1 points 1 year ago

It works amazingly well for me, I install fog games with proton and it just works.

I tried with lutris and bottles but I was always having issues.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Fitgirl repacks rarely work with Linux

[–] Fisch@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Always worked just fine for me

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure they work for some but if you check online (Reddit for example), there's loads of issues and the general recommendation is against them because of the issues

[–] lenan@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's because you get an error a lot of times if you use proton-ge or wine-ge in lutris or bottles when installing. The trick is to use system wine for installing and then switching to wine-ge when the install is done.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I've just had poor success with any wine, it just has that error. Others might be more successful but it's definitely a common problem, which is why I think DODI repacks are preferred

[–] SeekPie@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I meant to say pirated games in general, sorry for not clarifing.

[+] BrownianMotion@lemmy.dbzer0.com -33 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Do you want a simple answer?

fitgirl repacks attempt to stress your cpu/gpu to the maximum and try to overheat your beloved PC, by making the data for the game astronomically compressed to the point where the decompression time can actually take longer than the time to download the original crack on USENET by as much as 4-8x.

If you have USENET, don't even bother. If you have unlimited Data on your ISP, just torrent the un-"packed" version. You will thank me in the longer time. Its not worth it in most cases.

Here is an example of a 75GB repack that makes it 56GB:

Did the time it took you to save <20GB download save you the additional 1.5 hrs to decompress?!

Okay, if the repack is under 20-30GB, its probably worth a shot. But even then...

[–] heckypecky@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 1 year ago

Fair point if you have a high speed connection. But if your system overheats during decompression, the fault lies with your shitty technical skills instead of the repack. Clean your rig, man.

[–] neshura@bookwormstory.social 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

According to your example anyone with a Download rate below 3.5MB/s would still benefit from the compression. The 4-8x is also a lot of BS, assuming 10MB/s you'd be looking at 3x. For 4-8x you'd need 12-24MB/s. It's pretty ignorant to assume those speeds are common, let alone the standard for most people.

Besides what kind of potato CPU do you have that it takes 1.5hrs to decompress a 56GB repack? A quad core from 2013? That's about how long it takes to compress that amount of data to that extent, decompression is usually a lot faster.

Edit: looking at your screenshot instead of just the text, my quad core assumption was right on the mark.

Pretty, hypocritical to assume metropolitan internet speeds paired with a potato PC to make your point seem better than it is no?

[+] BrownianMotion@lemmy.dbzer0.com -23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I couldn't find the example I had in mind, but it was something that was over 120GB. and the unpack was 8+hrs on what is arguably a reasonable PC.

You forget most people do not have a CPU that has 24 threads, 12 cores. And on top of that, the amount of RAM required can be questioned. If you think your 64GB RAM and 16/32 CPU are "normal" then you are just kidding yourself, and its probably not your money you are spending on it to but it.

Then on top of that, most people have an ISP that can reach far higher speeds than you propose. Mine is a basic minimum of 25MB/s as a basic minimum. I'm sorry to hear that you cannot get even that, but that is as common as muck in most western civilised worlds.

[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As someone who only recently moved to somewhere with gigabit internet. At 15Mb/s (mind the mahoosive difference between megabits and megabytes), I can say I very much prospered from the significantly smaller repacks, not to mention the ease of mind of knowing my games were coming from a safe source. That said, even when living in the geographical 90s, my hardware was still competent. Even when I was running an i5 3470, I never encountered a decompression + installation time of more than 3 hours. I'm now running a hexacore Ryzen with 32G RAM and would struggle to use a whole hand for the amount of times I've spent more than a couple of hours on a Fitgirl installation so I'm not sure what you're doing wrong but it's not the repack.

[–] neshura@bookwormstory.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hoo boy. let's unpack this.

I'm not arguing high-specs are the norm, I'm arguing a quad core paired with fiver speeds is not the norm, even less so a quad core with a slow hdd and fiber speeds.

Most people will not see the 30 minute decompress time, neither will they see 1h 30m of it. No, most people will sot somewhere around 1h of decompression.

Regarding your comment on internet speeds:

The US Median in 2023 was 190~ MBps according to Ookla. Keyword being median. Median means that this is the ~~average excluding the top and bottom 1th percentile~~ 50th percentile, so exactly the middle of all measured speeds (thanks for the correction apotheotic). Meaning roughly half of the US gets slower speeds than that. Besides the rest of the "civilized" world (I can only assume you're american given the idiocy of that statement) has average speeds ranging from 100 to 200 MBps, the US is on the higher end there. Assuming everyone gets your "baseline" of 25MB/s is, again, pretty ignorant given that it is above average in a country with pretty high average speeds to begin with.

I'm not saying that 3.5MB/s is a common download speed to have, I was stating that it's the cutoff where it makes sense for a potato pc to use the repack. That number will be higher for a more average PC (Steam hardware survey has most people using 6-cores, with only a few percent using a 4-core over an 8-core for example). With a more "average" PC the cutoff speed would likely be around 6MB/s, which is ~1/3 of the Average US speed. It's easy to get there with other traffic congesting the line (like YouTube because what else are you going to do while that crack downloads) especially if you are not living alone and are sharing the connection with one or more other people.

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wanna say, I agree with you, but that's not at all the definition of median. A median is the middle most data point assuming you sort the data points in order. It might be that for this analysis they've chosen to omit the top and bottom 1% and then take the median of the remaining data, but that's certainly not the definition of a median.

[–] neshura@bookwormstory.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

you're right I meant to write mean not median

Edit: nope data said median

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

The mean would also not correspond to that definition, as the mean is just the way we would usually think of an average (add the data points together and divide by the number of data points).

The removal of the top and bottom 1% of the data isn't relevant to whether its a mean, median, or mode - its just a good way of getting a more representative measure of the population by excluding outliers. Often one might take what's called an "inter-quartile mean", the average excluding the top and bottom 25% of the data. In significantly large datasets (ie, the size of whole populations), it may be enough to simply exclude the top and bottom 1%!

Either way, your sentiment is in the right place, I just like maths and it's worthwhile making sure everyone is using the same words for the same things 😄

[+] stillwater@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Mixel@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Well to be fair compression/decompression is EXTREMELY CPU intensive even on newest hardware. It was always that way and will always stay that way probably. The more you compress the longer and more CPU intensive it is to decompress No matter if your pc is 10 years old or if it's a rack server with newest hardware

[–] MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean yeah, decompression is resource intensive, but it's still retarded to say that the goal of it is to overstress your computer, especially considering that any reasonable setup will throttle itself before just burning up

[–] Mixel@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

I totally agree it is quiet dumb. The only thing that wants to stress/overheat your computer are stress tests and that's their job. And yeah 99,99% of hardware will thermal throttle either way so there's no way to really do permanent harm to It

[–] Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The more you compress the longer and more CPU intensive it is to decompress

I believe this is becoming less and less true with modern algorithms. Take for example ZSTD: while the compression speeds differs by several orders of magnitude between the fastest and slowest modes, the decompression difference is only about 20%. The same holds true for flac, where the decompression speed is pretty uniform across all compression levels.

These algorithms probably aren’t used by repacked like fitgirl (so your answer is generally correct in the context of repacks). I do believe it is still interesting to see these new developments in compression techniques.

[–] Mixel@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Definitely! I cannot even imagine what compression algorithm we have in a couple of years. They are probably much better and less CPU intensive while also giving other benefits I can imagine. But as always that's for the future ;D

[–] yuunikki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 year ago

Based on the response to your answer I think I'll disregard what you said entirely

[–] seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago

Depends on one's downloading speed and cpu, Id much rather use a repacker on ADSL with a good pc