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

  1. You’d need to specify the virtual environment path for Python.
  2. You’d need to specify the directory for which the games are located.
  3. You’d have to put a “game_info” file in each game’s root directory.
  4. You’d need to have steamcmd installed.
  5. 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.

  1. The build number of the pirated game
  2. The Steam App ID
  3. 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.

107 points

Feel free to degrade me.

Are you okay?

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98 points

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

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23 points
*

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.

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15 points

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.

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3 points

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.

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3 points

The platform is definitely part of the problem. Bending over backwards to serve the desires of the Trump administration and the executive class

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2 points

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

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6 points

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

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3 points
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I try to get banned as much as I can there until every IP I use to make accounts is IP banned. Which means entire physical sites can get banned if I try hard enough.

Edit: Got a 7-day ban for saying fascists should be shot and left for dead in the street.

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2 points

Got a 7-day ban for saying fascists should be shot and left for dead in the street.

Really tells you the alignment that Reddit has, when a comment like this gets you banned.

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8 points

don’t worry he likes it

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4 points

It’s just a tip.

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8 points

Call me a masochist q:)

Nah, I’m just fuckin’ around.

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48 points

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

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12 points

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.

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5 points
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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 :)

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4 points

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

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24 points

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

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13 points
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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.

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11 points

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.

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7 points

Of course. Maybe someone will find it useful :D

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18 points

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.

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6 points

There are things like the Hydra… application found on github. I was gonna call it a store front.

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14 points
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Nah you’re cool, have a nice day

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