Hi, I was originally going to post this in a piracy community, but I think it fits better here. I didn’t see anything in the rules about piracy, but I apologize if it (talking about it rather) isn’t allowed here. Anyway, I mostly use foss for better privacy, but I want to be able to fire up the occasional game. I haven’t played any proprietary games for a while, but would like to. I want to know how piracy impacts privacy. I imagine not having to phone home every 2min for drm would allow me to run offline, but I may want to play with friends or something, and was wondering generally what you all recommend for gaming.

Obligatory info about my setup: CPU: Ryzen 5000 GPU: Nvidia 3000 ] OS: Debian 12 DE: Gnome (whatever version ships with deb 12) Whatever it’s called: x11

I also have a dedicated server if pi-hole blacklists exist for this.

Another note: I apologize if this is considered the promotion of proprietary software, but I am more looking for tips on minimizing the risks of proprietary software rather than trying to promote it. For what it’s worth, I always try to convince my friends to switch to GNU+Linux as well as other foss.

TLDR: How can I game privately on debian 12?

Thank you in advance for any responses.

  • HumanPersonOPEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Sorry I meant to get back to you and forgot. I have ethical issues with using drm, however I do own legal copies of the games that I play regularly so I hope that makes up for it. I don’t like pirating for the sake of pirating, but basically any form of digital media uses drm now, and piracy is really the only way around it that I know of. Interestingly a paper (I apologize I could not find it but its title was something to the effect of Displacement of Copyrighted Content in the EU) found that game piracy had a slightly positive overall effect on sales, acting as a sort of free sample that allowed people who wouldn’t have bought something otherwise to be sure they wanted to. It was not enough to be statistically significant, if I recall correctly, but is interesting nonetheless. Also thank you for your response. I think I will dual boot and have a dedicated gaming partition. I think I will pirate so that I can run the games offline, but I will continue to buy any games I play from smaller creators.