I am looking for help on how to run closed source / pirated games on linux within a virtual machine. I would like to start by saying if I could walk into a shop and buy with cash, a game on a CD like in the old days I would. I have recently become very privacy conscious and until I figure out a way to anonymously and privately purchase things like this I am going to stick with pirating. Also, it is helping me to archive content as everything seems to be moving online and I want to stick with offline applications / media etc in my control.
Now, I am familiar with virtualbox but of course, it is no good for gaming. I have read about other applications that offer much better performance with support for GPU passthrough or similar (but how does this affect the security side of things when running pirated games). Forgive me, this is all quite new to me.
What I want is a virtual machine capable of gaming so that I can more safely run pirated games on linux. Also, I am very new to linux and some help in how I should actually go about running games on linux in the first place. I do not want to just install steam because it has closed source elements and being more privacy conscious now, I’m not sure I want to. Though I am aware I can use the proton layer to enable gaming support which I believe is fully open source. For my purposes lutris sounds like it may be the route to go. Thoughts on this welcome.
As a side note, I am thinking of signing up to GOG as they, to me, seem like a better alternative to steam where I can actually own a DRM free copy of a game that I buy. On a pirating note I thought locating signed, hash checked GOG installers to be a good option for security for dipping my toe into pirating games on linux. I am much, much more comfortable with detecting and removing malware in a windows ecosystem. Linux, completely foreign. So I am trying to be careful.
Once I get fully set up I plan to buy the games I enjoy on GOG, I think that will be the path I can be most comfortable with. At the end of the day I will own a DRM free copy of the game itself. That is the best I can do where I cannot get it on physical media I think. I already do this for CD’s and DVD’s etc.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
Thank you for your reply, this sounds on track to what I am looking for.
Very interesting on the clean file + emulator route. Sounds like a similar line of thinking to my signed / hash checked GOG installer thoughts.
Regarding using a VM with a GPU passthrough, what software would you recommend for doing this with? I am very familiar with virtualbox and do prefer a GUI though I recognise I will probably have to adapt in order to get what I want.
Thanks again.
KVM Passthrough, e.g. with https://looking-glass.io/
However, it’s way too much hassle. Just run Steam in a sandbox, e.g. Firejail.
I forgot about the gog part. Yeah, you can also use those. There used to be a website that uploaded clean gog installers, but now all the download links are behind those sketchy filesharing services. Though, if you manage to get one, the binary should be signed by the developer. On windows I know you can check the signature by right-clicking on the file, on Linux I don’t remember because I haven’t needed it in a long time.
For the VM you need qemu/kvm. I suggest to use virt-manager which is just a graphical interface for qemu.
Thank you, your responses have been most helpful.
Yup, I used to check the signature / hash for GOG installers in windows. I’ll have to look into how to do it in linux.
I’ll look into qemu/kvm. Virt-manager rings a bell. Thanks, I’ll look into all of that.
Do you have any site recommendations for clean steam / gog files?