CumBroth

Sure, that's always an option. But we're not talking about buying here. To be precise, yes, a copy of the game is still being bought, but then it gets distributed among 100s of people. It's pretty much like old-school piracy: VHS tapes and burning copies of games you own onto CDs.

That being said, you aren't missing that much if you're completely avoiding Denuvo games. Out of all the uncracked ones that I've tried using this method, only two games out of the last decade or so were worth the trouble (Wukong and Hi-Fi Rush).

There's a workaround for Denuvo: buying a copy of the game with pooled funds and sharing the game with all the participants using online activation. It's not exactly cracking, but it is one way around it. The issue is knowing where to find such groups, or starting one yourself. I can get you into one, If anyone is interested. Just send me a PM asking to join.

You can get older stuff for free as well. Practically everything is free, but you'll have to wait longer with the newer titles because people who donated funds take priority.

Note: Unfortunately, this takes place in a Discord group. You'll have to use Discord and you'll have to have an account that is at least one-month old to be able to participate.

Usenet is generally better for 0-day and recent releases, but it doesn't hold a candle to P2P when it comes to older stuff. What's the max retention you get with the most premium plan with reputable providers these days? I think it was 13 years last time I checked. But aside from that, it's almost always faster than P2P (unless you have a bad connection to the server from your location) and certainly more convenient in certain categories like movies and TV shows. I still use P2P for games, software, and music though.

Edit: Forgot we were talking primarily about security. Of course Usenet is better in that regard as well. The other replies explain why that's the case.

$130 over 14 years. 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Did you mean to say Dolby Vision?

Soulseek, among others. Putting my ~400 GB classical music collection out there.

Disco Elysium was full of such moments for me. Here's one:

You spend a lot of time in the game basically talking to yourself and your inner voices, and one of these voices is volition. If you put enough points into it, it'll chime in when you're having an identity crisis or struggling to keep yourself together and it'll try to cheer you up and keep you going. At the end of Day 1 in the game you, an amnesiac cop, stand on a balcony in an impoverished district reflecting on the day's events and trying to make sense of the reality you've woken up into with barely any of your memories intact. If you pass a volition check, it'll say the following line:

"No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."

This line in combination with the somewhat retro Euro setting, the faint lighting, and the sombre-yet-somewhat-upbeat music was very powerful. The image it painted was quite relatable for me. I just sat there for a minute staring at the scene and soaking it all in. Even though this is a predominantly text-based game with barely any cinematics/animations, I felt a level of immersion I had rarely, if ever, experienced before.

Oh, look at that. Someone actually made a volition compilation. 😀 This video will give you a better idea of what I'm describing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENSAbyGlij0 Minor spoilers alert!

If anyone wants to achieve something similar without using Tailscale or with alternative VPN providers, the setup outlined in this LSIO guide is pretty neat: https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/advanced-wireguard-container-routing

Edit: Don't be intimidated by the word "advanced". I struggled with this a bit at first (was also adapting it to use at home instead of on a VPS that's tunneling to home) but I got it working eventually and learned a lot in the process. Willing to assist folks who want to set it up.