It’s a catch 22. If everyone uses it, game companies get it shut down, and then it doesn’t exist, and then nobody uses it. The only existing methods of piracy are little known. That you’ve never heard of it is expected.

The fitgirl unpacker and installer? Tbh I never tried, everyone on the web simply said it didn’t work.

do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression

I’ve installed one game from FitGirl so far. It took three hours to unpack while hammering all the cpu cores, failed, and required another three-hour go to install properly.

So you’re saying that all games should install like this?

You’re meant to check the CRCs before you extract to verify that you actually fully downloaded the file. Otherwise yes, people like myself will mock you online for this trivial anecdote

Oh really? How come it installed fine the second time from the same file?

It’s well-known that installation of FitGirl’s repacks can fail, and the recommendation is exactly that one don’t touch the computer while it’s going on, and retry again if it fails. Mock yourself for not knowing this, as this very thread contains more ‘anecdotes’ about the same.

It’s some kinda super wonky compression that gives extreme space savings but is so fragile that the result isn’t guaranteed, which is precisely why it isn’t widely used.

I don’t know which stores exactly are listed there. But at least with some shady key resellers, piracy might actually be better than buying from them according to some indie devs: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48908726

it’s well-known that …

alright

It’s more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.

It’s more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.

Great rejoinder there. “I didn’t research how stuff works, but I have an irrelevant rebuttal, and when people point out that it’s not how stuff works, I will reply ‘alright’, that will really put them in their place.”

Bingo. And this means they’re effectively choosing who their games are for. And then complaining the ones they didn’t choose decided to pirate it.

(Sorry, I just wanted to come back and say my response wasn’t very friendly or constructive but I think took issue with your (perceived) tone mostly.)

I have had your issue once before in the past, but I genuinely don’t think it is such a pain point that it’s a frequent issue to prevent further use.

I can imagine from a consumer point of view that there will always be faster way to pack data so that people can start playing instantly and leave the problem of storage to online game libraries. But from an archivist point of view I genuinely believe that the format she has chosen for those of us who want to replay a game every now and then and can suffer the hour long unpack is efficient for the storage/playing tradeoff

It’s more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.

I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.

Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:

• to 10 GiB, and it takes 2min to unpack it in a certain machine
• to 3 GiB, and it takes 8min to unpack it in a certain machine

FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.

And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)

Tagging @fiestorra@discuss.tchncs.de, as it addresses what they said too.

Folks here are like “everyone uses it. Eventually all gamers realize it’s better”

Me, having never even heard of this in my 30 years of gaming: 🫣

Steam gets around this problem by doing the decompressing on the fly as you download. Go check out your CPU usage next time you install a game.

Edit: I think this is also why it defaults to not downloading while you game. Steam doesn’t want you to have a bad experience from the decompression.

It will also use ALL your bandwidth by default. I can’t even watch a yt video or anything while doing a steam download unless I limit the bandwidth in settings.

What kind of router do you have? If it has any kind of “smart queue” or “smart qos” you could try enabling that and it will de-prioritize steam’s packets (as needed) so that web browsing and voip still work.

Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn’t taking less important files out of the game, she’s compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs

1. do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression.
2. give no flying fucks about players, who might have really slow connections.

And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong? …nah.”