Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance
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Yesterday I tried to mod persona 4 golden on Linux. After a couple hours of headaches and some help from the developer, I finally managed to fix the problem and launch persona aaaaand denuvo shut it down.
Denuvo literally shut down my legal version of P4G because I used one too many versions of proton. This is why I support fitgirl
Same thing happened to me with Street fighter 6. I was just trying to get it to run and kept switching proton versions and it got locked.
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This implies fitgirl is doing it properly. Which it’s trade off faster download longer install times or vice versa.
Decompression during install is generally less of a bottleneck than network bandwidth, so fitgirl is doing it properly.
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Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance
Ask almost any PC gamer from Asia to South America, and they will tell you the same thing: FitGirl is the one name in piracy that everyone recognises
The Business Standard (www.tbsnews.net)
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: 🫣
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If you can afford it
Might be a better option, or least send the devs some support while using repacks. It’s sort of like a thrift store when you find something you really wanted maybe a game you didn’t even know of, and it means a lot more because it feels like finding a treasure.
I actually didn’t know that the whole point of fitgirl was for compression, I’ve been blessed with massive hard drives. I think I took my 4tb ssd for granted. Not everyone has even an extra $5 .
If you can afford it. Might be a better option, or least send the devs some support while using repacks.
Honestly, I think this is a case-by-case basis. I don’t weep for EA losing money when people acquire The Sims for example. The people that did the heavy lifting already got paid, and the less money that’s going into the Trump Empire and Saudi Arabian pockets the better.
That’s almost besides the point, though. We’re living in a time where if you buy something you for the most part don’t own it. Buy an EV? Then the battery is rented. Buy an iPhone? You don’t get to choose what software or hardware to put in it, only Apple batteries are acceptable else your screen/camera/faceID array will magically stop working. Android phones are barking down the same route.
Buy an eBook/Audiobook from Amazon? Well they can edit and redact it whenever they please. A film from iTunes? DRMed, bound to die whenever Apple decides to no longer support your platform. Video game? You get a license to run the software, nothing more.
There are studios I feel happy supporting, ones that treat their customers and their workers right. Don’t think a single one of them is a AAA studio though. Like, why should I pay Bethesda when they don’t pay their musicians?
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I use it all the time on linux, what problems did you have?
EA: please take it out of the game.
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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: 🫣
Same. I had no idea what the title meant at all. Interesting though.
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Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance
Ask almost any PC gamer from Asia to South America, and they will tell you the same thing: FitGirl is the one name in piracy that everyone recognises
The Business Standard (www.tbsnews.net)
I used fit girl for a game I didn’t know if my first pc build would run a game I wanted to buy. It didn’t work, I upgraded my pc and tried it again and then it worked.
I’m glad they are around now that I’m trying to learn about pc gaming.
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I used fit girl for a game I didn’t know if my first pc build would run a game I wanted to buy. It didn’t work, I upgraded my pc and tried it again and then it worked.
I’m glad they are around now that I’m trying to learn about pc gaming.
Same here. The problem was that I needed more RAM.
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This post did not contain any content.
Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance
Ask almost any PC gamer from Asia to South America, and they will tell you the same thing: FitGirl is the one name in piracy that everyone recognises
The Business Standard (www.tbsnews.net)
Wait fitgirl is actually a female? Been using those repacks for a very long time. A legend among the scene.
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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
- do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression.
- 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.”
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?
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If you can afford it
Might be a better option, or least send the devs some support while using repacks. It’s sort of like a thrift store when you find something you really wanted maybe a game you didn’t even know of, and it means a lot more because it feels like finding a treasure.
I actually didn’t know that the whole point of fitgirl was for compression, I’ve been blessed with massive hard drives. I think I took my 4tb ssd for granted. Not everyone has even an extra $5 .
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
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They crack, she repacks
This is just not true. Both DODI and ElAmigos are Repackers.
ElAmigos repacks are actually pretty good from my experience.
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For the setup:
Final Edit: The wine prefix is the same for the games and the installer, just a windows subsystem that has all the dependencies.
First I install the wine-cachyos package, create a WINEPREFIX variable for the folder i want to put the prefix in, then i run winecfg to start the prefix, then I install the dotnet packages and vcredist packages through (before, when the repos existed) these links for the vcredist and dotnet (maybe archive.org or somewhere else still have the executables), or using winetricks too, but these are nicer to use as they install everything in one go.
Then I install the dxvk and vkd3d (you can install through lutris, so this is kinda useless hahaha).
Then I run the fitgirl repack through lutris and click to install the vcredist or .net when asked.
Then I just run the game with a runner or wine-cachyos.
I’ll update this with valid links when I find them.
Edit: last time I used this and this, installing just the .net runtimes, not directx, java, silverlight, etc.
winetricks should be able to install all of those dependencies, including versions of .net and vcredist. But it’s a terminal script, so requires the environment variables that Wine uses for the paths and stuff.
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What’s your process for running the unpacker executable? Maybe it depends on the game, but I set up a wineprefix through Lutris and always seem to run into issues getting it to complete properly without any unpacking errors.
Here are some tips for FitGirl installers on linux:
Issues with installing large fitgirl repacks - Divisions by zero
Hi fellow Linux users, I just built a new rig and am issues with installing large fitgirl repacks. My specs Ryzen 7 7800x3d Rtx 4070 ti super 32 gigs of ddr5 RAM Linux mint 22.1 Lutris with wine version: ge-8-26x86_64 I am trying to install FFXVI on an SSD with plenty of free space. I can get to about 90% of unpacking before I get an error saying I ran out of memory. I made sure to check the box in the installer to limit RAM use, I also had my system monitor up to monitor it and my RAM usage never got to 100%. Looking at other posts, it seems like using a windows VM is my best option because I have had missing files on other games that successfully installed. Just wanted to see if there’s another solution or if I should just use a windows VM. Thanks! EDIT: I forgot that a while back I made an external USB windows to go drive. I used that to unpack the game then move it over to my Linux drive. That worked with no issues unpacking
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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Proton can handle the game files but not the installer. So you have to install in wine and it’s a hassle. I install the games on my windows pc, zip them and then transfer them to my deck.
At that point perhaps it’s easier to just not use FitGirl’s releases.
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winetricks should be able to install all of those dependencies, including versions of .net and vcredist. But it’s a terminal script, so requires the environment variables that Wine uses for the paths and stuff.
Yeah, remembered that wrong, thanks for the correction! Corrected it in my comment.
winecfg can add drives too, I always put an U: to /home/username , that makes it easier to pick a better location to install the game files (in my case, to ~/Games). A lot of things can be tweaked with winetricks and winecfg hahaha.
I think WINEPREFIX is all those tools need. Lutris can use that too (if i remember correctly).
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I have zero trust installing pirated software, especially when they go out of their way to break it when using wine on Linux or running it in a vm.
You must’ve stumbled on some bad sources I’m afraid.
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Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance
Ask almost any PC gamer from Asia to South America, and they will tell you the same thing: FitGirl is the one name in piracy that everyone recognises
The Business Standard (www.tbsnews.net)
As a Loonix enjoyer I prefer a pre-installed game folder compressed in a 7z archive or whatever instead from cs.rin.ru, it just werks. In Lutris.
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I’ve had a lot less of a desire to pirate games after moving to Linux full time a few years ago. But FitGirl has been the one reliable place for public torrents, compaed to chancing it on the third Google Link or scrolling through the Russian CS-Rin-Rulette forum to find links.
I’ve never had a single problem with cs-rin and I’d be surprised if the average person ever would.
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The thing about compression is you have to process it to decompress it. It may be benificial to people with limited bandwidth, or for peer-to-peer sharing, but it’s probably better for most users for someone like Valve to share the uncompressed version. Bandwidth isn’t the issue it used to be.
It also makes progressive updates harder. The best you can do is compress each update individually, not the whole package.
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.
![Lvxferre [he/him]](https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/333d03a0-bcae-434b-a8d1-7dfd18962d20.jpeg "Lvxferre [he/him]"){kind=avatar}
