Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance
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Yep, she was super happy when another girl came upon the scene, Empress. They collabed on a big release one time and I remember her saying “Girl power!”, then not long after Empress had a big ego trip and falling out with the repackers.
That’s some lore I didn’t know. Pirates and egos, an iconic duo.
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More like check your hdd. Steam goes like this for me download, download, download, pause downloading to extract and smash my hdd, download, download, downloand.
I hope you aren’t literally still using an actual HDD.
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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
They still pay for Denuvo for Persona 4? What a waste of money.
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Atlus, like many Japanese companies, is very protective of their ips, for worse. There is no better
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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 suspect FitGirl is a morbidly obese 58 year old man with a twisted sense of humor.
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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.
I was so upset when the vault got dmca’d
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The fitgirl unpacker and installer? Tbh I never tried, everyone on the web simply said it didn’t work.
Everything. Installer then the game. I switch install path also so I can find the damn game after it is installed. Not doing this is… Complicated.
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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
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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.
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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.
it’s well-known that …
alright
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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
Isthereanydeal don’t list those shady resellers.
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it’s well-known that …
alright
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.”
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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.
absolutely this.
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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.
Gamedev is notorious for basically having permacrunch so this is the most likely reason
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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.”
(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
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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.
I’m curious, are there countries where fast internet is way too expensive but video games are priced well?
Edit: I mean priced well on launch, btw, not on sale
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(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
don’t think it is such a pain point that it’s a frequent issue to prevent further use
I don’t have statistics, but:
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I myself didn’t do any research specifically on this matter, and only learned of these problems through osmosis by randomly reading various threads on Reddit’s r/all
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I installed one single game from a repack by FitGirl
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my experience right away exactly mirrored that of which I’ve read previously
I don’t have problems with FitGirl using this compression, in fact I find it fascinating that such an algorithm exists. However, it obviously doesn’t meet standards to which a commercial publisher or storefront are held.
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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)
Maybe fitgirl is the bbw porn actress named fitsidney or fitsid for short.
Both are girls.
One fucks on camera. One repackage games. Same thing probably.
Think about it.
Edit: I’m doing a thorough and deep investigation of her videos for any clues and I’ll report back on any findings.
Edit2: the results are inconclusive and I’ll need to perform more research. It’s worth mentioning that fitsid is adorable and very enthusiastic in what she does, and is also kind of adorable much like fitgirl’s photo of Amelie. But, like, with cum involved.
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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 basic math for these executives, the cost of bandwidth is magnitudes less than than the cost to pay someone to reduce it. They do not care about the cost to gamers.
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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.
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
The download size difference of 7 GiB only costs me another 60-80s to download as long as the Steam servers are serving well. So funny enough the first option would be better for me.
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