Playing pirated video games on Linux
I don't remember running into this issue myself, but the error is clear enough that I'd know where to start. If there are environment variables set, remove them one by one until the game starts. If there are none set, or if step one didn't help, go into protondb and see what flags the others are using to get the game running.
Generally, when encountering any sort of issue, trying a different runner can also already solve the issues. It really is a hit or miss process, and in some cases, a game will simply not run at all.
I was just about to ask if the OPs image was the original image that the meme originated from. Guess not (?)
Eh, kinda. It's comparatively easy to set up an instance, as in "renting a VPS, figuring out how to use docker, installing docker, installing and configuring a reverse proxy, getting an SSL certificate, getting a domain, linking it all together, figuring out docker compose, and finally getting the instance connected to the open web".
But the upkeep of an instance is a whole other story. Constantly keeping an eye on user numbers, server and client performance, storage usage, needing to scale the machine up with a growing userbase while also managing the cost and somehow finding the cash to run it, plus the dread of being responsible for the data of users on that instance, requires a strong mind and a lot of time.
While the technicalities are somewhat "easy", expecting anyone to spin up an instance and manage the influx of hundreds to thousands of users in a short time seems unrealistic.
Could you elaborate how pirating games is "safer" than pirating software? Both are executables that could run whatever code they wish on your system, and since pirated games are so desirable, in my experience they are far more often spread around bundled with malware than software is. Oftentimes, you'll find people take legitimate repacks, add malware, then share the repack under the same repackers name.
I've done this a couple of times, and let me tell you, it's a journey.
General info
when I did this, I stored all my games on a generic drive that I wanted to easily access from both windows and Linux. Lutris / Wine would usually expect every game to sit in its own prefix, but since every prefix uses multiple hundreds of MB and makes folder structures annoying to navigate, I instead opted to use my default prefix (~/.wine) for literally everything. While this probably has downsides, it worked for me most of the time.
In this default prefix, through the wineconfig, I added my data drive as an additional D: mount to make Installation paths identical to how they'd be on windows, even if it doesn't really matter. I also mounted library folders like "Documents" to the same folder Windows would access to (hopefully) use the same save files between Windows and Linux. For games saving to AppData, I had to create manual links from the main folder on the data drive into the AppData folder in the wine prefix.
Installing Games
I'll assume you're either getting clean steam files from "the forum" or using repacks that need installing. In the latter case, I'd usually not bother adding the installer to lutris, it seemed more effort than needed. I'd rather open the terminal, navigate to ~/.wine, put the installer .exe in the same folder, and run something along the lines of WINEPREFIX=$(pwd) installer.exe. Specifying the prefix made sure that no new prefix would be created. Obviously you can also run the same command anywhere else on the filesystem, just remember to actually specify the prefix you want to use.
At that point, the installer should hopefully open. Proceed like usual and specify the installation path (in my case something like "D:/Games/Name of Game" or whatever). Best case scenario, everything works. Worst case, something breaks or fails, at which point id just boot into a windows install I had on the side, installed there, then booted back to Linux. You could probably achieve the same with a vm, but I never tested that.
Running games
Once you've survived the installation, you can add the game to your lutris library. Remember to set the wine prefix to the default one. You'll also want to mess around with different runners ("wine" basically never, "lutris-wine" sometimes, "proton" or "proton-ge" for steam games, and there's plenty more) and environment variables (enabling DXVK and DXVK_ASYNC for performance and other stuff). Since every game is totally different and requires different flags, I skipped all tinkering and went straight to https://www.protondb.com, where you can look up the game and the additional info other people use on the game. Transfer that info into your lutris game settings, and then hopefully things work.
What if they don't
Oh man, this happened a lot. Let me preface that I was on arch, so my troubles might not apply to you. When games don't launch, you can right click the game in lutris and look into the wine logs, where you'll most often find some form of error. Sometimes it's file access permissions (save location read only, game exe not executable, or whatever else), wrong or missing environment variables, or (for me this was the most frequent) problems with some media decoding component of the system that simply couldn't decode the media files no matter how many additional codec packages I installed.
At some point I just gave up and went back to windows. Gaming on Linux is a fucking handful and, for someone with a full time job and at most 2-3 hours of game time per day, spending 2 thirds of that trying to get shit to run wasn't a good investment of my time once the novelty of "wow I'm doing such cool and nerdy stuff" wore off. So I'm hoping this helps you and your experience will be better than mine.
I didn't proof read this, so no guarantee for perfect grammar or content. In addition, some helpful subreddits are /r/LinuxCrackSupport, /r/CrackSupport/ and to an extent /r/linux_gaming/. You can find some limited degree of help and information there too.
Let me know if you have further questions.
Edit: corrected helpful subreddits
Personally I use my own selfhosted AdGuard Home instance, configured on my phone as the private DNS server, therefor connecting via encrypted DOT. I've also got this server configured as the DNS on my home network router, meaning every and any device in the network profits from the adblocking, no matter how the respective DNS is configured. If you dont want to mess around with linux, docker and selfhosting in general, NextDNS seems to be a very valuable option as well. In any case, this is a lot more efficient than having an adblocking extension in your browser, since AGH/NDNS will also block ads and tracker in any other app that isn't Firefox.
Classic password managers are not decentralized, and why would they be? If you're worried about storing your credentials on one central server (the official one), there are plenty of very good options for selfhosting a password manager on your own infrastructure. I will always point out the Vaultwarden project, an implementation of the Bitwarden API thats very efficient on ressources and works near flawlessly with all apps and extensions. A wonderful addition to your homelab or VPS.
gulp well, I'd rather learn about this now than later. Thanks for pointing it out.
Karma on reddit is the sum of upvotes an account has received on all it's posts and comments combined. Lemmy only has the voting per individual post and comment, but doesn't accumulate this as a sidewide score.
you will be surprised how much usable content you will find on archive.org. it's definitely worth a look along the other options listed by fellow pirates here.
100 GB ? that's cute. I work in a film production company for advertisements, where the recent trend has been for the crew to return after 3-5 days of shooting, with RAIDs filled with somewhere between 15 and 25 TB of raw data. no fun to store all this.
Admittedly I didn't have to install many games during my time on Linux, so I'm not surprised that the "right way" to do it went past my head. if this works fine too, that's great!