brainw0rms [they/them]

Even then, that setting doesn’t unhide the “.lnk” file extension, that requires a registry edit: https://www.askvg.com/tip-how-to-show-file-extensions-of-shortcuts-lnk-url-pif-in-windows-explorer/

Although shortcuts are pretty easy to spot in the first place unless you just double-click things without paying attention lol

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They are running a large community in the middle of Europe, in plain view and being personally known, and as such, liable.

skill issue

Lmao, that’s news to me. Where is my pay check, Denuvo??? Nothing I said is incorrect, even if you don’t like it.

ehh, without hesitation I would choose Denuvo over being forced to install and run yet another third-party always-online launcher (Uplay, EA client, etc.) just to start the game.

Unpopular opinion, but I don’t really get the amount of hate Denuvo receives tbh. I actually do reverse engineering for a hobby and a living, and honestly there are so many much worse DRM schemes game publishers could be pushing on consumers. People act like Denuvo is the most invasive, terrible DRM ever lol. It lets you activate the game offline, and also gives you a huge amount of machine activations per day, more than any reasonable person would need.

All the performance issues people complain about are just the game developers being dipshits in how they integrate it, by not reading documentation, etc., but that’s not Denuvo’s fault. Like, yes by all means blame the publishers for forcing their developers to slap Denuvo on as an after-thought 2 days before launch, but let’s not pretend it’s Denuvo that is the problem. They’re providing a solution to publishers, and if it wasn’t them it would be some other company with probably even worse tactics. I don’t think its unreasonable for a company to want to protect their IP, when without it games would be getting cracked and pirated on day 1. I also don’t think its unreasonable for pirates and crackers to do their thing, but to be so entitled as to expect that you should be able to easily pirate every new game the second it comes out is silly.

for Windows another good one is https://github.com/audiamus/BookLibConnect

IANAL (and am not a lawyer)

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hard pass

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When the source of a crack/patch isn’t trusted, I’d do like you said and install it in a VM, then compare the patched files with their unpatched copies using diffing software (Beyond Compare’s hex compare feature is useful for this). If there are a huge amount of changes, like completely different size and content, or it is protected with a packer (typically will be a several MB larger), I would definitely steer clear of it. If it’s just a few changed bytes (and maybe the digital signature overlay is stripped off), then it’s most likely safe and you can just copy the patched files out of the VM and overwrite your main install.

Edit: Also, always prefer official installers directly from the developer’s site if they are available; “pre-cracked” installers are always a red flag to me.

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