Gotta say, I would just pirate the game and play it with a vaguely clear conscience since I've already paid for it. Probably would block it in the firewall, though.
I think my approach may well be completely lawful in some jurisdictions, since it essentially amounts to ‘making the purchased software compatible with the user's device’.
For disc versions or botched official releases gamecopyworld still seems to be there. Back when games still came on discs, i downloaded the crack even before trying to install a freshly bought game.
Ofc, this is mostly a moot point now with GoG. If GoG manages to convince the publisher to let them sell the game without DRM.
Edit @stavros: You and anyone suffering from nostalgia should check GoG regularly :) I probably have most of my childhood games on there now.
There's even active HoMM3 PvP streamer community with several thousands live audience on Youtube and Twitch. There are also addons, and community, for Heroes 4 and 5, but two magnitudes smaller.
Wait what? Wow Heroes 3 is a childhood game of mine. I remember spending hours in the map editor just drawing maps and placing enemies and resources all around.
Glad to see it still alive and kicking! Who to watch?
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheKnownWorld - some informational videos (strategies and such) as well as challenges against computers. Great explanations on the why/how and you get to watch at your own pace. I enjoy these more than the streams. Unfortunately he has run out of challenge ideas I think hehe
I believe that’s not against trojans, but for the legal safety (the game can’t call home and tell its/yours ids). As of trojans, just use well-established, curated torrent forums instead of faceless rarbg/kat/pb alikes.
Still risky. Any piracy of mine stopped once I had enough disposable income (and Steam etc. came along) to more conveniently buy the game. Which is an interesting commentary on the supposed lost sale for every pirate copy: when I couldn't afford it, there was no potential sale actually lost. I certainly understand budget-driven piracy though.
Anyway, if you're running pirate copies of any variety, I'd recommend a sandbox of some sort. VMware Player is free, and in my experience faster than VirtualBox. It won't passthrough a dedicated GPU though so it would only be good for older games. you'd need Workstation Pro to get that. Or a Linux distro like Proxmox that runs a bare-metal hypervisor.
And that's why you install questionable software in a virtual machine that you absolutely monitor with every available tool under the moon first. See where it goes, what it exports and brings back, check for file modifications it does with a file monitoring or file difference tool. Also repeat this test 365 times, one for each day of the year - pretty sure automation comes to mind. And only then you can say with a 50% error margin that the thing you downloaded is safe :P
Actually the various torrent aggregators usually have a comment section and if you don't download 0-days it's already vouched safe/unsafe by the time you get to it.
I think my approach may well be completely lawful in some jurisdictions, since it essentially amounts to ‘making the purchased software compatible with the user's device’.