484
Why FitGirl won't die: The repacker millions of gamers depend on in an age of surveillance (www.tbsnews.net)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
142 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    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

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    it's well-known that ...

    alright

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    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."

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    (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

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    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:

    • 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

    • I installed one single game from a repack by FitGirl

    • 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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent