Not all of us were born with the talent to know how to acquire copyrighted materials with non-approved methods, so I decided to make a small starting guide that allows you to pirate your own stuff and know how to avoid and deal with viruses and trojans. Before starting be advised, I assume you have basic computer knowledge (how to open and close files and folders, how to open downloaded files, following installation wizards, how to use the internet in general) and that you are doing this on Windows (if you are doing this on MacOS there are dedicated guides for your needs, if you are on Linux get outta here you already know all of this). So let's get started.
Requirements
This is legacy stuff and redundant in some respects but better safe than sorry. So first do yourself a favor and install ublock origin if you still don't have it installed, better than propietary adblock plus which is obsolete and has sold out to corporations, in case you don't know what this does it's an ad blocker, essential to even breathe in the internet these days. Next thing you need is a data compressor (i guess in this case decompressor), WinRAR is the most beginner friendly, but it's corporate software and also doesn't fully support .7z in my experience. Use 7-Zip instead, better decompressing speeds and also works a lot better for compressing things too.
Optional but if you are gonna torrent get Qbittorrent and if you are in a bad place (Five eyes or I guess any country that is usually called first world) you need a VPN to avoid getting letters by your internet provider or a fine and getting chewed out by your parents/roommates. If you need a VPN then you gotta start looking, and you better find something good. You need something that respects your privacy and won't ask many questions or sell your data to Google or Facebook. Most of the time thats gonna be a paid VPN, which kinda ruins the point, so fait is trying to run her own VPN, if you're lucky by the time this comes out it will be available to close friends. (give me money please).
Where to get your fix
This is the hardest section, for the most part you might want something that wont destroy your computer with a trojan and that actually works. Google is not your friend this time because they intentionally censor actual pirate websites and leave the ones with viruses at the top, not very helpful. You might hate doing this but go on reddit and start looking for places that mention "reputable sites", you need to remember this. Beggars can't choosers. You might run into people with questionable opinions or viewpoints so unless there's a better alternative, swallow your pride and pirate from them, unless they're straight up nazis, in that case where it's best to not get involved with that kinda people because it might get you into trouble too (looking at your Kims and Empresss of the world). I recommend direct download sites since they're likely to be faster and will not get you into trouble, but sometimes there ain't an alternative that's easier than good old torrenting. My personal favorite is MediaFire, I personally use it.
When you finish downloading the 5 parts of the 7z or rar file you got, extract it to the folder to your choosing, depending on the game and where it normally is available, you might get the game directly or an installer, I recommend you only keep the installer if you are torrenting (see appendix). You might also need to crack the game yourself or not, due to some games or platforms integrating copy protection into their systems (CD games usually have disc protection, platforms have DRM), don't worry! Use goldberg for easy to crack games, if you want a denuvo game wait and research, GOG games usually come in installers and are DRM free, Steam usually can be cracked with Goldberg Emu.
As a side note you might or might not need the last version of Direct X and Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables, usually it's best to download them once from the official pages and not worry after that.
Appendix: How to Torrent
You might realize that when trying to download a torrent you can find many ways to download a .torrent file, or use a magnet. Both of these are equivalent, in both of them you get the information for how to download the files, for the programmers think of them as pointers to the actual info. One is stored as a file the other one is integrated in the browser and opened as a link. Be careful.
On your torrent client (please use qbittorrent) you will find some different options and settings that all look like magical doodads, and you'll ask what is your download speed. Well it depends on two factors, the ammount of leechers and seeders, and your own settings. Leechers and Seeders are terms defining people sharing the file, leechers are people who are mostly trying to download the file, like you right now, and seeders are people who have the entirety of files and will be mostly dedicated to uploading that file to others, since this uses P2P your download speed will vary on how many leechers and seeders are available to send the files to you and how close they are too you. It's different to have 2 seeders right next door to having 20 leechers all in Russia.
I recommend you seed the file and not leech, in other words don't delete the file right after you used it, let other people get it from you, be nice. That's what the ratio is for, you ideally want it at least to reach a 1 Ratio, if you are real nice make it 2 or more. Depending on the torrent, you may see that it used a tracker, a tracker tracks the ratios of the people who torrented the file. Not useful if you are going to use torrent for pretty much nothing, since you will mostly use public trackers, meaning anyone can use the files those trackers watch and well since it's public the government will watch it somewhat. If you build up a good ratio on public trackers and have a reputation of your own you can try and join private trackers, which have files that can only be shared between members of the private tracker, usually have better servers and they have policies in order to not abandon torrents, and best of all, the FBI ain't watching them sometimes. Most niche content is on private trackers, you can join them if you have a good ratio, you can just register, have to go through applications, or be invite only depending on the tracker. Really hard to get in these days, so try to find another way of getting the content from them, good luck if you try to find dvd-isos if you are looking for them.
