this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Hey folks,

our team has worked tirelessly for a year to bring you Crackpipe, the open-source, decentralized, and liberal alternative to conventional cloud-based game platforms like Steam and Origin. We're thrilled to announce that Crackpipe is now available for everyone, and we're delighted to share it with the community as an open-source project.

With Crackpipe, you and your friends can enjoy playing and tracking games on a shared file server, free from the restrictions of traditional platforms. Embracing "alternatively obtained" games, including DRM-free titles, Crackpipe offers a flexible and open approach to gaming - think Jellyfin, but for Videogames.

Take full control of your gaming experience with Crackpipe's self-hosted approach. Explore your server's game collection, securely download, launch, and play games, and monitor your playtimes and progress - all even when the server is offline. Compare stats and play states with other users on the server for added fun.

Our server features include automatic indexing of games, metadata enrichment with RAWG API, multi-user authentication, configurable logging, health monitoring, full-text search, filters, sorting, pagination, and a fully documented API. Crackpipe's high configurability ensures it fits your specific needs.

Join us on this journey to embrace a more open, flexible, and enjoyable gaming experience for all. Try Crackpipe today and share your contributions, feedback, bug reports, and feature requests.

Link: https://crackpipe.de

You can also check out our launch at producthunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crackpipe

UPDATE: here

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Cool idea, problematic name. Have you considered any others? There’s a ton of racist/problematic connotations in the US with this name that probably wouldn’t be well understood in DE/EU…

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Agreed. As an American, cool concept, rough name. There is no way I’m recommending a software called crackpipe at work.

And let’s say I wanted to use it, I’m going to install this and instruct my kids how to use crackpipe? I’m sure that will go over great with little Timmy’s school when he tells his teacher and friends.

I’d strongly consider changing it.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And it's not like you can even abbreviate it since cp has its own problematic connotations when it comes to the Internet

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And when we are troubleshooting, we'll be searching "crackpipe _____"... I can definitely think of a few scenarios where that'll return very different results than expected.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

And let’s say I wanted to use it, I’m going to install this and instruct my kids how to use crackpipe?

I mean I get your point, but if you instruct your kids how to use a tool for managing pirated games, they are probably going to see a lot harsher stuff than the word "crack pipe"..

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Crack pipe isn't racist. People of all Skin tones can enjoy that sweet sweet crack.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (23 children)

In the US specifically there’s some historical connotations back to the 80’s and how the US government fucked over black communities by flooding them with crack. I’m sure you all didn’t mean anything racist/negative with this, but wanted to flag this to y’all since you were based in the EU and likely wouldn’t have the same connotations with the term :)

Anyways, best of luck with this! It’s a cool idea.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

In the US they can change it to MethPipe

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Even without the racist connotations in the US it's a weird name.
Obviously not as bad though

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

The name is fitting because it's for cracked games, which are piped in a single programme. I don't think it needs changing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You can rationalize it all you want, at the end of the day when you say crackpipe there’s only one thing that comes to mind.

I’m just imaging a conversation at work talking about a new game, and someone saying they haven’t picked it up yet and a colleague overhearing their co-worker say “just hit the crackpipe”.

[–] Uranium_Green 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Honestly even calling it CrackedPipe would be better than straight up crackpipe, lmao

I'm envisioning the possible reverse scenario where you get someone wanting some crack and won't take "Uhhh, I was just talking about a video game thing" as an answer

Then again Gimp is incredibly popular...

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Care to explain? I'm curious.

[–] JawnDoh 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here’s a wiki article about the incident they are talking about. Basically it’s believed that in order to get money to arm rebels in Nicaragua the CIA assisted with importing cocaine to the US and specifically primarily black neighborhoods fueling the crack epidemic.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I'm not going to talk with my friends about using something called crackpipe. Might be cool software, but I can't take it seriously. This would be like if Plex called themselves bootlegpimp.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Completely agree, having a memorable name is important but that doesn't mean the name should be a joke.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Still less embarrassing than recommending GIMP.

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[–] Sethayy 4 points 1 year ago

Gonna contribute to the project just to keep the name as is

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago

Terrible name. Call it something like Gamepipe instead.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As others have said, cool concept, awful name.

Bad name aside Windows only client support is a big letdown and makes the application useless to me.

[–] Sethayy 6 points 1 year ago

My favourite part is 100% the name never change it

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Cool software.

Even as someone sympathetic to 'privateers' though...you gotta have more plausible deniability bro, workshop that name lmao

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While Crackpipe can be used with cracked games, it does not encourage or condone piracy.

This is so fucking hilarious to me. Your logo is a pirate, and your app name is "crack"pipe (which is dumb for many reasons), and you use 'alternatively sourced' in the language instead of just talking about DRM-free games.

Cool software, but if you don't want to get shut down you certainly should reconsider your approach.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

reconsider your approach.

Start with the fucking name. Yikes.

[–] MonkCanatella 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I for one will not be using this to introduce my kids to gore simulators where you can see chunks of peoples' heads blown off at your own hands, because it's called crack pipe, and that is where I draw the line

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

I love the chutzpah of it.

Creative commons isn't a licence designed for code though, consider using the AGPL instead.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If you guys want this to take off in the US (and probably Canada too) you gotta rethink the name. If it doesn't come off as vaguely racist it will come off as edgy for edgy's sake. Low-brow and amateurish. Otherwise, it looks cool. Best of luck to you.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I thought it was satire at first 😂

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So it's like game streaming with Geforce Game Streaming and Moonlight?

But like others already said: Reconsider that name...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I thought so too, but it isn't - it's a server that hosts your pirated games and a client that downloads from the server and installs them. It's like Steam or Epic games, but for pirated games.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This looks more like Steam where users actually download and install the games.

[–] priapus 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'd be interested if there's any plans for a Linux client

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

cool stuff but what about packaging the games? only transfering files is most of the time not enough and games need registry stuff and what not and on games that need a setup.exe to be run, is that unattended like on steam or do users need to click "next, next, finish"?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

dude why would you name it that

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was designed to work with "alternatively obtained" games such as DRM-free games. While Crackpipe can be used with cracked games, it does not encourage or condone piracy.

People, come on.

First of all the name, the logo of a pirate, using the terminology "alternatively obtained" - this is clearly for sharing cracked/pirated games. Any plausible deniability is out the window. Especially with using copyrighted game box arts in the screenshots.

If you changed the language to be something like:

It's designed to assist with sharing games with friends by providing a mechanism for downloading and managing game installations. Please review your game's licenses to ensure this is an acceptable use before sharing.

Then you'd be able to say "this is meant for sharing freeware/shareware easily and making it a social experience."

Also change the name and logo, and get those copyrighted box arts out of the screenshots and just use art from open source games SuperTaxKart, OpenRA, etc. (Technically those may be copyrighted, depends on each game, but at least you're not dealing with fucking Sony by showing a Spider-Man game).

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