Dodi Repacks, the second most prolific and well-known repacker of pirated games behind FitGirl, has broken the hearts of piracy aficionados worldwide today, as Dodi has just announced in a “Roadmap” update on his website that he’s scaling back his piracy operation so he can… get married and become a lawyer? Saul Goodman, is that you?

I still remember blowing into Famicom cartridges until my cheeks hurt.

I was watching some retro gaming videos on YouTube the other day. There was a channel diving deep into the story of SEGA's Sonic. As I scrolled through the comments, I saw other old-time players sharing how they saved up for cartridges as kids, or how they first held a Mega Drive controller in a small shop. Their memories overlapped with mine.

What surprised me more was the comment section itself. People were rational. They disagreed without fighting. And they were quite welcoming to me, a Chinese commenter.

So I thought: I'll write too. I'll write about how we played, growing up on this side of the world.

Not to compare who had it worse, nor to claim we understood games better. Just our real experiences — blowing into Famicom cartridges, getting yelled at by arcade owners, going from grey-market PS2s to an official Chinese version of the Switch.

We are all gamers who love life. We just grew up in different places.

Before I begin, I want to say a few things. Not as a defense, just to let you know where we started.

First, we don't run from the piracy issue. Back then, there was no other path. When we grew up, we bought legitimate copies — not to whitewash the past, but because we genuinely wanted to pay that ticket.

Second, Steam helped a lot. For many Chinese players, the concept of buying legitimate games began with Steam. For older games that never got remastered, we still seek out original physical copies from back in the day.

Third, the game console ban and the "war on gaming addiction" did shape us. I'm not here to talk politics, but to say this: it was a generational disconnect, not anyone's fault.

Fourth, the shift from grey imports to legitimate copies was a natural process. I'm optimistic about China's console market and its games. If you're interested, you're welcome to join us.

Fifth, we just live in different places. The love for games is the same. Chinese people are often busy, but the way we support legitimate games may be a little different from yours.

Alright. Let's begin.

(Small note: AI helped polish the grammar a little. Every story here — blowing cartridges, the Water Level 8 rumor, the arcade owner's noodles, using PSP as an MP4 player — is 100% my real experience.)

The first time I played Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Black Box Studio was already gone. Disbanded. I wanted to give them my money, but there was no one left to take it.

That hit me hard — missing the chance to pay for a childhood favorite.

See, back in the day in China, most of us played this game as a cracked copy. No other way. No official retail. No Steam. No way to pay even if you wanted to. We were kids with dial-up internet and a dream — and a pirated ISO from a local PC café.

So years later, I thought: maybe a physical PS2 import copy would help. A kind of spiritual closure.

Luckily, I didn't get scammed. Found an old-school seller who knew his stuff. Got it at a fair price. We talked a bit about why I was buying it — he was genuinely happy for me.

Also grabbed a few titles on Steam during sales. Two bucks each on average. Felt good.

I have mixed feelings about this franchise. Part of me still hopes it can rise again. Make something world-changing. Like it once did.

Hello !games community 👋

I'm 26, born in 1999 in a small Chinese town. You can call me French Fry Noob – or just Fry.

Let me explain the nickname. In China's Battlefield community, we call new players "French fries." 🍟

Why? Because you're fresh, you get eaten alive out there… but you always come in large numbers. It's a self-deprecating way of saying: "I'm still learning. I'll probably die a lot. But I'm here to have fun."

So yeah – I'm a forever French Fry Noob.

A bit about me

I grew up blowing into Famiclone cartridges, sneaking into arcades, renting PS2 time by the hour, and using a PSP as an MP4 player. Just like many of you – just in a different place.

I don't work in games. I'm just a player.

Recently I wrote a long, personal piece about how my generation in China grew up with games. From the Famiclone era to Steam. It covers the console ban, the grey market, the "Steam tipping point" – and why "piracy" was never the full picture for many Chinese players.

I've shared it with Chinese gamers, and the response was warm.

I'm currently working on an English version. It's a story about why a kid from a small Chinese town ended up buying a physical PS2 copy of Most Wanted years later – just for closure. Not politics. Just games.

I'll post it here in the coming days. I hope you'll give it a read.

A quick note

I'm new to Lemmy. Still figuring out the etiquette. If I do something weird, just tell me – I'll listen and adjust.

Thanks for having me. And if you play Battlefield… I'll try not to trip on your revive.

🍟

– French Fry Noob

My homelab is essentially my own passion project and only really I access it except for when I spin up the occasional game server for friends.

I'm currently running Proxmox and run a debian LXC container for each docker stack I have, and have OpnSense routing incoming traffic with Haproxy with ssl offloading. My currently running LXCs are: mediawiki, amp game server(2 Minecraft servers), freshrss, and currently playing around with n8n.

I'm looking to collapse my LXC's to just VMs. I'd like to be able to have 3 VMs running in a Docker Swarm together so I can upgrade a VM at a time and just swing my running containers to another docker node and then swing back when the VM is stable again.

I've looked at k0s, k3s, and k8s and it just seems way too much work and overhead for what I'm willing to do. I also want to keep using docker compose and want a decent webgui to manage my containers/nodes/swarm. I'm using DockHand right now, but need to research swarm support.

Anyone have any advice for something like this? Any specific terms, tech, software I should look into?

Also, gonna throw a curveball, but what would the effects be of running 3 different distros as my nodes in my swarm? Like a Debian node, Rocky Linux node and potentially arch node? I'm guessing I shouldn't due to docker engine differences potentially.

I'm just trying to have fun with things, break things, fix them, learn, etc.

I mean the niche best known for Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls III, IV and V.

1. (Fantasy) The setting is a fictional world with fantastical elements, and a comparable level of societal progress as the 1600s or earlier.

2. (Character Creation) You create your own role: character and class. It is a permanent character.

3. (Action) You have direct control over your characters actions in real time.

4. (Open World / Sandbox) You aren't forced to do the main story and can roam around the whole map finding items and doing side quests.

5. (Single player) Not having to accommodate for multiple players, your choices can make a lasting impact on the world.

6. (Alive world) There are events that can happen by chance, like meeting people on the road.

Less importantly, they are first person. This connects you more to the character, but downside is you don't see how cool armor you are wearing. First person combat might also keep it from reaching high action potential, although games like Mount&Blade and Kingdom Come Deliverance features good First Person fencing.

What are the competitors in this genre of single player, open world, fantasy, RPG?

Baldur's Gate is not an action game.

The Witcher forces you into a premade character and thus I don't consider it Free Role Playing.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is not fantasy and you are a set character.

Elden Ring has few NPC interactions, choices and well executed quests. The world is heavily hostile. I don't see it fulfilling the niche quite, but it fills my craving per now.

With Oblivion and Skyrim being real hits, why aren't there more competitors in the Single Player, Open World, Fantasy, RPG niche?

TL;DR: Between May 2025 and May 2026, Waymo’s recall-scope count of autonomous cabs rose from 1,212 vehicles to 3,791 vehicles.

That is more than a 3x increase in the Waymo fleet size in roughly one year, a major acceleration that dwarfs Tesla's faltering Robotaxi rollout.

>be me
>19
>autistic khhv
>lonely
>get great idea to work on my people skills
>join a friend finding server
>add foid
>we chat
>shits pretty boring she gives typical one word foid responses
>says shes a history major
>I know how to spice this conversation up 
>I think about asking her the classic would you kill baby Hitler to stop the holocaust?
>but then an even better question dawns upon me
>would you molest baby Hitler to stop the holocaust?
>calls me a freak then blocks me
>hour later I get banned from the discord
>pic related

Staff

We don't need these "jokes" in our server. If you don't know better you present a risk we wish to not allow in our server.

USB Copy “No Permission” Error When Mirroring

Has anyone encountered this error before?

File "1-01 music_name.mp3" in task "music" failed [File/Folder Error]
Task "music" failed: [Execution failed]. Files were only partially copied.

I have tried giving permission to the music folder but this error still exists.

I would greatly appreciate any help.