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
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.
Completely agree, having a memorable name is important but that doesn’t mean the name should be a joke.
Still less embarrassing than recommending GIMP.
Oh please don’t be boring. It’s just a name
It’s not a big deal. But it’s ok to think the name is stupid, and that I’m not gonna use it if I think it’s stupid.
I think hyper-fixating on title irrespective of content is silly.
People are going to critique titles. Welcome to life. Life is tough. I get it.
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…
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.
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.
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”…
And it’s not like you can even abbreviate it since cp has its own problematic connotations when it comes to the Internet
We can’t name software around your delicate sensibility.
Good point. I should definitely be more comfortable introducing my children to a software suite called “crackpipe”.
🙄
What?? Do you think they will start doing crack???
crack is so addictive it’s better to never mention its name.
Crack pipe isn’t racist. People of all Skin tones can enjoy that sweet sweet crack.
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.
Agreed. Not doing the least bit of research and choosing an edgy name makes this seem extremely amateurish.
well, you can’t keep every weird american racist issue in mind, there are too many
Or maybe the world shouldn’t be based on whatever racist nonsense comes out of the us?
Yeah the world can’t follow any nonsense comes out of the us.
Exactly. Probably the most famous crack user is the white son of the current US president.
Lol seriously this thread is madness
Check the Edit :)
Much better name!! Nice job responding constructively to feedback, wish more devs had the same level of grace with these types of situations. Wishing you all the best of success with this project!
Care to explain? I’m curious.
The name is fitting because it’s for cracked games, which are piped in a single programme. I don’t think it needs changing.
Everyone gets that. It’s just that sometimes things can be clever and stupid, unwise, and an automatic NO
I like to commit crimes while screaming that I’m committing crimes.
It makes the crimes more obvious so that everyone knows I’m committing crimes.
CRIMES
As a European, I honestly don’t get what you’re saying. Maybe it’s worth thinking about not forcing your opinions and societal problems onto other people?
It’s okay to not know what something is. Crack pipes are WIDELY known to be drug delivery devices. That’s not unique to the United States.
Furthermore, advertising your product as being used to pipe “cracked” (otherwise known as … stolen) games RIGHT there in the name of your product is like daring law enforcement to shut you down in actual record breaking time.
If you want your company to survive such things, you pick a name that is even more clever in that it isn’t… moronic.
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”.
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…
Cool software.
Even as someone sympathetic to ‘privateers’ though…you gotta have more plausible deniability bro, workshop that name lmao
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
I just think it’s a dumb name is all
I love the chutzpah of it.
Creative commons isn’t a licence designed for code though, consider using the AGPL instead.
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.
reconsider your approach.
Start with the fucking name. Yikes.
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.
My favourite part is 100% the name never change it
Terrible name. Call it something like Gamepipe instead.
I’d be interested if there’s any plans for a Linux client
Same here. My current method is a self hosted website on my home network which showcases all available games, followed by a bash script download that will automatically generate the yml file for Lutris to fully install any of my 200+ games.
Whilst this is currently the best way I’ve found for my setup this app seems like the perfect thing to potentially swap to, if Linux was supported.
There are no plans for a native linux client right now, but there is an awesome community-driven approach to run it on linxu in our docs here
A product’s name should reflect what it does, not what you were smoking when you came up with the idea.
This seems cool, but damn I wish there was something like this for Steam games or something. That’s the biggest thing I miss from Sony’s ecosystem, and Steam’s “Family Share” is pretty bad in comparison.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong since I’m not familiar with all this, but would I be able to “upload and share” a game that I bought from GoG since GoG games are DRM free?
Yes. Just keep in mind that will likely break licensing for virtually any game you’ve legally purchased.
I love the idea. I think the UI can use improvement.
dude why would you name it that
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).
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.
How tf is this racist?
Due to racist propaganda in the US during the 80s and 90s. Crack cocaine was portrayed in the media as a “black” drug, and many of the news stories about crack were specifically about it’s effects on black communities.
While the name isn’t inherently racist, in and of itself, it does still carry some racial connotations behind it. Maybe it’s different these days for zoomers, but growing up during the “crack epidemic”, as it was called, and seeing the way it was covered in the news, I can understand why some people are resistant to the name.
