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

  • lordcommander@waveform.social
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    1 year ago

    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…

    • TragicNotCute@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • charles@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • aski3252@lemmy.world
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        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”…

      • lordcommander@waveform.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Neato@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Agreed. Not doing the least bit of research and choosing an edgy name makes this seem extremely amateurish.

    • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

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

      • starstough@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Everyone gets that. It’s just that sometimes things can be clever and stupid, unwise, and an automatic NO

        • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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?

          • starstough@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • 7egend@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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”.

      • lordcommander@waveform.social
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        1 year ago

        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!