I mean sure yeah you can “just” buy a whole new PC and then learn how to reverse malware without getting pwned so you can save yourself like $80 on some random AAA slopware. Be realistic, does it sound like OP is gonna do that?

I mean power to anyone who does take that route, but we have to acknowledge that 99% of people are not going to.

Generally I’d say they’re one of the most dangerous things you could voluntarily run on your PC. As someone whose education and profession is in infosec, games are one of the things I refuse to pirate because the risk is just too high for me.

Just running an untrusted exe from a shady source is enough to make my hair stand on end but the idea of intentionally replacing low level hypervisor components makes me run away screaming.

FWIW, the type of games that require HV bypasses are ones that I would pass on because the “legitimate” DRM is basically equally as scary from a security perspective.

Everyone’s risk tolerance is different though. 🤷‍♂️

Still makes it effectively 1000x harder than just having the same account forever. Because now you need a new stolen credit card account for every new release.