Anon tries to save money

Brazil and most Latin American countries are also safe pirate havens, unless you set up a for-profit piracy site, then you're painting a huge target on your head.
You can also just direct download games without a VPN.
100% safe?
No, but uh, ISPs have so heavily switched over to monitoring torrents, they kind of forgot the other option exists.
(I'll update this with a -whoops I got fucked- if that happens, but I've been doing this for half a year now, no problems.)
Another option is I2P for either direct dls or torrents, no subscription fee, but it is quite slow.

$14.99 Netflix subscription

$11.99 Gamepass subscription

$11.99 Spotify Premium subscription

Want more than one networks programming? Hulu/Max/Paramount/Peacock all cost around the same

ISP still sells your damn data to advertisers

OR

$5 Mullvad subscription.

You tell me what makes more sense.

Unfortunately I cannot recommend Mullvad for Torrenting. They blocked port forwarding, making seeding and thus contributing back to the network that much slower
I just went for ProtonVPN since (next to iVPN I think) it's the only other one to at least be partially OSS and still viable for daily-use
- Thats fair, and I agree with you for torrenting, its the one thing I wish they'd change. For privacy though, I feel like Mullvad is leading the pack. (Not having to provide an email, crypto and/or cash payments, DAITA)
- Yes shame about Mullvad. AirVPN still allows port forwarding though.
  Now days I just stick to private trackers while using a cheap European VPS setup with wireguard. Only saves me a couple of bucks a month compared to VPN service but it adds up.

It's hella cheaper tho

Yeah and something that is useful for all kinds of situations like circumventing geo-blocking as well. So it's always a good idea to have a VPN.

I may or may not have torrented so many games, software, movies and albums without any VPN. It went well for years until we got one of those letters.

Woops, looks like I left my Wi-Fi network open. Must have been my neighbor ;)

You also need an ISP, which isn't free either.

If you have a non-sucking ISP, you don't need a VPN. But a VPN is incredibly cheap, so just lump it in mentally with the cost of the internet service.

What VPN do you recommend?
- That depends on a number of things, like do you want to seed (if so, Mullvad is out), how much do you plan on downloading (if a lot, a VPS may be out), if your ISP blocks any of them, etc.
  I generally recommend Mullvad or DIY w/ a VPS (I DIY a wireguard VPN on a VPS), but just try some out and see what works best for you.

No money, no friends? Maybe that a signal it's time to take a break from the screen

Going outside when you're nowhere near a city:
(in USA at least)
- That's all of Alberta CA I think
- You've never gone tromping through the woods?
- If you're from the South in England, and haven't made any friends by uni (if you even get accepted) just give up, you're never gonna make any, not over there at least.
  Northerner terrifies Londoners by saying "Hello"
Exactly.
I tried, but could not get into gaming at all. Boy am I glad about that.
- That's kind of wild to me. There's so many unique types of games, and not a single one interested you?
  That's like not being interested in an entire media category.
  I can understand not relating to the gamer culture, but even my grandma games on her tablet.

protonvpn

until proton's ceo was all "o captain my captain" about trump and the "good things" that trump is doing
Mullvad vpn
- Mullvad lost me when they stopped allowing port forward
- they aren't free really,.
the free tier doesn't support P2P

Direct downloads are fine enough. No need for vpn.

Edit: Depends on your location. US is fine with ddl

Depends on where you are. Don't try that in Germany, you'll get a hefty fine.
- A fine for pirating? How awful.

Use Tor Or a pretty good free vpn like ProtonVPN. Just not a "free" one. Looking at VeePN with disgust

Please do not use Tor for piracy, you're taking up valuable bandwidth that people in authoritarian countries need to fight government censorship and surveillance
- This, and if you're downloading a large game, it might take a few months over a Tor.
protonvpn free tier doesn't support P2P
- sh*t
  Uhh ignore the example, idk a free vpn that supports P2P.
You shouldn't torrent through tor, however, i2p has built in torrents

Can't you borrow games at the library?

You can also torrent games at the library
In Austria you totally can and it costs € 30 / year. But for the new ones you can simply torrent them because nobody cares here.
Not at mine. We have board games and telescopes though.

Read the megathread ffs, use ProtonVPN

for direct downloads it works, however I tried to torrent on it and it disabled and said "no p2p". I pay for mullvad now and have no regrets
- How did you set it up? Proton offers port forwarding, which mullvad does not

If you live in a country that requires a vpn to torrent, you can probably afford video games.

Wrong, you probably can afford a temporary license to play a video game.

Lifetime VPN sub. Makes it a one-time purchase.

This sounds as unsustainable as free vpns
- Because it is. Just recently some VPN provider I already forgot the name of cancelled all lifetime subscriptions. There were multiple posts on Lemmy about it.
- How do you mean?
- Ten years and counting for me and VPN Unlimited so far. Unsustainable? Capitalism is un-sustainable. Cheaper than paying monthly or yearly? Absolutely.
  Personally, I use the VPN to do my searches, grab magnet links, and get the torrent started, then I disconnect the VPN and switch to Cell data, as that ISP has never sent me a nasty-gram about pirating.
  Reasonably sure Nord is still turning a profit on my sub.

This is always such a stupid take. Just force fully encrypted traffic in your torrent client... No VPN necessary.

This is wrong, torrenting is mostly caught by reviewing the peers list of torrents with infringing content, not analyzing the traffic. Only a VPN (or Seedbox) masks your IP, or alternatively private trackers are rare to get monitored.
- Okay so I think you are talking about getting caught by a copyright holder, and I am talking about getting caught by your Internet service provider. The alternative (free) solution to the former is just to use private trackers. The alternative (free) solution to the latter is to fully encrypt your traffic.

80$ games btw.

I recommend Fastvpn, they have great support for just 15$ a year