In many cases, legit games have more malware (spyware, DRM, rootkits, etc.) and the cracked versions remove it. It’s annoying to pay for a game and it won’t work offline because the company wants to collect your data, but the cracked version does work offline.

UE5 has some great tech and MetaHuman Animator is fantastic. I appreciate that they allow anyone with under $1M in revenue to use their tech free of charge. MHA, for example, is the only decent facial mocap available to indies that doesn’t have an expensive subscription.

On the other hand, Epic Games has a lot of shit. I was especially annoyed with their Fab store and shutting down Sketchfab. Hopefully their layoff doesn’t negatively impact what they’re doing right.