Yes. Unequivocally.
While Apunkagames attempts to shelter itself by claiming "We only host games that are not sold anymore" (abandonware), this defense does not hold water. apunkagames dirt
.exe file is a violation of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) in the US and the Copyright Designs and Patents Act in the UK.The Reality Check: Your ISP might not knock on your door for downloading one racing game, but you are stealing from developers. The team that built the particle effects for the mud splashing on your windshield likely lost their jobs during EA’s 2023 layoffs. Piracy has real-world consequences. Copyright Law: Code, art assets, music, and code
The racing genre is uniquely vulnerable to malicious injection. Because racing games require constant rendering of textures and physics, malware hiding as a "performance optimizer" or "directx installer" is common. The Reality Check: Your ISP might not knock
Users reporting on Reddit's r/PiratedGames have specifically flagged "Apunkagames Dirt Showdown" as containing a coin miner disguised as a save file. The miner activates only when the GPU is under load—meaning while you are racing, your PC is also mining Monero for a stranger.