If you own the original DVD or a digital license on Steam/EA, downloading a repack for convenience (smaller size) exists in a legal gray area. However, distributing or downloading from a non-authorized source violates copyright law in most countries.

Use only trusted repackers (FitGirl), verify hashes, scan with Malwarebytes post-install, and accept that installation will take longer than the actual gameplay session.

Buy the game on GOG and use Windows’ built-in NTFS compression. You lose no quality and support the developers.

Standard compression (like .zip or .rar files) reduces file size by removing redundancy. Highly compressed repacks take this further. Skilled repackers use tools like FreeArc, Precomp, and LZMA2 to shrink audio, textures, and even video files without (theoretically) losing visual fidelity.