Questions, answered

Yes. smog never hosts or provides game files, ROMs or disc images. A mod that runs inside GTA V needs your installed copy of GTA V. A native port of an N64 game needs a ROM you dumped from your own cartridge. Each entry page lists exactly what it needs.

When an entry asks for a file, the launcher checks its hash on your computer against the known-good versions and copies it into place. It is never uploaded anywhere.

smog is a catalog and an installer. It lists projects that their creators have published openly, credits and links them, and downloads them from the creator's own release page (or from our mirror, only when the project's license allows redistribution). It never distributes copyrighted game content, and it never lists projects that bundle it.

Laws differ by country, and some publishers are more hostile to modding than others. You are responsible for following the terms of the games you own. If you hold rights to something listed here, see takedown requests; we act on them quickly.

Projects where one game runs inside or alongside another (Minecraft inside GTA V, for example), mostly built with heavy help from AI coding tools. The AI-made and AI-assisted badges come from the project's own description; we do not guess. The catalog also lists decomp and recomp native ports, which are older, mature and the easiest to install.

Nobody else is doing it. Mashup tools today assume Windows, while Steam and Proton have made Linux a very good place to play Windows games. Getting mods to load inside Proton prefixes, pinning the Proton version an entry was tested with, and running native ports needs a launcher that understands Linux. That is the gap smog fills. Windows support may come later.

INXANITY is a one-click mashup launcher for Windows. It is closed source and members-first.

aigamemashups.com is an open catalog of AI-made mashups, and a good one. It does not install anything for you. Many smog entries were first found there, and we say so.

smog combines a catalog with a launcher, is free and open source, runs on Linux first, screens every build for malware, and requires a human approval before anything is listed.

No screening is perfect, so there are several layers: provenance checks, antivirus and YARA rules, capability analysis with capa, VirusTotal hash lookups, a source review, and finally a person who reads the report. The full list is on the home page. Entries are rescanned weekly and on every new upstream version.

The catalog the launcher downloads is signed, and it contains a revocation list. If an entry or a specific version turns out to be harmful after it was published, we add it to that list and publish a new signed catalog. Every launcher picks it up at its next refresh (at start and every six hours), disables the entry and tells you why.

The launcher does not delete anything without asking. Uninstalling restores any game files the entry changed, from the backups taken at install time.

Submit the link. A public repository or release page with a clear license is the fastest path. It must not ship copyrighted game assets. It goes through screening, and a person decides. If it is approved, the entry credits you and links to your repository.

If you made it, email [email protected] from an address or account we can connect to the project and tell us which entry. No reason needed. We remove the page and revoke the entry in the launcher. Details are on the takedown page.

No telemetry, no accounts, no analytics. Test reports are opt-in and only describe whether a game worked on your system. The privacy page lists every field.

No. smog is free, has no ads and does not sell anything. Neither do the projects in it: if a creator asks for donations, their repository is the place to give.