You are safe pirating either games or software, if you know what you are doing. Many apps require only a key, so, you just download an official app and find the key for it. Many games has gog versions, which are drm-free, or if it’s a steam version, you download clean steam files and use some steam emulators. That covers 99% of all the games. Game piracy has never been that easy and comfortable like it happens to be nowadays.

This thing is getting too popular, I wonder how long it will be able to last.

Actually, yes, there are a few groups with unique niche content that isn’t available anywhere else.

Have you tried cs.rin.ru?

I’ve never tried pollymc, but I’ve been using ultimmc for some time. So, yes, the launcher and installed java are the only things that you need for playing.