With no DRM I'm impressed. Dissapointing it's just a forum ban though (Steam forums are some of the worst and strictest anyway, so no big loss to any of the pirates).
Garry's Mod Pirates Get Stung
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
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I think i should point out the people who pirated The humble bundle, both of them.. And that was for charity..Rivers Wells said:
Edit: I see i have been ninja'd, apologies
True, but valve's probably concerned mainly with the casual pirate who torrents things every once in awhile. there really isn't anything you can do to the people who steal EVERYTHING unless you're willing to go to the trouble of suing them.sir.rutthed said:
*Gets up from the floor for laughing to hard*
Haha, wow. This is great. Very good way to get them without hurting your legit users. Besides, this is way to funny. Anything that makes pirates fume and rant warms my heart.
Haha, wow. This is great. Very good way to get them without hurting your legit users. Besides, this is way to funny. Anything that makes pirates fume and rant warms my heart.
dagens24 said:
There's no need to. Valve has their Steam ID and their account information. If you posted the error, it contains your Steam ID. Then can then check that against their own information to see if that particular ID had purchased Gary's Mod for their account. If they have a copy on their account, then it's a mistake, and nothing happens. If the Steam ID posted in the error does NOT have a copy of the game registered to that account, then it's BAN HAMMER time.
Only if you have no idea what entrapment entails. It is impossible to "entrap" someone for a crime they've already committed. Entrapment is inciting someone to commit a crime they would not have otherwise committed without your encouragement - in this case, for instance, giving someone directions on where and how to pirate Garry's Mod, along with assurances as to how hard it is to get caught and punished for doing so, and then busting them for following your instructions.Naturality said:
What was done here isn't even close to entrapment. This, as pointed out in the article, was a sting.
This argument is completely useless. You can apply this to any and every game sold for profit, legitimizing all piracy, because "they sold out."moppop said:
News flash: trying to make a profit off of something you spent time and effort creating to get some compensation for that time and effort is not "selling out," nor are you justified in stealing that creation for your own amusement because you didn't feel like paying for it.
I'm usually partially on the pirates' side, due to my hatred of DRM & overpricing, as well as other shady tactics from publishers.
This, on the other hand, is just pure win. Well done Mr. Newman, two thumbs up.
This, on the other hand, is just pure win. Well done Mr. Newman, two thumbs up.
A quick bit of information for anyone worried about pirates altering the log to victimize someone else:
There are more ways of storing information than plain text. Splitting a number in such a way that it can be combined back together (XOR, addition, appending, etc), adding bogus data in between ( every 3rd digit is a fake inserted. Or, more crafty, every third digit, when removed and added, forms a checksum for the actual ID ), encoding information in the whitespace, or the names/capitalization of some of the errors...
Anyone clever enough could set it up to be next to impossible to alter any of the information hidden within the log without making the edits extremely obvious. And the logs themselves could still be parsed by a computer as a part of a fully automated process.
Wikipedia can tell you far more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
I doubt that anything more than a basic confirmation ( if even that) could have been used, though.
However, in the future, there is more that can be done:
- Have a delay after an update, where as time passes problems are more likely to occur
- If it is completely harmless, perhaps legitimate users could recieve the same errors sometimes, to hide the true nature of it.
- Perhaps don't publicly ask for the logs, include it as part of the support process
- Don't announce the trap and/or hand out punishments until weeks later, if ever, giving more time for fools to fall for it.
- Hide enough information, or enough quirks that look like hidden information, that any pirate that suspects the purpose of the log would be driven to total paranoia. Occasionally include false trails even when not hunting for pirates.
- Convince other developers to use similar techniques in other games. With a widespread use of well-hidden information, especially with enough false information and/or easter eggs hidden in the data ( encode "The Cake Is A Lie" a few times, for example, in a way that looks vaguely like it is encoding your IP and MAC addresses as a watermark in the first 4k chars of the log file, during the initialization data ), eventually pirates will be either driven away from the support sites entirely, and are usually marked as pirates when they do.
- Hiding complex confirmation codes in the data can also weed out pirates who are nervous about being found, so alter the logs hoping to avoid the traps
- I hid two ASCII characters in this post. See if you can find them. Put them together for a smiley.
There are more ways of storing information than plain text. Splitting a number in such a way that it can be combined back together (XOR, addition, appending, etc), adding bogus data in between ( every 3rd digit is a fake inserted. Or, more crafty, every third digit, when removed and added, forms a checksum for the actual ID ), encoding information in the whitespace, or the names/capitalization of some of the errors...
Anyone clever enough could set it up to be next to impossible to alter any of the information hidden within the log without making the edits extremely obvious. And the logs themselves could still be parsed by a computer as a part of a fully automated process.
Wikipedia can tell you far more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
I doubt that anything more than a basic confirmation ( if even that) could have been used, though.
However, in the future, there is more that can be done:
- Have a delay after an update, where as time passes problems are more likely to occur
- If it is completely harmless, perhaps legitimate users could recieve the same errors sometimes, to hide the true nature of it.
- Perhaps don't publicly ask for the logs, include it as part of the support process
- Don't announce the trap and/or hand out punishments until weeks later, if ever, giving more time for fools to fall for it.
- Hide enough information, or enough quirks that look like hidden information, that any pirate that suspects the purpose of the log would be driven to total paranoia. Occasionally include false trails even when not hunting for pirates.
- Convince other developers to use similar techniques in other games. With a widespread use of well-hidden information, especially with enough false information and/or easter eggs hidden in the data ( encode "The Cake Is A Lie" a few times, for example, in a way that looks vaguely like it is encoding your IP and MAC addresses as a watermark in the first 4k chars of the log file, during the initialization data ), eventually pirates will be either driven away from the support sites entirely, and are usually marked as pirates when they do.
- Hiding complex confirmation codes in the data can also weed out pirates who are nervous about being found, so alter the logs hoping to avoid the traps
- I hid two ASCII characters in this post. See if you can find them. Put them together for a smiley.
This could be the new form of DRM. If it catches on it'll scare pirates away just from the scare factor of pirating, then being caught will make you actually have consequences from it.
If they could work with Steam and make them lose access to their games and such then it would be awesome. Piracy is a crime people. If they catch someone pirating then make em' lose something of value so that they don't do it again. After you get caught stealing something you don't just return the money. You have to pay fines or have some punishment on top of that.
This could be a great way to actually screw over pirates over things they actually do care about.
If they could work with Steam and make them lose access to their games and such then it would be awesome. Piracy is a crime people. If they catch someone pirating then make em' lose something of value so that they don't do it again. After you get caught stealing something you don't just return the money. You have to pay fines or have some punishment on top of that.
This could be a great way to actually screw over pirates over things they actually do care about.
To them I say:
http://www.lockportenterprises.com/Whine.jpg
Seriously though, this was a nice trap.
It's actually extremely easy to find out one's Steam ID, which is what worries me about this. Pirates can fuck off for all I care, but I don't want to get banned from the Steam forums because someone posted the error message with my Steam ID.Eclectic Dreck said:
"The sheer unfairness of not being allowed to play a game they didn't pay for"
In the words of the ever-quotable yahtzee, "That's not logic!"
Why are people so surprised? They're the ones in the wrong anyway for going against Team Garry's right to make money.
In the words of the ever-quotable yahtzee, "That's not logic!"
Why are people so surprised? They're the ones in the wrong anyway for going against Team Garry's right to make money.
I really don't so how anyone could be annoyed or concerned with this.
It clearly states that the Steam ID was shown along with the error message, hence it's easy to see if someone was "falsely" accused. So no legit customer was "harmed".
This really is a great method of rooting out pirates and a great example of unobtrusive DRM.
Well played.
It clearly states that the Steam ID was shown along with the error message, hence it's easy to see if someone was "falsely" accused. So no legit customer was "harmed".
This really is a great method of rooting out pirates and a great example of unobtrusive DRM.
Well played.
