Garry's Mod Pirates Get Stung

[Awexsome]

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.

 

[BrownGaijin]

Not everyone is fan of Garry's Sting, naturally; some forum commenters have expressed concern that the "exploit" could be abused or mistakenly target innocent gamers

To them I say:

http://www.lockportenterprises.com/Whine.jpg

Seriously though, this was a nice trap.

 

[Motiv_]

How easy is it to obtain this ID number? My chief concern is that if someone figures out a way to get SOMEONE ELSE's number, they could fake the message and get that person banned. For example, I don't own Garry's Mod (yet), so if somebody pretended to be me on the Garry's Mod forums, and claimed to have the error message along with my ID, *I* could get in trouble for it.

This strikes me as a very dangerous form of antipiracy.

P.S. Thanks

The person who generated the information had to willingly submit said information. From a technical standpoint that equates to perfect security while from a practical standpoint (as demonstrated with the reality of this case) such a mechanism is clearly open for exploit. For example, one could simply ask for it.

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.

 

[Cobaltmotari]

"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.

 

[TiefBlau]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Well played, Garry, well played.

"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!"

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

What did they expect?

 

[MonkeyPunch]

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.

 

[NLS]

I support this but do think that Steam should allow for some sort of review of cases where gamers claim they had a legit copy and were mistakenly banned.

The thing is, its in the coding to where if its not pirated...they wont have the problem. and you can only get it on steam sooo lol. I guess If you contact them and you did buy it...they have a record of it right there so they would be fine with giving you your account back (and knowing valve probably 5 games with it) but still...sounds like a rare case. GOOD JOB BIG GUY..YOU SIR ARE QUITE THE SMART

3 users were affected with the onscreen error message that were legit. But that's been resolved and won't happen again according to the official blog. (this was before the banhammering during the test phase)

 

[sb666]

My question is what exactly is stopping these guys from pirating it again? They obviously have no compunctions against it.

true but it was still worth it for the giggles

 

[Ravek]

That is fantastic. Whose pathetic enough to pirate a $10 game anyway?

The same people who would pirate a 1 cent game.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100576-Who-Would-Pirate-the-One-Cent-Humble-Indie-Bundle

You seem to imply that pirating a 1 cent game is worse than pirating a 10 dollar game. I'm not sure how that would work.

Pirating a 1 cent game only cheats the developer out of a single cent. That's a tiny moral burden, that might be easily outweighed by a bit of extra convenience like not having to set up a paypal account (or whatever), etc.

 

[GGZeta]

Good on you, now that's inventive anti-piracy policy. Somehow I really just can't feel sad for the people that stole the game and then got caught. They're lucky a perma-ban and an inactive copy of the game is all they got.

 

[Daemascus]

That is fantastic. Whose pathetic enough to pirate a $10 game anyway?

The same people who would pirate a 1 cent game.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100576-Who-Would-Pirate-the-One-Cent-Humble-Indie-Bundle

You seem to imply that pirating a 1 cent game is worse than pirating a 10 dollar game. I'm not sure how that would work.

Pirating a 1 cent game only cheats the developer out of a single cent. That's a tiny moral burden, that might be easily outweighed by a bit of extra convenience like not having to set up a paypal account (or whatever), etc.

It is worse. That one cent game was for charity, with one cent being the minimum donation. And being lazy is not an acceptable excuse for pirating.

 

[Luthir Fontaine]

awsome

Down with the bastard pirates!

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I support this but do think that Steam should allow for some sort of review of cases where gamers claim they had a legit copy and were mistakenly banned.

They do, you might recall - last year people who were mistakenly banned from Modern Warfare 2 (after being on the wrong side of a bug in a VAC housekeeping patch) were rewarded by being unbanned and given a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 for the trouble. Valve has it covered.

 

[Ravek]

It is worse. That one cent game was for charity, with one cent being the minimum donation. And being lazy is not an acceptable excuse for pirating.

Who cares, it's just a cent. I find that a lot easier to understand than pirating something you'd normally pay $10 for.

 

[Desert Tiger]

How easy is it to obtain this ID number? My chief concern is that if someone figures out a way to get SOMEONE ELSE's number, they could fake the message and get that person banned. For example, I don't own Garry's Mod (yet), so if somebody pretended to be me on the Garry's Mod forums, and claimed to have the error message along with my ID, *I* could get in trouble for it.

This strikes me as a very dangerous form of antipiracy.

P.S. Thanks

If that happened you could probably just contact Steam (they've got really good customer support) and say so. Chances are, you log in regularly to Steam from a certain computer with a certain IP address. They can then easily and plainly see that the forum account logged in from a different computer to the one you normally would use, backing up your statement that you're not the perp.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

It is worse. That one cent game was for charity, with one cent being the minimum donation. And being lazy is not an acceptable excuse for pirating.

Who cares, it's just a cent. I find that a lot easier to understand than pirating something you'd normally pay $10 for.

Along with the crappy people who'll just pirate anything, not caring if they're taking money from charities and indie devs, there are people who have their reasons, you could have donated, then torrented it to save their bandwidth, or be in a country where you can't get it thru official channels, or don't have access to a credit card. In those cases, while it's still kinda wrong to pirate it, I imagine they wouldn't be too pissed if you dropped some cash in a charity closer to home to cover it.

 

[Uristqwerty]

It is worse. That one cent game was for charity, with one cent being the minimum donation. And being lazy is not an acceptable excuse for pirating.

Who cares, it's just a cent. I find that a lot easier to understand than pirating something you'd normally pay $10 for.

Along with the crappy people who'll just pirate anything, not caring if they're taking money from charities and indie devs, there are people who have their reasons, you could have donated, then torrented it to save their bandwidth, or be in a country where you can't get it thru official channels, or don't have access to a credit card. In those cases, while it's still kinda wrong to pirate it, I imagine they wouldn't be too pissed if you dropped some cash in a charity closer to home to cover it.

If I remember correctly, they are only counting people who downloaded from their own site, for example if one person bought the bundle and then gave their download page URL to 100 other people. (Just checked, http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle )

Also, http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/12/Download-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle-2-using-BitTorrent

 

[Asehujiko]

I, on the other hand, find it all terribly amusing, and the pained squalling of those who got busted while seeking technical support for a game they illegally downloaded is just sweet, sugary icing on the cake of hilarity.

You find it hilarious that another poorly thought out scheme to "fight" piracy that only ends up annoying the ones who try to make up for it by helping the developers fix their bugs also enables a massive exploit to get other people banned?

 

[Irridium]

I, on the other hand, find it all terribly amusing, and the pained squalling of those who got busted while seeking technical support for a game they illegally downloaded is just sweet, sugary icing on the cake of hilarity.

You find it hilarious that another poorly thought out scheme to "fight" piracy that only ends up annoying the ones who try to make up for it by helping the developers fix their bugs also enables a massive exploit to get other people banned?

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".

The only people this thing annoys and bans are the pirates.