

Garry mods Garry's Mod to catch pirates - iughugh
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/13/garry-mods-garrys-mod-to-catch-pirates/

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Argorak
I have been bitten twice by such schemes, although having a legit copy:

\- In Settlers 3, buildings started to produce wrong items: iron instead of
pigs etc. In a game that heavily relies on well crafted production chains, it
completely wrecks havoc. It was fun for 5 minutes, but after finding out that
it was actually a misbehaving copy protection, I was a bit angry. Also,
explaining to support or other users on forum that your copy is actually legit
only worsens the pain.

\- Operation: Flashpoint was much worse. First of all, single player works as
expected. But when the copy protection thinks you use a copied disk (or your
CD-rom is not behaving as expected), it quickly started to ramp up the
difficulty to the point where an enemy shot you with a pistol over a kilometer
distance. It took hours of frustration until I found out what it was.

There are other games that implemented such schemes. Usually, they have one
thing in common: they produce false positives that are much harder to detect
than a simple "I think you have a pirated copy. If not, please ask support for
further assistance."

In this case it might work, because Valve can actually revalidate whether the
ID given has bought the game and rule out false positives.

But please, stop that stuff.

~~~
pmh
There were already a few false positives
([http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1078239-Pirate-catching-
cat...](http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1078239-Pirate-catching-catches-
me.-I-did-not-pirate)).

~~~
archgoon
This isn't actually a false positive. The system for catching people is a two
part process.

1) Error is noticed, someone asks about it on the Steam forums.

2) User ID is checked to see if they have GMod on their steam games list. If
they don't, then the person is assumed to have a pirated copy.

Now, we can still get false positives (someone is using a friends computer and
posts under their ID, and the friend doesn't have Gary's Mod), but it sounds
like this person was permabanned.

~~~
Argorak
You forgot one step:

0a) Legit user is not able to play the game properly and wastes precious
lifetime and falls victim to angry comments by fellow users in search for
help.

0b) User is actually a pirate, but I really don't care about those.

Thats what makes false positives so bad.

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jrockway
So, it's a good idea to punish people that are trying out your software by
banning them from purchasing it? Sounds like the A/B testing phase was skipped
on that one...

~~~
archgoon
How would you propose to do A/B testing with pirates? It seems like a bit of a
difficult proposition. It seems to me the only way you could run such any sort
of test for this is by doing exactly what Gary is doing. Hopefully, after some
time is passed, he might be willing to share whether he sees an improvement in
sales.

However, actions such as these aren't really about increasing the sales of any
particular software product being sold. It's about creating an environment in
which game piracy is frowned upon by the community in general. I'm not going
to argue if it's effective or not (or even morally the right thing to do), but
I think that it's missing the point to claim that if Gary does not see a
direct increase in sales, then he's being foolish (which is what you seem to
be implying). I suspect that this is more about respect†, than about money.

†Again, we can debate if this sort of thing is the right way to go about
gaining it, see Argorak's comment for obvious reasons why you don't want to do
this.

~~~
Indyan
He isn't expecting to witness an increase in sales from this.

"I don't think the error isn't (sic?) going to boost GMod sales.. I just like
to give people that paid something to be smug about."
<http://twitter.com/#!/garrynewman/status/58100503036432384>

------
MikeHo
Sheer brilliance :)

