
Catching software pirates the fun way - old_sound
http://twitter.com/#!/garrynewman/status/57917898215272448
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markszcz
I'm interested to know, or know the theory on to how the developer came about
to check if GMod was pirated.

I agree with what he is doing but is there a way, without a shadow of a doubt,
always be able to prove it was pirated and not a legitimate glitch?

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devicenull
He sends the user's steamid (a unique identifier of the account) back to one
of his servers. Presumably, that server compares it to a list of people who
have purchased the game. There's very little little chance of a false
positive. The check will not crash the game if the server is unreachable
(which the pirates have already discovered), so it won't turn into your usual
"DRM servers are down, can't play my games!" issue.

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markszcz
Thanks! I was going to ask for a link to how you know this but it makes total
sense. I was already thinking if that was the case or if something else was
being done but going back to the servers is the most logical explanation. What
personal computer isnt hooked up to the internet these days. The game must
have come from somewhere, most likely the internet and not someone’s floppy
disk/zip drive/usb stick.

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devicenull
I was checking some fairly well known pirate forums to see how long the
protection had lasted, and they talked about how it worked. It lasted for
about 3 hours after he posted the cause of the error.. probably would have
lasted longer if he hadn't done that.

