News Garry's Mod error catches 2,500 pirates in 15 hours

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/04/13/garry-s-mod-error-catches-2-500-pirates-in/1

 

no mention of accounts being banned then, shame.

 

*Points and laughs*

You know, I do feel better

 

We confirmed with Garry that neither He nor Valve are banning Steam accounts, merely forum accounts.

 

I wish the error would turn the pirated players model into a clown or a pirate skeleton!! Then it would be something to laugh at!

 

But not without a couple false positives. Lets hope they were isolated incidents.

I'm all for inventive ways of catching/discouraging pirates, but not at the sake of the paying customer.

Stories like this, while novel, remind me of when a friend and I were unable to play Splinter Cell Conviction Co-Op for 48hrs after launch because the online DRM (which was already hacked by pirates) was acting up. To add insult to injury, the pirates were not only able to play the single player component, but multiplayer too. Apparently Ubisoft was so busy deploying their new, fancy DRM, they forgot to include a simple server-side CD-key check...

 

We've been in contact with Garry about this too. Because the Steam ID is there, he can identify false positives. There were 3 of them.

 

Getting banned from facepunch is a blessing, not a curse tbh.

 

Hahahaha.

Hahahahaha.

Suckers.

 

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is not a lost sale or even a potentially lost sale. Many got it for free because they could. $6 or $600, if they don't want to pay for it, they won't pay for it. It doesn't matter if they can afford it.

 

Bit of a shame in my eyes, i would have liked to see harsher action taken since as you have later said the false positives were identified. But i guess there are reasons behind it. Thanks for the reply btw

 

I bought Lemmings, The Secret of Monkey Island and Lechuck's Revenge for my Amiga 500 with my Christmas money.

 

Did you read the rest of the post after the end of the sentence you quoted? He knows it wasn't all lost sales and goes on to say:

'I don't really look at it as lost revenue though, Garry told Bit-Gamer.

'It's cool. I've pirated as much as anyone,' he added.

Good on him for doing it. It's bad enough having your game played for free, but for pirates to ask for support on the steam forums is just a kick in the nuts!

 

Did you read the rest of the post after the end of the sentence you quoted? He knows it wasn't all lost sales and goes on to say:

'I don't really look at it as lost revenue though, Garry told Bit-Gamer.

'It's cool. I've pirated as much as anyone,' he added.

Good on him for doing it. It's bad enough having your game played for free, but for pirates to ask for support on the steam forums is just a kick in the nuts!

 

I own the game and this is cool I guess lol

 

Hmmm to be fair I don't agree with any company that earns billions per year and still moans about piracy. Greed makes me want to download more torrents....

 

Yep, but yet again we see a newsitem with the inflated figure of lost sales, and the developer only "looks differently at it". The way it's presented, Bit-tech seems to think that Garry missed out on 15K in lost sales, so leslie is absolutely right to point that out.

 

Im not sure if "there were 3 of them" is meant to mean "that makes it okay", or "obviously 3 legitimate users were inconvenienced and then unfairly branded as pirates, and that is clearly wrong".

Your tone made it sound worryingly like the former.

 

I agree with this 100%. You can't claim it to be a lost sale if the person who pirated the game initially had no intention of paying for it anyways.

I am sick of software companies using this as a lame excuse to justify horrific DRM systems.

 

I know what you mean, I remember the horror of being told I could only install a game I paid £25 for, 3 times before it become useless.