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Garry's Mod Catches Pirates the Fun Way
UgLyPuNk writes "A few hours ago, Garry Newman – the creator of Garry's Mod – asked, quite innocently, whether anyone was unable to shade polygon normals. He received a few comments, mostly jokes, but a quick look at Google suggests that there are indeed a few people who are experiencing problems with their game. You can hear Newman's chuckling from here — not the normal response to a wide-spread bug report, but this is no normal bug. It seems that the developer has deliberately enabled an error in GMod, which will only affect people who have pirated the game."
Back in the 80's, the developers of a submarine game called Silent Service built in a piracy check that would cause the sailor guy's pants to fly up over his head if your game failed the copy protection. They got quite a few phone calls from baffled pirates.
except that they're catching legitimate customers with the shitty DRM system.
Here in my car
Where the image breaks down
Will you visit me please?
If I open my door
In cars
Seriously what is the point of this? To flush out pirates on forums? Because if it is to be a sneaky anti-piracy system it is pointless. I have heard about games that detect pirated copies and corrupt saves or don't let you finish the game etc, but what is the point of giving pirates a bizarre error message? Wouldn't "Stop being a douche and support indie developers!" be a better message to display?
Not that I would ever actually pay for Garry's Mod as it is just a "dev tool" type mod. I don't see any creativity in it besides what the Half-Life 2 developers put in. I looked it up years ago and when I saw it cost money I laughed and spent the money on better games.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
It takes a couple minutes just to load the page banner, then once it does, it redirects to an advertisement page.
I like to RTFA, but you can be sure that I won't be visiting that site ever again.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
seems like this guy was caught red handed: http://www.gameshampoo.com/2933/garrys-mod-unable-to-shade-polygon-normals
Pirating GMod 10 is like visiting five ice cream shops in a row and getting enough "tastes" to fill a quart. Simply not worth the effort, considering that GMod10 is, was, and will remain ONLY. TEN. DOLLARS. If you own any of Valve's excellent recent games, you've fulfilled the only other requirement (a Source engine game). Chances are high that if you're interested in GMod10, you've already got one or more of those.
I can understand pirating a $50 game because you want to stick it to the publisher or you want to try it out before shelling out, but pirating something that costs $10 strikes me as a remarkably pointless gesture.
You should turn signatures off.
There's an incredibly loud auto-playing advert. Thanks for the warning, guys.
More advert submissions from the slashdot janitors...
From TFA:
"Making the situation even sweeter, the number which appears in brackets after the error statement is in fact the gamer’s 64-bit steamid.
Y’see, Steam keeps a list of which accounts have actually forked over the $9.99 for a legit copy of GMod – so it’s a simple matter of checking ids and turfing out the pirates."
As such, only people who reported the problem AND whose Steam accounts lacked a proper purchase of Garry's Mod were banned.
If it is this easy to detect a pirated copy of the game, why not all the game developers are doing it to prevent privacy? What am I missing here?
Mod parent up. To the GP; there is a subtle irony in your post, when you think about it. In the same way the Vista Australis devs were accusing people of being pirates without properly investigating and getting the full story, so you've accused the dev of GMod of "over-estimating his cleverness and acting like an ass" without getting the full story. And now someone can explain to me about the incorrect assumption I've made about your post, and so the cycle wil continue.
what restrictions exactly? it's a steam only game so it's not a no-cd crack. Furthermore, attached to the error message is a guid, which I believe is the steam id for the account. The games that the account owns is publically available on their profile page.
for those that didnt RTFA the error number was their steam ID, so when said could be pirate posted on the steam forums about it with the full error message valve could then check the steam ID to see if they owned the game, anyone who owned the game and got hit by this "bug" (could happen) would be found to have G mod in their steam account and no ban hammer would be applied (since G mod is only available via steam this is a good way to catch people with pretty much 0 margin of error) so the dev was infact not being an ass and legitimate consumers were not harmed :)
1. How does he know there's no bug in his copy protection code that does not inadvertently trigger for legitimate users under ANY circumstance
According to the article, the error message includes the user's Steam account number, which can be used to distinguish any cases in which the user actually paid for a license but is still getting rejected by the copy-protection check.
2. How does he know the people "pirating" haven't paid for a legit copy and decided to get around all the BS restrictions by using a crack anyway.
If all the serial numbers have been metaphorically filed off, then the Steam account number referenced is probably nonexistent anyway, so who are they really accusing of piracy? If someone's using a crack to work around restrictions, then this is just one more restriction to work around.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Is it wrong for a bank to shut down your credit card temporarily because they detect 'fraud like' behavior? You're not defrauding the bank but for your account and the systems integrity they essentially accuse you of fraud if something goes wrong.
In example 1 there is an exteremely unlikely possibility that someone will be inadvertantly accused, through a bug, of illigitamate use of the software.
Example 2 violates the licensed use of the code anyway and is essentially pirating.
Now I completely agree that we should be free to use the data we license the way we want to and should not be hassled. But overall I would rather see a developer laugh at a pirate then start clogging courts with law suits for copyright violations...
Oh and if the error does exist in example 1 I would rather someone make fun of me on the internet then explain it to a judge.
The bug report contains the steam id of the accused pirate.
Checking was only done by Garry -> replacing said SteamID is therefore easy to do.
At the moment they only got a Ban on the forums and nothing else, but if this has more severe consequences one could plugin the SteamID of another person without problems and therefore get them banned.
I've always wondered why developers didn't do this.
Lots of people will try a cracked game in order to see if the game is worth buying. If those people get this problem without understanding why, they will decide that the game is a cheap piece of rubbish. I would not buy a game that I cannot get a good crack for to get rid of any need to insert the CD or play while on-line, so I would not buy this one.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Switching the soundtrack to Justin Bieber music was enough to scare most players off.
Settlers 3 did something similar, if you had pirated the game the blacksmith would make pigs instead of iron, thus you could never produce any weapons.
I'm not too sure if I condone this behaviour, nor do I think this is a 'fun' way to catch pirates: A fun way was how the Nintendo DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience made copied versions of the game unplayable and taunts gamers with the blaring sound of vuvuzelas: See here
The problem I have with these kinds of protections is that they also might affect paid customers; Same as with strict DRM.
I already bought Garry's Mod after having played it for free (as the HL2 mod).
It was less than 10 dollars, so a real bargain. But I would have reconsidered it if I heard of this beforehand.
Nonetheless, all power to the developer to protect their property.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
Steam games don't need the CD in the drive, and Steam has an "offline mode" so you don't need a net connection once it's installed and played. As such there's no need for a crack, good or otherwise.
A few hours ago, Garry Newman – the creator of Garry's Mod – asked, quite innocently, whether anyone was unable to shade polygon normals.
A few moments ago, Googlebot visited the sites.
A hour from now, a puzzled evil pirate gamer types "Unable to shade polygon normals" in Google, and guess what pops up? They're going to think "oops, I'd better not report that issue. In fact, it's better not to report any issues in any of my pirated games! Glad this issue has already been documented!"
This is the information age. People document things openly. Don't build DRM that is built on top of ignorance and secrets. It only works for a while and you wasted time.
Isn't that the name of a band from the 80s?
The purpose of existence is to make money.
What if you don't have an internet connection or want a game that you can still install when steam goes out of business in 5-10 years.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Of course now they can no longer ban people, as no doubt posts will begin appearing with other people's account IDs.
In response to the several comments re: "it's all in good fun, just a joke, not trying to catch pirates" -- note that what's happening is tricking people with a fake error message that includes their Steam ID, so when they report it can get their account banned.
FTA: "Not long after posting the request, the user found themselves permabanned from the forums for using pirated software."
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
...get hold of a persons 64bit steamid.. and post a thread in a forum with the following error to get a person banned from steam as long as the steamid have no registered transaction for GMod?
Engine Error:Unable to shade polygon normals()
so the dev was infact not being an ass and legitimate consumers were not harmed :)
...they were harmed by the developer intentionally introducing a "bug" that rendered them unable to use software that they paid for.
Mind you, this "harm" is very much temporary, and nothing remotely near critical (considering the software in question), but still, they do have grounds to be annoyed, if not upset.
And considering that he either knew or should have known that this "bug" would in fact affect some percentage of legitimate users, one could make the case that he was being an "ass".
Not that I would say as such; it sucks that they can't play with the sandbox they bought for a few hours/days, but there are worse things than being unable to play a specific game at a specific time...
My sig can beat up your sig.
It could be used on PC (and i think i remember an old game doing it, just like ultima 7 a/b "oink oink oink" if you answered wrongly within the game) Bad PR. Plain and simple, and cost. 2% can ammount to a LOT for big budget.
If you don't have an internet connection, I doubt you use Steam.
1. How does he know there's no bug in his copy protection code that does not inadvertently trigger for legitimate users under ANY circumstance
Unfortunately that happens all too often (not only with DRM bugs but also patches, installation, etc). I can't even count the number of times I happened to stumble over "you're a fucking pirate" accusations while trying to find a solution for a game's bug; a game which I bought legitimately no less.
It's come to a point where people start yelling "pirate" as soon as somebody has a problem they didn't have. I'm sure that's very encouraging for paying customers.
what restrictions exactly?
The game requiring Steam for example? That's a fairly heavy restriction and one I would like to circumvent.
I'm fed up trying to troubleshoot Steam everytime I reinstall it to play a game on it. It's a buggy annoyance, not to mention a risk for customers who can lose all their games due to no fault of their own.
Lots of people will try a cracked game in order to see if the game is worth buying.
And then blame M$ for their malware infested windows box.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I remember something like this in gunship 2000 where it would do a piracy check by entering a code from the book. I was about 10-12 at the time but didn't understand what it was really asking I just wanted to fly. MY dad figured it out after phoning their support line ...
First time you blow something up it would crash out with a meaningless error message!
The comments on that GamePron link make me want to gouge my eyes out. They're worse than the Official WoW forums! The argument where people claim to pirate games because they're "poor" and it's justified in that not everyone can get decent jobs? It makes the mind boggle.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
As such, only people who reported the problem AND whose Steam accounts lacked a proper purchase of Garry's Mod were banned.
They banned people based on this?!
Unfortunately I already own GMod, but I sure as hell wouldn't have bought it after they pulled something like this.
If you don't have an internet connection, I doubt you use Steam.
(Yet another reason to pirate it)
News flash: Steam games can be cracked just like any other. Steam itself can be cracked.
There used to be a time when you could hack the Steam client to download any and all games.
I think you could just copy the cracked retail exe over and play it outside of Steam.
If Steam did go out of business then all Steam DRM would be retroactively cracked regardless.
The piracy detection fails occassionally, and a honest paying customer gets hurt (and probably buys less in the future, because he feels (and rightly so) that he got cheated).
Obviously you'd have to extensively QA test any potential checks and the consequences and prevent false positives but the intention would be to pepper the code with these things. Just when the cracker thinks they've fixed the game, another one turns up. Confound and annoy the crackers and pirates and just generally waste their time. And when a patch comes out, introduce a few more. And rebase the code so everything moves around. And of course shame anyone stupid enough to complain on official boards.
And It suffered heavily from a bug that would pop up in the pirated version. Ton's of people where complaining on the forums that the game was buggy and no good because of it. And other people listened and didn't buy it. So if software developers really want to do such a thing either make it a minor problem or patch it in later, because if you don't it can hurt your reputation.
This type of thing has been done several times before, obviously. From using seemingly innocent errors to denying game content.
My most recent run in with this was with Darkstar One. You need a jumpdrive that jumps X amount of distance to continue the game after the tutorial-ish introduction. If you 'pirate' it, you can't jump that far.
Problem was of course, that I did buy the game, but that my CD/DVD drive somehow failed the required check... So here I was with another useless game I actually bought. No wonder people pirate this type of thing, usually they're cracked to prevent stupid shit like this.
Anyhow, I had to wait a few months for NEC to release new drivers for the DVD drive and suddenly the CD/DVD check no longer failed.
Look at Garry's twitter feed he has pirated movies in his iTunes from axiom and gokU61 (rocky)
image
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3590255/Bits/DRM.png &
post
Bye Bye DRM - thanks @Craiggwilt http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3590255/Bits/DRM.png
Thu Apr 07 2011 15:52:16 (Eastern Daylight Time) via web
-b
Ultima III wouldn't let you interact with NPCs - they'd say "Honesty is a virtue, I will not help you" or something to the effect.
Personal experience. As a teenager I bought Ultima III (I think) for the Amiga for $many_weeks_allowance. The original floppy was corrupt, and being an expat in a remote country meant I couldn't get it replaced. A buddy mailed me a pirated copy to replace it. A "fun way" to catch pirates for sure, but there I was with a box, shiny cloth map and a game that would tell me I'm dishonest. Never got to play it. Guess whether this experience motivated me to (a) buy more games or (b) pirate games instead.
</childhood_trauma>
I understand the rationale behind copy protection and DRM, but they can make life hard for legitimate users and end up counterproductive.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Sure a few MIGHT take the time to visit their forums and get laughed at.. But in reality the majority do... :Hey this game is buggy and sucks. *delete* NEXT!
And now they, and any of their friends. Associate your game company with producing buggy garbage. Making sure none of them will NEVER be a customer.
Talk about win the battle but lose the war... That's just retarded. And it makes me laugh.
Theres far too many shitty games out there for your sneaky drm to really ever be noticed.
Have you tried to circumvent a Steam only game? I have a friend who did. It's a pain in the ass. He showed me all the "simple" steps he had to go through. This was for a $5 game, too. I said, "For all the time you spent on that, you could have worked 15 minutes of overtime and bought it."
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
So they say. Now, I believe they will do their best to remove all DRM from games if Steam goes out of business, but if someone seizes their assets, etc, you're SOL.
Now, I have a decent amount of money invested in Steam, so I hope this doesn't happen. Just saying it's not a guarantee like you seem to think.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
People always love to toss out the excuse that game (software) piracy exists mainly because of cost. Yet we see many examples where people will pirate (steal) items with 99 cent prices like those on the App store.
If you "understand" pirating a $50 game then you would understand pirating a $10 game. Justification on price is odd because your still excusing theft? I will assume the price points are merely the level at which you would succumb to the temptation, in other words, where you would feel justified in it?
As for sticking it to the publisher or the "man", again its another misdirection used to excuse oneself of responsibility. When taking has so little threat of recrimination far too many will take. It is no different than looting after a disaster.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Money (either try before you buy, or sheer ludicrous pricing schemes).
Really not an acceptable excuse in this case. It's $10.
Unless the work's publisher won't take your payment method, such as cash in the case of somebody still in school who does not yet qualify for a checking account. Or unless you happen to have been born in a country with an undervalued currency, such as many countries not in the top 20 economies.
There were plenty of games which tried to do something sneakily wrong to gameplay if they think you're a pirate.
The problem is that, basically, invariably there's the assumption that such a piece of code is 100% proven and bug-free itself. You know, unlike the rest of the program and unlike other shitty pieces of DRM.
A prime example of what I'm talking about was IIRC Gangsters by Eidos in the '90s. Among other things it would take as a clue that it must be a pirated copy running in an emulator -- until a later patch fixed it -- was if your CD is any other drive letter than D:. Because God knows that no honest customer ever would have more than one HDD or partition or have a RAM-disk or two CD drives or anything, you know?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It took me 40 minutes to get Steam installed and log into an existing account. How is that better than 15 minutes?
Steam is a bug-ridden piece of shit that keeps you from actually playing games.
I feel a sudden urge to find out certain peoples steam-IDs and post a lot of error messages...
I think you misread something. I said Steam DRM would be cracked, as in, nonvoluntarily....
The online requirement has been cracked many times already... what would be needed is Steamworks server emulators, and that's been attempted more than once.
I hardly ever use Steam so my knowledge of the current hacks is limited.
Before you salute this vigilante gesture, a lone captain taking on the high seas of piracy, stop and consider these necessary questions:
1. How does the developer determine whether the customer's version of the product (a mod, no less) is legitimate or pirated?
2. Is this method a 100% foolproof way to detect a pirated copy?
3. Could a false positive ever be detected, flagging a legitimate customer as a pirate?
4. Could a programming error, introduced either now or in the future, ever flag a user as a pirate?
5. Could a cracked game executable, modified content files, or lack of Internet connection ever flag a user as a pirate?
6. What does the developer do with this new list of suspected users? Is it merely for research purposes, or does he plan to turn it over to other authorities (i.e. could these users be perma-banned not just from the forums, but also from the mod, from the game, or from the Steam network?)
7. What makes the developer think the pirate community can't bypass this slightly more deceptive form of DRM, like they have so many times in the past?
I do not condone the actions of people who would pirate an indy developer's $10 game, but I also don't condone a developer running wild on an anti-piracy power-trip. By banning every single person who complains of this from his forums, he may be inadvertently banning users with legitimate problems. It wouldn't be the first time.
Banned from Facepunch, not from Steam. This is nothing new, as they've been using antipiracy measures on garrymod.org for a while too. They're just trying to keep pirates further away from the game.
The real problem is that people think it is OK to pirate stuff. Here are the most popular reasons:
1. They put DRM in there, thus the pirated version is better and I am entitled to steal it.
2. The game is too expensive, thus I am entitled to steal it.
3. I wouldn't have bought it anyways, thus I am entitled to steal it.
All of these are bull. No one has any right to steal anything that doesn't belong to them. There is a deep moral issue here with a good chunk of people on the net. This extends to torrenting movies and other entertainment. I don't see why people are so cheap. Even at 60 dollars a video game is about what it costs me for gas in a month or groceries in a week. It isn't exactly expensive. Anyways, maybe the only solution is to get rid of internet annonominity and allow publishers and developers to report pirating offenses to the police. And yes I am a game developer.
This is why the SteamID is put in the error message.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember playing a Settlers II RIP cracked version, but didn't found any glitch. Actually, I finished the game.
Garry: Your vindictive investments will be your downfall.
He's posted a write up:
Shading Polygons
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
As a paying customer, I want your 'protection' to be invisible to me. As a paying customer, I don't want to be forced to put the CD in the drive, I don't want you installing drivers or messing with my boot sectors. I don't want you putting extra crap on my machine. I just want a smooth, fun, gaming experience.
Gary's mod sounds ideal. As a paying customer, I see/hear/experience nothing amiss. And yet their game is protected from theft.
If the choice is the customer experience vs. stopping pirates, the answer should always be the paying customer. No plan to stop piracy is worth inconvenience to the paying customer. And I'll put my money where my mouth is. As a consumer, despite enjoying Assassin's Creed, I did not purchase the sequels specifically because of the overbearing copy protection. But I would happily buy products from the people who make Gary's Mod.
From his blog:
"Yesterday I made pirate versions of Garry’s Mod pop up an error. This error only happens when people pirate the game. 48 hours ago there were no results for this phrase on Google. As I type this there’s 717 results (and climbing by the minutes). This is partly as a result of me stupidly mentioning it on Twitter and lots, and lots, and lots of news sites posting about it. I don’t get why it’s getting so much attention.
The overwhelming response has been supportive. Which to be quite honest I don’t really understand. If EA or someone does something like this people go crazy. Maybe it’s the motive.."
More @ http://www.garry.tv/?p=2410
I'm pretty sure it has a very specific point. Saving 10 dollars. When you're 20,000 in debt in student loans, you don't need to be spending money on anything when there is an alternative where you don't -- it isn't always about morals.
Like all copy detection, I'm sure this is 100% accurate, so losing hundreds of dollars worth of games without appeal seems like a great idea.
If the DRM stays memory-resident on a person's computer while they are NOT using the game, then I have no problems whatsoever with people pirating the software.
In all other respects, I agree with you.
If you don't have an internet connection, I doubt you can pirate.
Yep, you definitely have my empathy. I've run into that kind of situation before myself.
I used Gangsters for example, because it actually happened to me too. I had 2 HDDs, 1 RAM-disk, and 2 CD-ROMs. There was no way that game was going to be in a drive letter lower than drive F:. So I start the game and pretty much I'd get screwed no matter what I do. I could have my gangsters even just sitting around doing nothing, and still get everyone arrested. Not only I wasn't getting my money's worth out of the game, but there's the sheer annoyance factor of, you know, "WTF does it want from me? What AM I supposed to do here?" Then I eventually run into its being recognized as a problem and patched, and pretty much went ballistic when I realized that the damned thing had cost me several hours of increasing annoyance, just because some idiot hadn't even thought it possible to have a legitimate CD in any other drive than D:.
And, yeah, there are a few other games where I still really wonder. Was I just bad at, say, Operation Flashpoint (another game which actually was proud of screwing the difficulty if it thought you're a pirate), or did their shitty DRM glitch on me?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As long as we're citing anecdotes, the last time I installed Steam, it took me less than 5 minutes to download and install, then log in using my existing account and start installing games.
So... were you trying to install it on WINE or something? On a Mac with a case-sensitive file system?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Quite honestly the pirates got what they deserved.
Steam isnt an intrusive form of DRM which hardly affects legitimate customers. In return for the few small disadvantages (having to keep your games updated) you get a ton of online features like achievements and the Steam Cloud in return.
Not to mention that Garry's Mod requires a computer which costs $500+ to run smoothly. If you can afford $500 on a PC why cant you afford $10 (or $5 in the sales) to buy a game?
And I presume this was properly vetted by a well-budgeted QA process, yes?
Only idiots who don't actually try to take care so far as where they get their cracks from.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Nope, plain Windows XP.
First the installer complained about Steam already being installed. Apparently the old version I uninstalled a year or two ago didn't remove itself properly. So the new installer asked for an old .msi which was no longer available.
After that it installed but wouldn't log me in with my account. No error message, no hint what was wrong. Yes the password was correct, a wrong one actually gave me an error message; the right one just a silent failure. And so on and so forth.
Every problem resulted in copious amounts of Googling, searching various forums, Steam redownloads and reinstallations. Also: great fun to redownload Steam on every single reinstall, really speeds things up!
This is why the SteamID is put in the error message.
Oh well it's Steam and it includes a SteamID, so it must be perfect and bug free and could only every correctly identify genuine pirates.
Are you lot listening to yourselves? Slashdot has fallen big time when idiocy like this becomes the norm and a legitimate comment gets modded down because people don't like having their favourite DRM criticised. Shame on the lot of you. You reap what you sew.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
That is enough about that!
Although I would accept this system happily, it should be made clear to the buyer that this is what they can expect. i.e. With our system you can play your game without any need to insert a CD etc. etc. on the pack. They should think more about the service that they provide the customer rather than the problems they create for the freeloaders.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Piracy is armed robbery, kidnapping and murder at sea.
So unless Garry is patrolling the Horn of Africa in a PT boat this has nothing to do with piracy.
Some descriptivist halfwit will chime in "but but but langwijez chanj LOOL0LOLL0!"....
Allowing copyright owners to call copyright infringment piracy makes the trivial sound grave, and the grave seem trivial. When you misuse the word piracy you are contributing to the problem of our insane IP laws. You're letting them win.
Imagine if we started calling all Germans Nazis instead of Germans. A descriptivist would call this evolution of language, but it would be applying the label of a group that committed horrific crimes against humanity to people who did not. It would eventually rob the word Nazi of it horror and add that horror to the innocent.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!