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WBGhiro: Out of curiosity i typed some random bullshit into the redeem page.

It actually worked, game was already redeemed though.
Call GOG, ask to increase entropy. =)

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skeletonbow: No, you're missing the point. What is the actual point of doing all of this? Is it to cause harm to people running a bot or bots that eat up codes? Is it to force them to stop using bots?
....
It is to cause them stopping using bots, because of the financial loss. Because bot-masters have to pay for captcha solve, it will drain much more investment than "income" from a capturing of a valid key and selling it.

Ultimately, this will reduce their presence of forum. This also includes traffic they generate.
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skeletonbow: What if every single code was swallowed by a bot that went and sold them to G2A who turned around and made a profit off of it? Well, we don't know that is the case first of all, and even if it was, people who want to sell codes on G2A have dozens of other much more profitable ways to acquire them in much higher volume than polling the forums with a javascript program to scoop up all of the games nobody actually wants which they could sell for peanuts if they're lucky. Even if they did do this, it is 100 games, games GOG has already been paid for anyway. There are probably 10,000-100,000 or more times that many GOG games likely pirated on torrent sites etc. every single day which are a much bigger dent on GOG's bottom line than some script kiddie swiping paid for codes for what are mostly games people just want to get rid of, and which are often the least popular ones.

The net effect is incredibly miniscule at absolute best.

So basically, GOG would suddenly start caring about something that loses them little to zero money every day and allocate resources to trying to combat a problem that doesn't affect their actual business or profitablility, possibly putting time money and developer resources into it, to try to honeypot frame people who aren't actually breaking any laws even if they might be doing something that annoys some small number of people in the forums and more or less has no other real consequence? Again, with most of these codes actually being Steam codes...
Seriously, there are a lot of things that are unrelated and mixed together.

Steam: this is not about Steam and personally I don't care about it. If anyone finds a newer valid method to help reduce Steam code scanners - go ahead.

Piracy: I pirated 99,9% of the games I had between 1991 and 1999. Why? Because there was not even single shop to purchase games legally in Russia. Between 1999 and 2004 - they started to appear, but most of the titles were DRMed; and those without DRM were actually pirated content localized by pirates (ie. Fargus). Now I have license for every single game I had or have.
Hell, I even had original boxed copy of Doom2 on floppies. Why? Because its DRM-free. Affordable price and confidence that purchase will last and work. Additional plus in form of upgrades and support. Nothing beats it. Because DRM-free means I can adapt a title to any newer technology and know that my license will not be revoked for attempt to make a game run, so its a good investment. ( I am not mixing online cheating for this or software against cheaters, because that is unrelated and different.)
So piracy is completely unrelated and in digital distribution causes no losses - and no gains - at all. Physical distribution is different, thats a form of counterfeiting. So in my case piracy did a good marketing. Also DRM-makers like to FUD the devs into buying their customer-hurting technology compiling the random unrealistic numbers pulled out of sky, but thats it.

GOG profits: this is also not about gog profits. Its about good users being scammed and part of this is a militarized forum zone, where you have to MAHAYO against whom? Humans? No, against bots.

Lets not mix everything together, can we?

So essentially, you are saying that this will not have any impact on bot scanners, because they are not that widespread. I got ya.
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Lin545: Call GOG, ask to increase entropy. =)

It is to cause them stopping using bots, because of the financial loss. Because bot-masters have to pay for captcha solve, it will drain much more investment than "income" from a capturing of a valid key and selling it.

Ultimately, this will reduce their presence of forum. This also includes traffic they generate.
It's ridiculous to assume that people using bots are paying money for captcha solving. The number of codes posted here is miniscule in the grand scheme of things, and most of them are Steam codes and Steam doesn't even use captcha to begin with. People make it out like there is some massive crime syndicate here scooping up millions of codes and profiteering off of it or something. Absolutely ridiculous.

This whole thread is just getting more and more laughable by the minute. I might even have to make some popcorn. LOL
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skeletonbow: I might even have to make some popcorn.
I'm always logged in here so I leave my popcorn machine on all the time.
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Lin545: <snip>
So essentially, you are saying that this will not have any impact on bot scanners, because they are not that widespread. I got ya.
Well, the first post in the thread ends with: "What do you think?". I've said what I think. If you only wanted people to pat you on the back for the idea who agree with you and encourage it you should have said that I guess. There was no indication that only opinions in agreement with the idea were desired, so I've presented my opinion in disagreement with the idea.

Ultimately, it is up to you and whoever else to do whatever you want. What the results are are speculative either way and I really don't care personally. If someone follows through with it and it is non-disruptive then it really doesn't matter in the end. If it becomes disruptive then I'm sure that something will be done to put an end to it.

I merely had hoped to talk some common sense into the conversation, but I can't force common sense on other people any more than posting bogus codes is going to force bots to stop sweeping the forums. :)

Best of luck with whatever you decide.
Did anyone come up with a good answer to why people want to randomly drop codes in the first place?
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Nirth: Did anyone come up with a good answer to why people want to randomly drop codes in the first place?
I'm guessing general laziness.
"Meh, nobody's gonna want this crap, screw it, the bots can have it."
There are better alternatives, but they're not willing to put the work into it or look up the other, better methods out there.
Which, for some games, I can understand to some degree (who's going to want a copy of "The Slaughtering Grounds" or some similar Digital Homicide game, for example?).
low rated
Nirth is my friend, he's Swedish.
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Lin545: Thats the point! Bot enters a fake giveaway over and over. Bot master pays for every code validation (human solved captcha).
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Randalator: There. Is. No. Captcha. Involved. In. The. Process.
---

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WBGhiro: Out of curiosity i typed some random bullshit into the redeem page.

It actually worked, game was already redeemed though.
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Lin545: Call GOG, ask to increase entropy. =)

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skeletonbow: No, you're missing the point. What is the actual point of doing all of this? Is it to cause harm to people running a bot or bots that eat up codes? Is it to force them to stop using bots?
....
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Lin545: It is to cause them stopping using bots, because of the financial loss. Because bot-masters have to pay for captcha solve, it will drain much more investment than "income" from a capturing of a valid key and selling it.

Ultimately, this will reduce their presence of forum. This also includes traffic they generate.
Its like watching one of these old B/W slapstick movies :P
Post edited October 03, 2016 by anothername
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Kleetus: Nirth is my friend, he's Swedish.
^ This fu**ing phrase XD
How many times did you write it, like 50?
Post edited October 03, 2016 by phaolo
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anothername: ---

Its like watching one of these old B/W slapstick movies :P
>> "This amp goes to 11."
> "Hmm, I see. Why couldn't you just keep it at 10, but make 10 louder?"
>> <pause>
>> "But this amp goes to 11."
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anothername: ---

Its like watching one of these old B/W slapstick movies :P
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skeletonbow: >> "This amp goes to 11."
> "Hmm, I see. Why couldn't you just keep it at 10, but make 10 louder?"
>> <pause>
>> "But this amp goes to 11."
Lick my love pump!
Is OP a bot?
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Randalator: Lick my love pump!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7vk5keNbRc :)
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Randalator: There. Is. No. Captcha. Involved. In. The. Process.
Then I'm a little confused about what they are using in the attached screen shot.
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