Restrict access to the forum with a minimum amount of purchases or something else like that. Anything that needs manual input from a human being.
The spam is getting worse and worse.

I support this.

I'm definitely in favor of the something else. People who have trouble completing purchases and then hit the wall that is the chatbot should be able to ask for help on the forum.

I've previously suggested reCAPTCHA to post, until hitting a certain milestone, like posts made and/or games bought.
Keyword-based blacklists that either reject posts or hold them for moderation would also help.

How about being allowed to make only one post every hour or every 24 hours? Nobody needs to spam that many threads.

Also those who have legitimately and rather innocently claimed the always free games or a temporary giveaway might have something decent to contribute here. I'm with Ice Mage - please don't paywall this community. There are always alternatives.

But let me make this clear: I want the bots GONE.

Definitely, that is why I added some input from a user is needed. Locking the forum behind purchases wouldn't be ideal, I agree. :)
reCAPTCHA would be a helpful tool against spam bots.

There are always reasonably priced games on GOG, don't see why a single small purchase would be so difficult.

I'm also against a paywall.

Sadly, to have a control over restrictions put on new users' accounts, to have more moderation tools, and for general improvements would require setting up a new forum so I don't expect anything will change...

All these spam threads follow the same pattern. It could be simply prevented using a filter based on regular expressions. I find reCAPTCHA and similar "services" much more annoying, than spam itself.

Yes, it discourages anyone from posting anything, effectively turning forums into a field of desolation. ;)
We know well, how GOG usually implements new features.

I very clearly didn't suggest it for everyone, every time a post is made. After 9 years here, you likely have enough posts and bought games that it wouldn't affect you.
Just as you need to deal with reCAPTCHA when resetting your password or trying to redeem a code without being logged in, it should be there as a roadblock to stop spam under certain conditions. Total posts made and bought games were my preferred metrics, but if some other stats would work better, I'm fine with that.
You think new users would prefer dealing with pages and pages worth of spam, instead of reCAPTCHA for a while?

There are better solutions, which would not annoy neither newbies, nor old-timers. I've already suggested one.

Will never happen. gOg is a store, and as a store it is npt a good idea to make restrictions to access. a potential customers should have the ability to ask questions before commiting to the store.

If somebody has technical issues they may have to make numerous posts in a short time.

Maybe captcha for a period of time for new users; maybe after buying one or a certain number of games, or spending a certain amount of money, disables captcha. Assuming the above is possible which I assume it is.

The continual problem seems to be GOG staff's trouble at implementing technical things / changes like this, unfortunately.