Sorry. I meant Topic. One Topic per hour should be a minor enough annoyance.

Well, no restrictions to posting, but maybe a limit to starting new threads.

Not sure if spambots would then continue posting to existing threads (like they do already), but it would still be better.

I think there are already now restrictions to access, like not being able to post links until... something.

However, generally some restrictions (to e.g. starting to threads) especially to new accounts without any purchases could be implemented, but not completely blocking because many newcomers probably have questions to ask, before making their first purchases.

Indeed. Even if people don't want a "paywall" (limiting posting unless least 1x paid game is owned), there's still a lot of things that can be done:-

1. Limit maximum number of threads started on accounts with no purchases to 1 per day
2. Limit maximum number of threads started on newly created accounts to 1 per day
3. Limit maximum number of threads started per 24hrs (or per hour) for everyone in general (I haven't seen any genuine user start even 10 threads per day let alone 50 per hour).
4. Block all threads with phone number patterns in or obvious spam keywords like "pills", "pharmacy", etc.

To be fair GOG is a global company, or at least is globally accessible.

They should have a 24 Hours, 7Days a week and 356 days a year support Staff.

It doesn't have to be massive, just a couple of people in different times zones working remotely to keep forum clean and supported out of Polish working hours and the weekend.

These would make for a good solution to the problem.

Now watch GOG do none of them...

I would prefer no paywall.

I also think that any posting limit should be bigger than 1 per time unit, because sometimes there's reasons one might want to post multiple questions in a short time. (Still can be pretty low, like 2 or 3 per hour.)

On the other hand, there are some things that should, perhaps, be banned in topic titles:
* The plus sign, followed by blobs of around 10 digits. I've noticed that the majority of the spam topics include such number blobs in them, which are pretty much useless anyway.
What about the other 9-10 days?

Also, here's a first for me: Looking through the forum for non-spam topics, I ran into an entire page of obvious spam, repeated instances of very similar topic titles.

I say nuke the entire forum from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Even still, such a number blob is hard to read, even if you want to dial the indicated number.

The phone numbers I'm familiar with:
* Do not have a + sign in front
* Have hyphens to separate parts of the number, making them easier to read
* Sometimes, the area code is put in parenthesis

Edit: Just noticed you said "bumbers" rather than "numbers"; is that a typo?

Has anyone thought to check the game specific forums for more instances of this bot attack?

The + is for international numbers. Anytime you dial a country code, there is a + to indicate that it is the country code. I don't know if you have a cell phone, but you'll notice if you put a +1 in front of any local number, your phone will prompt you about international calls and fees. +1 is the US/Canada code.The rest of your points are completely valid, but I get the sense that therse guys don't care if you can identify the number per se, since punching that string into a phone should get you to them to steeal your money.

5. Block or limit posts with identical content.

Now the spam reporting thread has jammed up.
I can't report a spam post I'd found in the Galaxy 2.0 discussions.

:(

This would be another great implementation. This has been mentioned a couple times in recent years and some users always started complaining, but I personally (not that it matters) think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks by far.

or they could just use some updated code, instead of code from 10 years ago.

its a simple couple of lines of code dumped in a for loop to create current spam.

if the code is to be believed i should be able to edit other users posts, hopeful the backend prevents that tho