It should be possible to make a 3rd party gifting system (and I'm willing to do it and host it).

Using the same mechanic for signing up and linking accounts as Barefoot_Monkey's PM system.

You would create a trade with the code you are offering and the person who it is intended for. It could show you the rep and join date of the person by using a forum crawler that would find a post from every user to pull the latest information from.

Then the other person would get a link to the trade and put their code in. Both codes would be checked that they are valid (I would have to check if you can open the gift without redeeming, which I am pretty sure is possible). Once both codes have been checked, the codes would be displayed to the recipient for redeeming.

It would also be possible to trade codes for non-GOG things by flagging it as external. It wouldn't provide as much safety because it wouldn't be able to check them but it can reveal the non-GOG one first and the other person would have to flag they redeemed it before their GOG code showed.

Really, the most protection this gives is that reported scammers could be blocked from trading through this system. But it should be doable and it should offer more protection.

You can.

However, the code gets locked for 10 minutes, I believe.

It doesn't seem to, but I'm not sure if that is because I am using a code for a game I own and I'm just opening it twice.

EDIT: Just code a friend to test it and it shows as "Code already used" even though it isn't. Shows the same for a code that *is* already used. Gah, had to make it difficult, didn't you GOG?

Funny, this is scarily similar to a personal research project I'm currently working on, in which I was going to use GOG codes as an example. I've actually made a fair bit of progress on the sample application. It's basically a demonstration of the benefits of escrow for various trading scenarios.

Probably not worth us both putting the time in, so if you're going down this road, drop me an email.

Just tested this further and it does look like the server response is different for "locked" and "used" codes. So while the script checking would be able to tell, it would also cause it to lock it out for the recipient.

Hmm...

EDIT: And clicking "Cancel" doesn't unlock it.

EDIT #2:
Okay, so the best case scenario, if the script does check it, is to not show the codes for ~15 minutes after the check. This gives plenty of time for the person who submitted it to redeem it in the meantime, but it won't be obvious when the check has been done (until the codes are revealed). Redeeming it before then risks the script noticing.

Possible solutions? Reveal the code for the higher-rep trader first, they confirm they received it and the lower-rep one gets revealed?

This won't be perfect by any means but I think it could be pretty useful with the right mechanics.

EDIT #3: It doesn't have to simply be the "highest rep" either. To avoid rep abuse, it could block trades where one of the traders has a high rep for their join date until they have been checked (or vouched for by a high-standing member).

EDIT #4: This check would make any trade take longer than 15 minutes. There could be an "express" trade option that simply reveals the codes as soon as they are both in (without checking). Possible option to automatically make a trade express if the trader is on their trusted list (or on the trusted list of one of their trusted people).

I've posted this in the other thread, but I just want to spread the word
http://www.gog.com/en/wishlist/site/show_date_joined_and_rep_score_in_pms

Thinking on this further, a trading post could actually be useful for other things. For example, making "open trades" where people can find people offering what they want. If we add the inverse (i.e. wishlist), it could auto-match people up for a trade (with options such as "minimum rep" per user).

I don't know if this has been answered, but this was actually removed to keep people in certain regions of the world from getting a shitty version of The Witcher 2. They let you override the IP based country of origin. By default it works as you say, you're able to manually override it, though.

It was removed again? They added it to force regional pricing and versions (due to legal demand from the publisher, or they'd be forced to pay a lot of money continuously until they complied).

That is, the version (and price) of The Witcher 2 is not (I'm quite sure) affected by your "location" setting, but by Geo-IP.

I just want to inform you that there is some guy (probably anasto or same kind of sick bastard) that is still impersonating known fellows of this great community. So look out for any kind of dots or punctuation in user names. In attachment you can see that he is trying to look like Heretic777
Sick bastard. It is beginning of psychotic disorder. I want to help this guy, but it is beyond help if you want to scam this great society.

You can publicly change it to whatever you want, but it still tracks your IP adress in regard to shopping. So, although it appears, you can change it, it's only cosmetic feature now.

Just when i thought the classifieds was back and running fine again.

It's a shame, especially because recently the thread has had some decent deals, i did 2 this week.

Another thing is that someone here said that they were banned from the carbrera brothers cyberpunk forums, i'm sure i also read that Sirprimalform was banned from some other forum for something trivial. I myself was once banned from the Gamespot forums.

The point is, if it's possible to get perma-bans on these other forums, how come the scammer cannot get banned here?

Because the scammer doesn't care about an account if he's made 40. Ban all 40, he'll just make a new set of 'em. IP-bans are pretty much like having a bunch of people standing on a field, and saying that the person who stands at spot (x,y) can't open their mouths. The annoying shouter will just take a step in some direction, and he can shout again. Keep banning spots, and suddenly you have a bunch of people who can't open their mouths while the shouter just runs around shouting.

To clarify, the account bans only bother legitimate users because they like to have an identity.

I've just had another idea, but it could be (reasonably) regarded as a privacy violation. I'm not sure if I'd want to see it implemented, but it could really help with the current situation.

If GOG would display the total number of games directly purchased by the account holder (i.e. not freebies or gifts) then it would make it really obvious who is just here to get free stuff or scam people.