Could restrict access to game subforums I suppose

Or they could have a separate subforum, dedicated for new arrivals until they confirm their accounts via a purchase.

Get a life. They will all be caught.

If your suggestions were to be implemented, I see nth hindering someone (determined to scam) to buy a cheap game and thus lift the restrictions against them.
Then what? Impose a (higher) minimum number of purchases before they can use the forum freely? Or some other kind of restrictions until proven worthy?

IMHO, this kind of discriminative suggestions should never be implemented as they can and would affect innocent people, not to mention the damage they can cause to GOG's public image.

The point there would be to make it more expensive to scam people. Which would probably cut things down a bit as people would have to buy something in order to risk succeeding in their scam. And that probably would cut down on scamming.

That being said, I dislike the idea of opening things up on the forum only to people that have bought games. Seems like the medicine might be worse than the disease.

After confirming account (ie buying game), a warn/temp ban/ban system would go in effect.
So 1st offence warn,
2nd offence temp ban and loose access to your games library until lifted.
3rd offence permanent ban and loose the games you own (basically meaning you threw away 6 bucks at least)
It's not perfect, but it's a start.

They're never going to do that. What's more, it doesn't even make sense. Once you buy and download a game they can't take it back.

And they certainly aren't going to expose themselves to this sort of liability over activity that they don't have any control over. Ultimately, you choose to trade and you choose to take your chances. It sucks that there are scammers out there, but it's not going to change any time soon.

@blotunga
I'm sorry, but your suggested start is not only extremely anti-consumer, it could also get GOG into some serious legal trouble - dealing with this specific issue doesn't give GOG the right to act as a vigilante or tramp on everybody's consumer rights.

I outright said I disagree with such discriminative measures and your analysis just reinforced the reasons I disagree.
You can/ will go on thinking your suggestion's ok and I can/ will go on thinking the opposite - there's no point in discussing it further and thus no need to post more details or arguments about it.


EDIT: I see that in the time it took me to type my reply, hedwards replied to you - and he does make good points.

Still there has to be a way to enforce at least a small degree of control. Probably what I've suggested is a bit extreme, but every society has laws and rules. Yes, they already have downloaded the game if they wanted. But the idea of gog is not necessarily that you can download games... If you'd have no moral issues (and most scammers probably don't have) you can get the games from less legitimate places....
Also my idea was just to limit further damage to the community. Most of us a civilized, and don't scam others, but those who break the rules should at some point suffer some kind of consequence.

There already are laws against scamming and the only way to enforce them on forum scammers is to collect concrete evidence and turn them in - punishing someone for breaking one law by breaking another law is not the way civil societies work nor the way law is (supposed to be) enforced.
And there're also rules in place here for GOG's community which can't go against laws either.

If someone decides to go against the law and the rules, that's something GOG can't know beforehand.
What you're suggesting is putting GOG in a very liable position, more so over something (trading) that's, to the best of my knowledge, not their purpose of existence.
They can't and shouldn't be branding every newcomer as a scammer until proven otherwise - and that's what your idea of warn/temp ban as a 1st offense warning suggests they do. As hedwards said, the recommended medicine proves worse than the disease.

You can argue that since they allow it they have some responsibility, but your responsibility comes before theirs as you're the one that decided to actively engage in trading in an enviroment that you know offers no quaranties or safety nets.

Did you notice how post #503 by Katchim got deleted? That shows that when GOG's made aware of objectional behavior they act on it.
IMHO, you should actively report any suspicious behavior to GOG so that they can look into it and act within the law to protect this community.
Scamming sucks big time, but since this is a known and well documented issue, you should all be more careful and less unwarry.
There's really nth more or new to add to this discussion.

While the idea of having some transparency about whether an account has bought any games might help retard scamming, it might also introduce some kind of caste-like behavior about who has bought how much.

Unless they are actively trying to hack GOG servers, this step is completely unacceptable. Or are you suggesting that you want GOG to be more like Steam regarding service?

Plenty of long-standing and trustworthy users here who are willing to serve as an occasional third-party go between in the exchanging of gift codes.

That wouldn't help things much since new arrivals are apt to start posting on game-specific forums too.

It would probably be better to create a trading subforum with access restricted to people who've purchased whatever amount of games and leave the rest of the forum system alone.

Not really. But still there could be some temporary restrictions applied to new arrivals, like a subforum accessible only after some time and at least one purchase. Even though there is a lot of hate towards Steam, it also doesn't lets you trade before making an actual purchase and having spent some time after.
I don't think we should borrow all the bad ideas, but there might be also some good ideas which are applied to other services.
This could also work of course. The most "light" idea i have is a separate trading rep. Which should have nothing to do with the forum rep. Just like ebay :D