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If you're among the many Garry's Mod users experiencing the startup error "Unable to shade polygon normals," you should probably keep that information to yourself. According to GMod creator Garry Newman, he introduced the error this week and it's designed to only appear on illegal copies of the game as a means of flushing out pirates.
Upon receiving the error, unsuspecting pirates posted on the Steam forum looking for assistance. Those individuals are being banned from the message board. Making the situation even more interesting, the polygon error message is followed by a number in parenthesis that most folks would associate with an error code. See the example below:
"Engine Error:Unable to shade polygon normals(#################)"
The kicker is, that's actually a SteamID, so pirates are unknowingly revealing their Steam identity. Speaking with Bit-Gamer, the developer claimed that 2,500 pirates were identified 15 hours after rolling out the error. Newman doesn't have the power to ban Steam IDs and it's unclear if any accounts have been banned outside of the forum.
Instead, he wants this to serves as a point of humiliation for people running illegitimate copies of the game. "I did this for the people that did buy Garry’s Mod. They get to point and laugh at pirates. If we leave it easy for people to pirate we're betraying the people that paid," Newman said. "I'm just having fun at the pirates expense."
Upon receiving the error, unsuspecting pirates posted on the Steam forum looking for assistance. Those individuals are being banned from the message board. Making the situation even more interesting, the polygon error message is followed by a number in parenthesis that most folks would associate with an error code. See the example below:
"Engine Error:Unable to shade polygon normals(#################)"
The kicker is, that's actually a SteamID, so pirates are unknowingly revealing their Steam identity. Speaking with Bit-Gamer, the developer claimed that 2,500 pirates were identified 15 hours after rolling out the error. Newman doesn't have the power to ban Steam IDs and it's unclear if any accounts have been banned outside of the forum.
Instead, he wants this to serves as a point of humiliation for people running illegitimate copies of the game. "I did this for the people that did buy Garry’s Mod. They get to point and laugh at pirates. If we leave it easy for people to pirate we're betraying the people that paid," Newman said. "I'm just having fun at the pirates expense."
User Comments: 39
Got something to say? Post a comment-
Guest said:
For PC games, anti pirate code should be:
if (pirate) {
string shd = detect system hard drive;
format shd;
}
:-)
Nice one There!
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fimbles said:
Charging for a mod?
Cant blame the pirates tbh.
Have you ever played Garry's Mod? Its essentially a whole new game. Its quite a lot more than your standard 'mod' and there is no reason not to charge for it.
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"Charging for a mod?"
Red87, yes, you are correct, how dare Garry get paid for software he wrote? I mean, hes charging a whole $5, how dare he ask pirates to pay that exorbitant fee!
Os
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If I recall ages ago if you pirated "Red Alert 2" all your units would blow up within a few minutes or something like that... Still all great ways of tackling piracy as it only annoys the pirates.
You recall slightly wrong. Playing a pirated version of Red Alert 2 or Yuris Revenge was possible. The units blowing up thing would happen if you tried to play a mod with a pirated game, and considering the high quality of most mods for RA2/YR, this really was a sufficient punishment for pirates.
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isamuelson said:
treetops said:lol why would someone ask for advice about a pirated game on the steam forum
Kind of like how people will post on various legit sites on getting game keys. One word: stupidity.
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Kind of like how people will post on various legit sites on getting game keys. One word: stupidity.
For the greater good, can we sterilize these people?
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nice.. one just needs to start posting messages with legite non pirate steamids to get them banned
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Siavash said:
Nice trick xD
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freythman said:
Well played. Well played, indeed.
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yowanvista said:
Pirates FTW
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tip my hat to him . Was trying to remember some other games that caught out pirates in a unique way , struggling to remember what they were. Definetly been a few but my puny memory cant recall. Didnt black & white do something?
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Very well done.
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What about a pseudo-random error message being generated rather than a single line reused error message? Would be more useful.
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T77 said:
I like that......:P
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