To be fair, the shaky forum infrastructure probably prevented them from posting hundreds more threads as no doubt it got confused and overloaded.

I would be totally fine with limiting every user for 1 thread per day.
Harsh times call for harsh measures, even if SO advanced.

That's still one thread that can be made by a bot/spammer tho.

But that would be 100 times better, is it not?

No, actually that's not better in the least bit.

Restricting accounts to 1 thread per day just means that the bot owners will simply deploy more numbers of their bots in order to compensate, and make the exact same number of threads that they otherwise were planning to have made with just one bot only.

The idea to limit posts per day will therefore have zero effect on the number of bot spam threads.

The other suggestion, however, to only let accounts posts who have bought games here, that would actually work to totally eliminate the bot spam problem.

What Dragon said. No band-aid will ever solve this problem.

How can you be sure that creating 100 acounts per day is *the same* as creating 100 threads per day from one account? On paper it sounds like that of course.

What I might expect is the spamming in threads of other users more frequently, no question here. But since the spam-bot account is going to be blocked, creating more and more accounts on daily basis would become more and more cumbersome for the culprit.

Yes, that suggestion was brought up by many users including me. That would be a cool suggestion, yet it would require more work from GOG stuff to check if the account is *valid* for posting. Also it would break some laws (especially the EU), since the forum is open and public everyone should have access to it.

Also new users might be alienated and never come back, what if they want to clarify something before making a purchase.

Either it's an open / public forum or a closed one. In case GOG change that to be more exclusive to the paid owners - their Agreement rules - then yes, a very good solution. Still not the best.
Another possible solution. A necessary premoderation for every post of the new user (0 rep, 0 posts). That way spam bots would wait for hours before their posts are checked and rejected.

A very good solution. A very bad way to greet new users.

Sorry but i disagree. I did not imply that we should become like steam which is utterly draconic to new users. No friend lists no nothing, until they spend 5USD/5eur.

Simply restricting forum posting is enough. Also would alleviate gog CMs and admins from constantly having to monitor the forum for spam etc.

I don't get it. You are sorry for disagreeing? To that it's a good solution and / or to that it's a bad way to handle new users?

No idea what you meant by Steam, I had 0 friends and I had no restrictions on their forum. Tell me how I was restricted?
The only thing I noticed, with or without frinds in my list, was the language filter (no curse words) and links filter (some links were removed as "dangerous" even).

Restricting forum for 1 thread is my main suggestion. You said that resticting is enough, but before you was not so positive about that or maybe I'm missing something.

Not sure that I'm aware of a EU law that would have that implication on a forum.

Still, if it does exist, I'd either fully gate the forum or add in some additional security steps to registration. e.g. to register, you have to provide a verified email address and a mobile telephone number for SMS based 2FA, which would have to be enabled before you post. Limit the number of accounts that can be linked to a single number to either one or two and while you won't remove the spam, you've just made it a lot more difficult. I'd also couple this with a limit to the number of threads to one a day until more than $10 had been spent in the store (and not refunded) - I'd probably also limit everyone to creating a maximum of three threads a day anyway; I can't see why you would need more than that.

Or - whack in a captcha when a user who hasn't spent any money tries to create a thread - say a couple of pages of identifying traffic lights or boats and one where you have to type out the text. That will make it harder for bot based spam.

Ah yes my bad. Forgot about that!

I'm not sure as well, perhaps it has something to do with "discrimination", and EU is all about people rights (according to my TV that is). That's why I specifically mentioned that Agreement text must be adjusted in case GOG would go for that exclusivity option on their forum.

Additional layers of verification is very cool and very expensive to implement, especially the SMS confirmation. My local banks are not happy with SMS and push their clients (politely) into using mobile apps with "push notifications" rarely with SMS in case the IP, Location or Device ID is totally new or unexpected (e.g. "someone just accessed your mobile bank app, make sure it's you or else call us now").
Let's assume GOG has all the money and they forced that 2FA SMS verification, how that would work, every time I want to create a thread I must access a secret code from my phone? That would be the end for me and I expect for some other users, I would never touch GOG forum. But yes, spammers would be gone as well and the core GOG users would remain. Not sure if it's a good solution since I can't see the good implementation of that.

Everything esle regarding limiting the thread counts per day - and $10 for more limit - I personally would agree. Spammers must pay, literally ;)
Personally I can't see why anyone would need more than 1 thread per day, but 3 sounds good enought as well. Less unhappy and vocal users.

That would be awesome. I think some users already got it. There was a time when I could NOT log in to GOG without that CAPTCHA test screens. I have only 1 account and I rarely access it from more than 1 IP address.

I would suggest to *whack* a CAPTCHA for any new thread after the first one per day. That way not only spammers might lose the interest but also Google and GOG might earn a few bucks in the process. Win-win.

That helped a lot, only 2 pages of ads left there for several hours. The lunch break is terribly long. If only GOG would give some rights to our Yellow Community Users to at least block the account from posting "for further investigation". Do we have the Yellows still? I haven't seen one in months. Don't confuse it with the Orange (Developer).

Nope, there is no regulation of any forum even in the EU and there can't be one since EU does not even force any store to HAVE a forum to discuss things. If you really think such is the case please tell us the exact rule/law. Otherwise it simply is not a valid argument to bring up.

Or removing messageboards completely. A store doesn't need them. If people want to talk about games or anything else, they can do it somewhere else.