Actually, I was joking about your perception of the forum. I love it here, but it is far from casual. :P

Fact is I have been here since 2012 and only joined Steam about a year ago because of Deserts of Kharak which GOG admitted to me may never be updated here.

I use both but I am GOG to the bone. I can't live in Steam because I live in the middle of nowhere with a satellite internet connection. I only get 25Gb of bandwidth a month. Even if I was fine with DRM, I simply can't have it.

Spammers don't pay up like that in practise though as even $10 is more than what they'll get back plus those 100x GOG accounts will need 100x different payment methods to avoid fraud triggers, and the whole thing ends up costing them far more in both time & money than what they're willing to put into it. The cheapest games I've seen are $1 / £0.79, so 100x accounts is more like $100 for almost no return. I know some people don't like the suggestion, but it's already proven to work on Steam (and other forums) with little real inconvenience precisely because the difference between $0 vs $1 actually puts up a huge barrier for spammers who only spam for free because creating fake financial accounts to make real payments is a hell of a lot more time-consuming than free fake e-mail addresses & GOG accounts, plus they won't get back their money (and will run at a loss) especially with gibberish spam posts like this that don't even advertise anything and thus will never cover their advertising costs.

And whilst people correctly point out that newbies who haven't bought any games looking for tech support for say Treasure Adventure Game may be affected, if nothing gets done then you end up with long-term, high-rated members already finding it less appealing to post : "I got to say, I think I'll not be visiting for a month or two. Every time I log in, it's ridiculous. It's not fun anymore."
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_are_under_attack_again/post705

^ And from GOG's point of view, watching people who've bought hundreds of games drift away from GOG due to an unreadable forum is going to cost a lot more than worrying about the rare guy who's never spent a penny here but wants to ask a flood of pre-sale questions with spammer levels of posting frequency on the very rare occasion that happens.

I'll give you another example then. I'm a GOG Galaxy 2.0 user, this means I will inevitably run into an issue. Better make a thread to highlight it, and see if I'm not the only one suffering from it. Perhaps this will even culminate in GOG being "hmmm, this issue is gaining traction" and laser focusing on it. THREAD ONE.

On that same day, I am already next in the line of GOG Forum Mafia hosts, so I create the sign up thread. THREAD TWO. Now, if my Mafia setup is pre-defined and there's a limit to how many players will play, AND all the vacant seats are filled up in the same day, then I can create the main game, also on that day (and yes, the game thread is separate from the sign up thread by tradition which has been OK with GOG since circa 2010). THREAD THREE.

You're probably NOT convinced a Mafia game would fill up this quickly, alright. I play a specific video game that day and then capture a couple screenshots. I decide to share them. 'ere we go, THREAD THREE ALTERNATIVE.

And that's without mentioning news (game W announced, game X released, scandal with official Y, death of actor Z, etc).

Look, forums are made to foster discussions. If you limit the creation of threads, you're only putting restrictions on the discussions and when you're in GOG's shoes, you don't want to scare the newbies you're attracting via initiatives like Connect or Galaxy. The idea of a "one paid game to post" Membership Fee will prevent any people who want to inquire about something GOG related to, you know, get the answers to THEIR QUESTIONS and make it just that less likely to invest into the store.

If that's the best solution all of you have got, then I'm sorry, but I'd rather see Baba fucking Ji over seeing a Membership Fee happen. Of course, I'd rather GOG upgrade their forum software so that it can detect obvious spam, but that's not gonna happen any time soon.

EDIT: Also no, just because the rival called "steam" did it, doesn't mean GOG can pull it off. For one, steam doesn't care if you're inconvenienced or not, so they just do what they want; in this case, basically the laziest option, which is offering even less of the service until you pay a decent sum of money (on their platform, so you can't just buy a game from Humble at that). They know nobody's going anywhere else. GOG knows that the slightest restriction will have people going everywhere else. They can't afford losing customers who can just leave the store easily.

The easy way to do it would be to have a moderator get notified anytime a new account tries to post something, just add the option to approve or deny an account right there. That way, they could easily stop spam before it even appears while at the same time not making it inconvenient for new customers to get help from the community.

You are a customer for six years and you have 215 games in your account...that makes you a bad example, because you would not be hindered in any way by my proposal.

People can still post questions - even if they haven't bought a single game.
My suggestion is only in regard to creating threads...not making comments.

It's threads created by spammers that hit the forum hard - not comments in threads created by others.

I'm not a Galaxy user, so I'm in a weak position here, as I can't speak as someone who knows about the particulars of Galaxy.
But: the non-Galaxy approach is still open, even to Galaxy users - and btw: what's the point of using a gaming client, if you don't own games on it?
That would require someone (or rather:several someones) to surveil the forum 24/7 for 365 days/year.
Which also costs money. Even extra money for the night shifts.

I would not, but newbies definitely will be.

And the best way these people can post these questions is by making a thread. GOG's forum software supports creating question threads and marking any specific reply as an answer. This feature should be used by newbies and veterans alike. Your proposal to get them to comment on some existing thread has its own holes. If a game subforum doesn't have a relevant thread for the newbie's question, WHERE do they post it? Let's say a new game has modding support, so this newbie wants to ask if modding support is a thing on the GOG version before buying it, but there's no threads yet for modding. What can they do, besides either wait and potentially be driven away from GOG, or post off-topic?

Well, I'm providing an alternate answer to Bookwyrm's answer, which answered this:

Hmmm, for some reason I thought it was three threads not two. But you can see the point. Either way, two threads per hour? Definitely plausible. For mine, I can simply create a Galaxy 2.0 thread and a Mafia thread in less than one hour, but what about a newbie? Oh, they can create a thread talking about some issue with a game, and another in a separate subforum about what people like in some game or whatever. I can think of many combinations.

Eh, took more than 20 seconds to dig up. I don't care enough to bother digging in the sub forums further.

And I care about digging for this even less, especially since I have no idea whether such information is even recorded anywhere.

It doesn't always happen, but keep an eye out during the big sales. I suggest using Magog and searching by price.

That it would fend off spammers while not harming legit users is just your claim. :P

It would harm any new user that wants to create X threads on different topics on a given hour/day/whatever. It wouldn't do squat against spammers when creating a new account is so easy (and creating an account SHOULD be easy). I'm not saying this happens all the time, or even often; I'm saying this is a plausible scenario and legit users should not be punished.

No, I can't be bothered to go digging for proof, whether you try to add artificial restrictions or not.

Maybe we browse different sub-forums, then. In my experience, answers tend to get buried over time in the busier sub forums, and the less busy sub forums don't have as many answers by their very nature. It doesn't help that some technical questions can be hard to locate if a newbie doesn't know/use the same terminology that more experienced players use.

Define "not that long".

Again, maybe we're just browsing different sub forums. Some of the same questions show up periodically in several of the sub forums that I browse; just because a newbie CAN search doesn't mean they're going to search or that they'll spend very long searching. Why bother when they could just go elsewhere for a more user friendly experience?

When ideas that I think are harmful are being presented, I may stir myself enough to provide the opposite view point. I would like to see bad ideas not get implemented, especially if they might harm my user experience.

I basically stopped caring about forum spam when we had this problem a few years ago, right down to pages of B@ba Ji black magic threads. GOG showed very similar responses then as they have now.

I provide plausible scenarios to display why I think a given idea is a bad idea. If you think a scenario isn't plausible, then indicate why. Thus far, you've basically said "Aw, that's not a real thing!" while you make assertions with no proof of your own.

I see no reason to waste my time trying to dig out historical precedent to display why ideas that haven't been implemented are bad ideas.

And I'll give this question the response it deserves: lulz.

*shrug* As I've said, I don't care for the idea of locking the forums behind a price point, but I consider it the most workable idea that I've seen presented thus far.

As a comparison, last I checked, gifting is locked behind a price point and it proved to be an annoyance; the person I was trying to help with it basically wrote off GOG for making it difficult for the user to spend money here.

I don't know how to measure the effect of losses from users who walk away in disgust versus those who stay because of a particular measure being implemented or not.

Yeah, I saw Tallima's post, and I can't blame him. I, personally, have been affected very little by the spam (it has mostly been cleaned up any time I've wandered in), but my interest in General Discussion has already been eroding due to other factors (like the poor moderation).

You may well be right that GOG cares more about long term users than new users. My perception is that GOG has been chasing the new users more than courting the existing users, based on the decisions they've made over recent years despite community outcry. It makes some sense to me to court the new users more than existing users, since new users may buy copies of all those games that existing users have already bought.

I was thinking on the pay wall, and I remembered the occasional threads I've seen about this user or that user being unable to purchase something on GOG because of some Paypal (or other payment method) snafu. A natural response is to go to the forums or support page to look for help. I don't know if Support has people working evenings or weekends, and I'm not familiar with their current typical turn-around times, but historically support could take a week or more to respond to a ticket.

Being unable to pay, therefore unable to post, and getting a slow response from Support is likely to drive a prospective buyer away entirely and incur bad word-of-mouth to boot. Not a scenario GOG wants.

Not necessarily if you had people working remotely from other time zones. [Though I agree with your main point that they're not likely to pay for more moderation, period]

What about the suggestion that accounts must either:

Have 1 purchased game (albeit that can be gotten around in a few ways, but it's a minimal barrier)

OR

If no purchased games, posting requires CAPTCHA

I know people hate CAPTCHA, but if someone needed to post from a free/non-verified account, it's theoretically viable to still do so.

I understand that, but that's when a multi-tiered approach becomes effective. I have moderated a couple of forums in the past (one IT related, another for a disability support group). No single anti-spam rule by itself will ever be perfect but the goal for the forum owner is really to place anti-spam rules / limitations that lie above the behavioural threshold at which most users operates. Eg:-

- It's possible that new users may create 2-5 threads per day asking for help on a game. I have never ever seen any genuine user create literally dozens of threads in the space of an hour or over 200 threads per day though. So capping max threads per day somewhere between 1 and infinity is one valid "speed bump", it's simply finding the maximum number any single valid user has posted and putting the barrier slightly above that. Or perhaps as bler144 suggested, you allow new users to post say up to 5 new threads per day but require a Captcha.

- Slowing down the rate at which new accounts can post is another. Eg, perhaps allow 5 threads per day but also limit to max 1 thread per hour that at least keeps things manageable for GOG's response time and significantly shrinks multi-page "floods" into just a few posts.

- Flag the very first post of new accounts as requiring moderator approval. Perhaps appoint 1-2 trusted members here as community moderators that could temporarily approve "first posts" from new accounts to improve GOG's response time. Or flag obvious spammer accounts on an account level that auto-hides all posts and temporarily blocks new posts being created until GOG permanently delete them.

There are plenty of things GOG could do that find a more forum friendly balance between barring non-owner newbies from posting at all vs leaving it an unreadable mess for everyone (including same non-owner newbies) that have little real-world impact on both new & existing users. The goal isn't some magic rule-set that will block 100% of spam now and forever, but it certainly should be about preventing multi-page floods we've seen.

I do understand that spam is massively undesirable, and I dislike it as much as everyone else. My primary concern in nay-saying many of these suggestions may simply be a difference in priorities, where my foremost concern is "Don't interfere with legit users" rather than "Stop the spammer". Make the experience as easy and intuitive as possible for people that will be spending their money here.

My first experience with GOG was when I finally stirred myself to visit after hearing good things from a friend. I took a look around, saw some games that I like, saw terms that I liked a lot, and I tried making my first purchase. I was left with the impression "Wow, they've gone out of their way to make it easy for me to do business here. Good for them!".

If my first impression is "Huh. I'm having problems, and I can't post to the forums or anything for some reason.", then I'm also going to be thinking "Maybe I should put my money back in my pocket and walk away. These guys are looking either incompetent or apathetic." I've got better things to do with my time than figure out why this particular game seller has a broken site.

I agree that masses of spam are NOT a good look. I simply don't think that most of the proposed solutions are good solutions because they interfere with legit users more than spammers. Were it me making the decision, I'd look at getting a team of moderators that keep an eye on the forum 24/7 (figure three 8 hour shifts per day, 4 day work weeks, and you'd want a team of 6-8 people to cover this). Comments from GOG staff leave me with the impression that cleaning up the spam is relatively easy for them when they see it, but they don't always see it in a timely manner. Community volunteers to act as moderators could also work, though I have the impression that GOG doesn't want to let power out of their own hands that way. The next alternative would be getting some outside tool or plug-in that is designed to deal with spam.

Full disclosure: this next bit of information was current several years ago, but I don't know the situation now.
Stardock employed a guy in Australia specifically to keep an eye on their forums when it is night time in the USA. Spam and such didn't last long at all because there was a dude present specifically to deal with it even in off hours. GOG could do something similar; surely there are at least a few people in Warsaw willing to work during the night time hours.

During the day time, probably, but these attacks are timed when it's night in Europe, and the boards seem to not be staffed.

And put yourself in the shoes of Wyrm's hypothetical new customer - do you want to wait 2 hours to even post (much less get a response) when you are in the moment of having bought/installed a new game and want to play it? Probably not.

Serious question, are the spam bots that come in here, and other sites, in any way connected to the fucking spam bot robocalls I get ten times a day?

Is it the same group of assholes hitting every form of communication?