I've worked with 1-2 other sites that have probably the size of GoG. They probably have 1-2 coders total for web based stuff. If they aren't available, then you just gotta wait until they are, unless they call them back as an emergency.

But more so is a badly written SQL statement can literally wipe the entire database clean. It's quite easy to do, although i haven't don't that personally. Still they have logs they can sift through, and a lot of them to figure out what the easiest way to block bot creation without resorting to IP blocking (as VPN/proxy gets around that).

I've reported some in the BG forum, but it just keeps coming. This has to be sorted from the site itself.

Doesn't a simple picture verification work?

You mean captcha. Sure that can work i suppose... but remember there's probably only 1-2 web developers. They might also be testing solutions on a testing environment to see how it works, if the solutions will even work, if it will be safe to implement without breaking the system or accidentally resetting the DB, etc.

It could be more than that, perhaps there's a license/fee they don't want to have to pay, or maybe they have their own picture verification they want you to use, or perhaps some simple logical puzzle i see on forums to get verification you're human, be it simple math, which isn't a vowel, which animals have hair, which names are months/planets/days, etc.

But if they stop it via captcha, what if the bot already has 50,000 accounts? Yeah i'm sure it will be easy to spot... but you can't blindly delete accounts, although the pattern they are using make it pretty easy to find them. (Although if they don't own any games, i'd happily delete them all and apologize if i accidentally hit a real user, re-signing up is minimal vs hours of manual labor for users).

I really don't know why they are taking so long. Some of the site changes have annoyed me, but nothing truly deal breaking...
That's what i've been saying.

Just reported a bunch of them.
That gave me a good chuckle, though. :D

A simple CAPTCHA upon registering should keep some spambots at bay, right now it's way too easy for them to create new accounts. Not a complete solution, but it'd be a good (and easy to implement, i think) start.

What about a requirement that a register user has actually purchased something before being allowed to post in the forums? Not the best solution, I admit, but it might be better than having a captcha code every time you want to post.

Not a CAPTCHA for every post, that'd be highly annoying and useless; just one when you register on GOG the first time.

Edit: A purchase requirement doesn't seem like a good idea, it could scare potential customers/community members away (I wouldn't have registered if a purchase was a prerequisite, for one).

Ehh. Permission granted.

sir yes sir !

ill get my cannon sir !

Traitor! Your soul will meet my blade in Hell!!! >_<

Snitch :-)

There are many users who don't come to the forums for years after they've used GoG. A purchase would add a huge level of risk to spammers as well. So honestly it's not a bad idea... Unless of course they start doing charge-backs on credit cards immediately after getting access to the fourms... That wouldn't be good.

So why hasn't that spammer been banned yet? Another 10-ish threads in BG now. If it's similar in many other subforums too, there is a ton and a half of this stuff. Sigh.

Yes it is. It's an extremely bad idea. It would be alienating potential customers, which is a very poor strategy for any business.