Garry's Mod Creator Tricks Pirates Into Turning Themselves In
by Harry Monogenis, posted on 13 April 2011 / 3,017 Views
The creator of Garry's Mod, Gary Newman, probably isn't happy with the fact that people are pirating his game. So, what is someone in his position to do? Simple. Unleash chaos.
Reports were --and, well, still are actually --flooding in about an error message upon booting up Garry's Mod which reads "unable to shade polygon normals" followed by a bunch of numbers from users who stated that they weren't able to play the game any more.
The thing is that those numbers that appear after the error is actually the user's SteamID. Many of these pirates considered it an error code, so they decided to copy and paste it, publishing their IDs on popular Internet forums, including Garry's Mods' official forum and hacking websites. The SteamID, as I'm sure most of you have guessed by now, has allowed for easy permanent ban distributions -- ouch.
Newman then decided to post an update on Twitter telling his followers what he'd just done:
"Just enabled this error in GMod today. It happens when you pirated it. Having fun watching people complain." He also provided a Google link showing the amount of pirates caught in the act as they began getting frustrated and wondering what on Earth was going on -- some even claimed that they "had just purchased Garry's Mod" when the error appeared.
