Indy Game Creator Smashes Pirates With Ease

Let's begin by explaining what this indy game creator's product is: GMod, aka Garry's Mod. There's a game called Half Life 2, it's a first person shooter that you play on the PC. What our homie Garry Newman has done here is to create a mod that turns the game into a sandbox game in which there are no predefined aims or goals, only allows the user to create their own worlds inside the constraints of the Half Life 2 environment. Basically this means you can do anything, and invite your friends to join in. What Newman has done to smash all pirates of this particular for-sale modification of the game is to insert an error that occurs only when pirates attempt to use an unpaid-for version of the game.

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has occurred, and it certainly wont be the last, but it is a good example of a completely independent developer using a simple method to stick it to those who would take his application when he'd rather they pay for it. The exact error here, incase you're wondering, is the inability to shade polygon normals. What the heck does that mean? Doesn't matter. What does matter is that it's working.

Have a peek [here] at the barrage of complaints made by foolish peons trying to get support for a game from the people they didn't pay for it from. He of course admits that this most certainly wont boost sales of GMod, and in fact is noting that it's certainly not uncrackable, finally takes the time to explain the error in detail.

What do you think? A fabulous trolling of those who would thief, or a totally uncalled for action executed by a terrible devil?

NOTE: The way this error has been working on stolen copies of the game and not legit is: Steam keeps a list of which accounts bought GMod and which didn't.

[via Reddit]