Superior Servers is abusing an exploit to gain players and money - Garry's Mod

I have been playing on Superior Servers for about a two months now (I am a moderator), and throughout that time, periodically, they have been advertising gaining the "Yes, I am the real Garry!" achievement by joining their server through their Steam group and in game. [img]http://s11.postimg.org/q6xesdh8z/ss_2015_12_27_at_07_31_06.jpg[/img] Coincidentally, while people are joining and gaining the achievement, staff members are announcing to donate over some 25% off deal. [img]http://s1.postimg.org/kn5o1eii7/ss_2015_12_27_at_07_32_39.png[/img] Proof of the player and his falsified SteamID: [img]http://s28.postimg.org/ex13x6hfx/ss_2015_12_27_at_07_53_00_1.jpg[/img] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [img]http://s17.postimg.org/e27mlfahr/ss_2015_12_27_at_07_58_26.png[/img] I also believe the owner is behind this considering he set his rank specifically: [img]http://s16.postimg.org/3ju3lm2b9/ss_2015_12_27_at_07_58_56_1.png[/img] Meanwhile, they have a "Garry :D" walking around the server attracting a huge crowd. Of course, the player's name and SteamID match the real Garry, however, when you go to his profile, it says that the real Garry is not playing GMod, revealing it's a fake. The Steam group announcements, staff advertisements over donations, and blatant lying about it being the real Garry by upper staff leads me to claim that [B]the abuse of the achievement system is done by SUP to attract players and money.[/B]

I'm not personally faking garry or having the guys doing do it. But people want the achievement so I'm going to let my players know they can join to get it when whoever it is comes on as it's pretty apparent people want it.

[QUOTE=StonedPenguin;49402391]I'm not personally faking garry or having the guys doing do it. But people want the achievement so I'm going to let my players know they can join to get it when whoever it is comes on as it's pretty apparent people want it.[/QUOTE] Doing nothing in this scenario is the same as taking advantage. I would have banned that guy for impersonation and reported the incident to the real garry.

[QUOTE=StonedPenguin;49402391]I'm not personally faking garry or having the guys doing do it. But people want the achievement so I'm going to let my players know they can join to get it when whoever it is comes on as it's pretty apparent people want it.[/QUOTE] Honestly, if that's the truth, then it comes off as grubbing for players, especially when there's manual donation advertisements going off at the same time. Also, if you don't know who's doing it, why would you give them VIP (a paid rank) for free?

Little is it SUP's problem that at the moment people can spoof their SteamID and imitate Garry, an exploit that several people have access to. If somebody feels like handing out Garry achievements, why wouldn't a server use it to their advantage, honestly? Further, if you're [i]bothered[/i] so much, why are you even a mod there? And go so far as to create a FacePunch account [i]just[/i] to complain about a guy capitalizing on a spoofer visiting his server? Ultimately, the players choose to join, and the players choose to purchase upgrades on the server. That's [i]business[/i].

[QUOTE=KingofBeast;49402438]Little is it SUP's problem that at the moment people can spoof their SteamID and imitate Garry, an exploit that several people have access to. If somebody feels like handing out Garry achievements, why wouldn't a server use it to their advantage, honestly? Further, if you're [i]bothered[/i] so much, why are you even a mod there? And go so far as to create a FacePunch account [i]just[/i] to complain about a guy capitalizing on a spoofer visiting his server? Ultimately, the players choose to join, and the players choose to purchase upgrades on the server. That's [i]business[/i].[/QUOTE] It's reflective that the community does not participate in moral practices. As a business, it's just as bad as some company in America abusing Quantitative easing for their own pockets and fucking over consumers. Sure, it's not SUP's "problem," but it is their choice in participating. Everything is optional, but it's dirty to bring in player's to "harmlessly" get an achievement and bombard them with donation advertisements.

[QUOTE=Triplet;49402491]It's reflective that the community does not participate in moral practices. As a business, it's just as bad as some company in America abusing Quantitative easing for their own pockets and fucking over consumers. Sure, it's not SUP's "problem," but it is their choice in participating. Everything is optional, but it's dirty to bring in player's to "harmlessly" get an achievement and bombard them with donation advertisements.[/QUOTE] I naturally say that every 30 minutes, coincidentally Garry came, and as it is 25% off, and there's lots of players, why not let them take an advantage of the deal?

Participating in moral practices? In a game like Garry's Mod? You realize that Garry's Mod and especially DarkRP has a relatively low mean age. Do you expect the average player to consider "it's not the real Garry, maybe I should preserve my achievement virginity and not join"? It's literally an achievement in a game, man.

[QUOTE=VintageSI;49402517]I naturally say that every 30 minutes, coincidentally Garry came, and as it is 25% off, and there's lots of players, why not let them take an advantage of the deal?[/QUOTE] 2 minutes is a quick 30 minutes! [editline]28th December 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=KingofBeast;49402528]Participating in moral practices? In a game like Garry's Mod? You realize that Garry's Mod and especially DarkRP has a relatively low mean age. Do you expect the average player to consider "it's not the real Garry, maybe I should preserve my achievement virginity and not join"? It's literally an achievement in a game, man.[/QUOTE] But the players gained and the money made is a lot more than achievement.

[i]Business[/i] I'm done posting here.

Although I normally would I agree with you, I know for a fact that the owner is not involved. Should he ban the guy and not capitalize on it for lack of better terms? In my opinion, sure; but they are not using it to feed on money from my perspective on it. This "exploit" is nothing in comparison to falsifying player counts and A2S requests for like 100 servers representing one actual server.

I had the same guy on my server spoofing Garry, and banned him permanently - later realizing the potential to get my server filled up instantly. THE REGRETTTT. PS. Don't hate on Penguin, you would've done the same in his situation. He's not the one exploiting so what's wrong with taking advantage of it? he already runs the biggest server in DarkRP.

[QUOTE=KingofBeast;49402438]Little is it SUP's problem that at the moment people can spoof their SteamID and imitate Garry, an exploit that several people have access to. If somebody feels like handing out Garry achievements, why wouldn't a server use it to their advantage, honestly? Further, if you're [i]bothered[/i] so much, why are you even a mod there? And go so far as to create a FacePunch account [i]just[/i] to complain about a guy capitalizing on a spoofer visiting his server? Ultimately, the players choose to join, and the players choose to purchase upgrades on the server. That's [i]business[/i].[/QUOTE] Sure, if he wants to do that then there's nothing that we can do to stop him. But I and others will totally think less of him and mentally group him with the assholes that fake player count and will do anything for money. What's the difference? What's more important? He's prioritized money over integrity, so on a personal level he just seems desperate and slimy, and if I were staff on this site I'd ban him for abusing an exploit. "Don't forget to donate!" Geez man. [editline]28th December 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Elpisaur;49404838]I had the same guy on my server spoofing Garry, and banned him permanently - later realizing the potential to get my server filled up instantly. THE REGRETTTT. PS. Don't hate on Penguin, you would've done the same in his situation. He's not the one exploiting so what's wrong with taking advantage of it? he already runs the biggest server in DarkRP.[/QUOTE] Except I haven't, and my friend who runs a legit server hasn't. The idea that you MUST do this because you run a server is silly and unfounded. It's as easy as not being a desperate for cash.

Nobody ever said that anybody [i]must[/i] take advantage of somebody using the exploit. The arguments made were that there's no harm in doing so. And note that the adverts in this screencap are made by the user Vintage, who doesn't receive any share of the server's income and has little to gain by encouraging others to purchase upgrades. But, if he wants to do that, who are you to tell him he can't? As far as I'm concerned, Penguin was just about totally removed during this situation save for the Steam group announcement. Him and I were developing at the time.

I dunno, it is kind of weird how everyone was really against Aero Servers but are more relaxed about this since while the scale is severely different, the core concept feels the same?? "You would have done the same" is a terrible way of brushing off criticism too

Another fundamental difference in this situation is that SuperiorServers only pushed out an announcement to ITS OWN Steam group. People that do or have already played on the server and felt it was worth it to be in the group. Anybody else would have been completely oblivious to what was going on. The Aero Servers group was advertising to the entire server list a falsified amount of active players. Now, I would understand the frustration if for example SUP were to do something like that, or post on public forums like FacePunch that people could join for the Garry achievement, and having admins subsequently point out their Christmas sale. But like I said, everyone who saw the announcement was [b]already a part of SUP.[/b]

The second you take note of it, advertise it in Steam Group, and manually advertise for donating during the event you essentially created is the second you're no longer an innocent bystander. If you wanna say it's a business move, fine, whatever, but don't say you're not taking advantage of the exploit and that you have nothing to do with it. You recognized that it exist and instead of reporting the incident to get patched or whatever you decided to use it to make some cash. It's not really the whole "let this guy" rampant thing that bothers me, it's the fact that someone manually asked for people to donate because of the huge influx of people coming for the garry exploit. I don't really care about the exploit itself, although I think it should've been reported anyway.

My main concern, if this exploit is able to imitate Garry's steam id, can it be used to imitate staff and hijack servers?

[QUOTE=coolcat99;49410564]My main concern, if this exploit is able to imitate Garry's steam id, can it be used to imitate staff and hijack servers?[/QUOTE] The exploit is purely client side so the server still recognizes you with your steamID. Therefore you won't be able to hijack any servers.

[QUOTE=wauterboi;49410450]You recognized that it exist and instead of reporting the incident to get patched or whatever you decided to use it to make some cash. [/QUOTE] Ley reported it months ago and told me about it. [QUOTE=wauterboi;49410450]It's not really the whole "let this guy" rampant thing that bothers me, it's the fact that someone manually asked for people to donate because of the huge influx of people coming for the garry exploit..[/QUOTE] One of my admins did that on their own accord, when I tabbed back in game and saw it I did ask him to stop.

And something you can't really see is there wasn't a huge influx of people coming for the garry exploit anyway. Before the ruckus started the server was already at like 105 players. So in all maybe 10 people got the achievement and the rest got redirected to the other less populated server. The server-wide adverts to purchase credits is not special to the occasion nor was the sale that Vintage was talking about so you can forget about those points in their entirety. And like I said, he has little to gain by even doing that.

well I know this is old but I hope this bug is around still as it would be a great boost for any server's player and donation count to rise. this is pretty smart thinking tho I'd go as far as find ways to make it much easier to get many other achievements quicker in return for specific donation packages. like say maybe Achievement-HunterRP maybe? [highlight](User was banned for this post ("What are you doing (Dumb bump)" - Novangel))[/highlight]