4 ms·

I think it aligns with the strategy of pretending to be bigger than you are so you can attract business customers. An old startup I worked at used customer IDs

by mozman 2y ago

I think it aligns with the strategy of pretending to be bigger than you are so you can attract business customers. An old startup I worked at used customer IDs in communications that started from an arbitrary 5 digit number to give a false impression of our customer base.

ender341341 2y ago
similarly it's used to be super common to get checkbooks starting with a higher check number cause some places were cautious of taking check #1 from someone assuming they didn't have any sort of credit history.
TillE 2y ago
That was really common among shareware developers back in the day, one guy sort of pretending to be a big serious company. I suspect Tim Sweeney was joining this trend but also mocking it with the name "Epic MegaGames". It's definitely not how people act these days, at least with indie/solo game developers.
- mentos 2y ago
  When I was running my Ultima Online emulator in highschool there was a "Welcome, there are currently 6 other players in the world." Can you guess what I did in the early days to eventually grow the server to over 2000 real active players?
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    Did you spoof the value server side or run bots? Maybe some portion of the 2000 organic players were also running bots? I ran some personal bots back in the Diablo 2 days with D2Loader and some shareware bot plug-in I bought on a shady site for like $12 in ~2003-2004 or so. Wish I could remember the name. https://web.archive.org/web/20100813125735/http://d2loader.blizzsector.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100813125735/http://d2loader.b... Apparently there are modern versions of D2Loader type software. I haven’t really followed the game or the bot scene much these days, but I like the cat and mouse game in general across the physical and virtual space. Red teaming scratches that itch I guess. https://github.com/shupershuff/Diablo2RLoader https://github.com/shupershuff/Diablo2RLoader
    - mentos 2y ago
      Ha yea I spoofed the value server side so it was something like NumPlayers*20+RandRange(0:3) So that if there were only 6 online it’d report 123. Took only a few weeks before I was able to disable it and report the real values.
      - mozman 2y ago
        As long as it works that’s all that matters. It’s natural for people to not want to be an outlier
keyringlight 2y ago
Another angle I've seen is different types of id numbers within an organization start with a different digit, even if they're all the same length. The CRM system doesn't care, but it prevents mixups on the human side

by mozman 2y ago

ender341341 2y ago

similarly it's used to be super common to get checkbooks starting with a higher check number cause some places were cautious of taking check #1 from someone assuming they didn't have any sort of credit history.

TillE 2y ago

That was really common among shareware developers back in the day, one guy sort of pretending to be a big serious company. I suspect Tim Sweeney was joining this trend but also mocking it with the name "Epic MegaGames". It's definitely not how people act these days, at least with indie/solo game developers.

mentos 2y ago
When I was running my Ultima Online emulator in highschool there was a "Welcome, there are currently 6 other players in the world." Can you guess what I did in the early days to eventually grow the server to over 2000 real active players?
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  Did you spoof the value server side or run bots? Maybe some portion of the 2000 organic players were also running bots? I ran some personal bots back in the Diablo 2 days with D2Loader and some shareware bot plug-in I bought on a shady site for like $12 in ~2003-2004 or so. Wish I could remember the name. https://web.archive.org/web/20100813125735/http://d2loader.blizzsector.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100813125735/http://d2loader.b... Apparently there are modern versions of D2Loader type software. I haven’t really followed the game or the bot scene much these days, but I like the cat and mouse game in general across the physical and virtual space. Red teaming scratches that itch I guess. https://github.com/shupershuff/Diablo2RLoader https://github.com/shupershuff/Diablo2RLoader
  - mentos 2y ago
    Ha yea I spoofed the value server side so it was something like NumPlayers*20+RandRange(0:3) So that if there were only 6 online it’d report 123. Took only a few weeks before I was able to disable it and report the real values.
    - mozman 2y ago
      As long as it works that’s all that matters. It’s natural for people to not want to be an outlier

keyringlight 2y ago

Another angle I've seen is different types of id numbers within an organization start with a different digit, even if they're all the same length. The CRM system doesn't care, but it prevents mixups on the human side