Like a lot of message boards, there are serious issues with spam posting around here. People just have an urge to get their idea/thought/feeling out there and will post something that has absolutely ZERO value to anybody else(Hint: just because you have correct spelling and grammar, doesn't mean your post is any good).

"ya I argree"
"fuck that, Sony/MS doesn't know what the hell they doing"
"oh yes I was their and it was a fantastic experience"

That doesn't seem too bad but when you have to wade through dozens of pages in a thread to read something useful...well this is why the junk mail filter in your email inbox was invented.
I understand that there's some sort of crackdown going on around here. Seems the spammers not only post in threads but also begin entire topics for their garbage? Christ. 
 
Glad something's being done but now with Giantbomb becoming a pay site, it's way harder to tell people that put food on their table what to do so the situation could quickly become worse. If you try to tell people what to do, you could easily drive away a hundred thousand dollars, because these people will just go back to IGN, Gamespot or GAF. I wish there was some solution but for now it seems like an impossible balancing act...I remain hopeful that somebody will come up with something.
 
cheers,
Sander
 

People submit to certain "house-rules" when signing up and participating here, whether or not they have an account. And paying for service doesn't excuse you from being treated the same as everyone else (even if that's very bad service to begin with) pretty much anywhere in the world. Hell, you pay a lot of money for a movie ticket and they treat their customer like criminals - to the point of spying on them through night-vision goggles throughout the movie and everything short of frisking people on the way in and out.
 
The problem with spam and duplicates around here has nothing to do with people's attitudes (well, for the most part) and everything to do with the strange way the forums are laid out and searched. It can be very difficult to identify whether or not you're posting a duplicate topic unless it just happens to still be on the front page of that forum at the time.
 
Further, if you let your community go to shit, you lose a huge chunk of it paying or not, which eventually causes less people to want to subscribe and less of the free eyeballs for advertisers. It impacts their bottom line if they treat people differently.
 
Of course, there aren't any examples of this happening anyway, so this is all kind of pointless. Shit changes. Big deal.

True.

No one will get preferential treatment for being a subscriber. If subscribers break the rules, we won't hesitate to give the same punishment that we would give to a non-paying member. Nothing changes with regards to our moderation. Everyone is subject to the same rules and punishments regardless of their subscription status.