I just bought my son UT2k4 off of Good Old Games (GOG). We installed it and started playing last night for the first time. He got all the way through the map downloads, but before he completely spawned he got the message that he was forcibly removed from the server and banned. He didn't even have time to break any rules.

It looks like it's a serial number ban and not an IP address ban though because I can still connect.

Is the GOG version of UT2k4 banned for some reason? I know when GOG makes a deal with the distributor they usually just hard code a single serial in for all downloads. Not sure if that might be it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Try this FilePlanet: Unreal Tournament 2004 Patch v3369

Thanks Worlock. He's already version 3369.
I emailed GOG games and they sent me a patch that provides a unique serial number for online gameplay. Apparently UT2k4 was one of their first offerings and didn't have the ability to auto generate unique serials for each of their downloads. (Kinda like what Steam does.)

I'll try the patch this weekend to see if it works. In the meantime I bought him a Steam version so he can play. Steam version works.

So if someone else stumbles across this trying to figure out why they got instant banned, email GOG.