The Witcher 2 Devs Hunt Pirates in Spare Time, Claim All Accused are Guilty
The Witcher 2 Devs Hunt Pirates in Spare Time, Claim All Accused are Guilty
Posted 12/16/2011 at 7:46am
| by Paul Lilly
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PC Gamer, Maximum PC's sister site devoted to, well, PC gamers, posted an interesting piece about CD Projekt RED going after software pirates in Germany and threatening legal action to anyone who refuses the settlement offer. In this day and age of BitTorrent, this is hardly unusual, but what's interesting here is that CD Projeckt RED claims it's able to successfully identify pirates of the game The Witcher 2 with 100 percent accuracy.
"We’re addressing only 100 percent confirmed piracy causes that are 100 percent possible to prove," Michal Nowakowski, VP of Business Development for CD Projekt RED, told PC Gamer via email.
Nowakowski wouldn't share what exactly CD Projekt RED is doing to elminate false positives, only that he's supremely confident all accused are guilty.
"We are not worried about tracking the wrong people. As this is the trade secret of the company working on this, I cannot share it," Noakowski said. "However, we investigated the subject before we decided on this move, and we aware of some past complications (the famous Davenport case). The method used here is targeting only 100 percent confirmed piracy cases. No innocent person was targeted with the letter so far. At least we have not received any information as of now which would indicate something like that."
CD Projekt RED released The Witcher 2 earlier this year free from any DRM shackles via its sister company, GOG.com. Including retail copies with DRM, the game sold over a million copies around the globe.
Lots more good stuff on the topic over at PC Gamer here.
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Ghok
December 16, 2011 at 6:22pm
I just bought The Witcher and I'm really loving it, but to hear this leaves me feeling pretty cold.
I know you guys don't like people infringing your game, but see it as a mark of success. People are still buying your game. The best way to stop piracy is to make the retail version better than the bootleg.
Scatter
January 15, 2012 at 9:44pm
"The best way to stop piracy is to make the retail version better than the bootleg."
I've heard this suggested plenty of times before but I never see any valid suggestions of how the developer should actually do this. These guys have already released DRM free copies of their games. What more can they really do to make legal copies more attractive than pirated ones? Personally I'm tired of people demanding the near impossible of companies in order to allow them to protect their products from pirates.
The way our laws are currently written companies really have no way to protect their intellectual properties. They're just expected to bend over and allow their games, movies and music to be freely distributed over the web. I'm sure that if someone walked into the homes of some of the readers here and just took their games, and DVD collections they'd be outraged and expect the law to do something about it. However when it's someone else being robbed people couldn't care less.
timmyw
December 16, 2011 at 2:17pm
The only thing I am absolutely 100% sure of is when someone says they are 100% sure of anything they are 100% full of shit.
AntonioGarrison
December 16, 2011 at 11:48am
Notice how it's in Germany and not the US. Yeah, they know that their 100% method won't hold up in the US.
Eoraptor
December 16, 2011 at 9:36am
yeah... no.
no.
and no again.
The internet and PC's themselves are as complex as any living organism is. and as with any living organism, there are only two 100% occurences, life, or death. Anything else is not absolute, including accusations of piracy. I appreciate that they don't want their hard work stolen from them, but simply declaring every machine that doesn't transmit some unique identifier code as being a dirty child-raping nazi-loving game thief is not the way to do it.
CD Projeckt RED can go peddle their wares elswhere. I was not interested in their games to start with, but now I will actively avoid them and tell others to do the same.
j814wong
December 22, 2011 at 9:38pm
With priacy, one creates antagonism from the content creator or owner. But with boycotts, it is more legal and looks significantly better then piracy in the eyes of content owners or creators who opften view piracy as stealing no matter what pirates say. Thus, the best way to protest bad policies of a company would be to boycott a company and avoid its products as you said. Boycotting also has a greater degree of respectabiltiy among non-pirates unlike piracy and would be more effective.
Scatter
January 15, 2012 at 9:52pm
The problem with boycotts is that really don't accomplish anything other than to maybe make the individual feel better about themself. There's no way to show that you're boycotting something other then to scream out "hey look at me, I'm not buying your product". However for starters, nobody really knows for sure that you haven't bought something that you would normally enjoy. And secondly if you really don't purchase something there's no way to prove that you would have purchased it otherwise and that a sale was lost.
t.y.wan
December 16, 2011 at 9:10am
But, how legal is that? There are many ways to "100% confirm piracy" but most of them are illegal... and even that, it could only narrow it down to the hardware (the computer the pirate uses) but not the actual person operating it...
Most efficient way? Trojan horse in the "game fix", I think. Well, it could also be "included" within the game which was not awared by the "hackers" making the cracks...
limitbreaker
December 16, 2011 at 8:29am
So they are targeting people who cant afford the game or just dont like the game enough to buy it. They're probably tracking people by IP, perhaps the crack files contain a malware created by themselves or something. What's certain is that i wont be buying any games from them.
j814wong
December 22, 2011 at 9:35pm
So just because people can;t afford something, they take the easy way out by priating or stealing? That seriously undermiens work ethic of people ot earn money to get stuff they want. If they don't like the game, then why even play it at all?
TommM
December 16, 2011 at 9:34am
I see...so the solution if you can't afford it or don't like the game is to steal it? And there's nothing wrong with that and companies who try and deter that type of activity/mentality are the bad guys?
Is that what you're saying?
damicatz
December 16, 2011 at 8:20am
Well, they just lost a lot of respect in my eyes.
There is no such thing as 100% accuracy. People are not guilty just because they are accused and that kind of thinking is what the MPAA and the RIAA use and that is what dictatorships and brutal regimal governments use.
Scatter
January 15, 2012 at 9:57pm
A fingerprint at a crime scene isn't 100% proof of a crime either but it's still pretty damning in court where you generally only have to convince a jury of a wrongdoing.
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