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Net Journalist Prosecuted For Warez Crimes

Posted by Zonk on from the pwned dept.

Andrew Burnes writes "A fellow Internet games journalist will shortly plead guilty in a Connecticut court room for being involved in the warez scene, following his apprehension in April as part of Operation Fastlink. Here is a slice of his email to various press and editorial professionals: 'I am very sorry for what I have done, and after I serve my sentence, I hope I will be able to continue my career in the game industry, and move on with my life. This last year has been incredibly hard for me emotionally, facing the consequences of my bad choices, and I am hopeful for your support, but I'll understand if you want nothing to do with me.'

3 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. this sounds familiar by EddieBurkett · · Score: 5, Funny
    This last year has been incredibly hard for me emotionally, facing the consequences of my bad choices, and I am hopeful for your support, but I'll understand if you want nothing to do with me.'
    Apparently my ex got her break-up speech off the same warez site he did...
    --
    The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
  2. Re:What a dumbass. by pnice · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...cue dead Pac-Man sound.

    --
    My Xbox Live Gamer Card
  3. Re:well.. how badly was he in it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    not that this should affect his game reviewer career though.. hell.. most game reviewers SHOULD be into warezed games so that they could write the reviews both early and WITHOUT ass licking of the publisher being necessary to get the review game.

    Uh huh. I once worked on a game where we accidentally put a game killing bug into our first beta candidate. We rolled it back, and fixed it properly, and told the people concerned to chuck the disks we'd just sent them, and to have this BC2 disk. Guess which version got warezed onto the net. Guess which version 4 different reviewers reviewed. Guess which reviewers got an 'early' review where they spent several paragraphs bagging the crash bug and saying this game is a load of shit. Guess which reviewers had to spend a bit of quality time with a lawyer where they tried to insist that 'it was like that when I bought it, but I don't have the original disk anymore'.

    If you go with the warezed version, you don't know what you're getting. But we might. We do keep track of identifiable features in each version that goes out of the studio. The last game I was on, the 'zero day warez' version wasn't a zero day crack. It was from a month before release. Anyone who reviewed that, wasn't reviewing that same thing that gamers were going to play. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not reviewing the game that I'm buying, then what does your review have to do with anything, and why should I pay money for it?