Witcher 2 Torrents Could Net You a Fine

An anonymous reader writes with this quote from Eurogamer: "Gamers who download upcoming PC exclusive The Witcher 2 illegally could receive a letter demanding they pay a fine or face legal action. If gamers refuse to pay the fine, which will be more than the cost of the game, they could end up in court, developer CD Projekt told Eurogamer. 'Of course we're not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,' CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiski said. 'In quite a few big countries, when people are downloading it illegally they can expect a letter from a legal firm saying, "Hey, you downloaded it illegally and right now you have to pay a fine." We are totally fair, but if you decide you will not buy it legally there is a chance you'll get a letter. We are talking about it right now.' Interestingly, The Witcher 2 will be released free of digital rights management – but only through the CD Projekt-owned digital download shop GOG.com. That means owners will be able to install it as many times as they like on any number of computers – and it will not requite an internet connection to run."

Comments

Intended Reaction?

[Anonymous Coward]

A DRM-free game released by a publisher that intends to hunt down pirates. Am I supposed to cheer them on or cry foul? I'm so confused :(

Re:Intended Reaction?

[black6host]

Games should be released DRM free, publishers should be free to utilize what means have been approved to protect their work. At least that's how it would work in my perfect world....

Re:Intended Reaction?

[RsG]

I'm cheering, tentatively.

My "Ideal Future" is no DRM whatsoever, with the game companies selling their product through digital downloads, and possibly brick-and-mortar/snail-mail retailers for those who want physical media.

I want this future specifically so that I can be sure the games I buy today are still good to go fifteen years from now. Not as unreasonable as it sounds, when you consider that my own collection includes titles like X-Com (1993), Fallout 1&2 (97/98) and the Infinity engine series (late 90's), all of which work, or can be made to work, on a modern PC.

The biggest resistance to the "DRM free" approach comes from the fear of piracy. I don't think this is a particularly rational response to the problem on the part of the devs, as only a single game copy needs to be cracked and torrented to make the DRM irrelevant - you can't reasonably stop that without complete control of the box that runs the game, something you can only partially achieve with consoles, and arguably not even then.

Is suing the pirates in lieu of DRM any more rational? Debatable. But I've no doubt it's an improvement. After all, DRMing the games causes problems for me, the legit user, while anti-piracy suits do not.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[Cinder6]

Even if you assume 100% of pirates wouldn't have bought the game if they couldn't get it for free, what gives them the right to play the game without paying for it? I used to think as you did, but now I'm not so sure. I don't think exorbitant fines (such as the *AA enjoy) are the answer (in fact, I find them reprehensible), but neither can I condone piracy.

Or how about a different example. Are you in favor of people sneaking in to movie theaters? Assuming a non-full showing, it doesn't "hurt" the theater one bit, but it's obviously the wrong thing to do.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[MoonBuggy]

Two major reasons: firstly, IP addresses don't map directly to people and (depending on the gathering method used by the companies) can be trivial to spoof, secondly (and more importantly) defending a civil suit can easily bankrupt even an innocent person - offering a pre-set 'settlement' in this situation is very close to blackmail.

As I mentioned further down, though, I'm withholding judgement here until I see a bit more information. I still feel it to be a poor choice, mainly for the reasons above, but I can see why they're doing it and I don't feel any real sympathy for a person getting something akin to a parking ticket if they have in fact been illegally downloading games.

This sympathy for the copyright holder is normally somewhat tempered by the fact that I would like to see the bunch of mindless jerks in charge of the companies under the *AA umbrella first against the wall when the revolution comes[1] as penance for the harm they've done us all in infinitely extending copyright, attacking net neutrality, pushing fines and penalties far beyond the reasonable, attacking fair use, attempting to mandate pervasive network surveillance, and kicking puppies[2].

In this case, though, the copyright holder seems to be more or less reasonable, so I'll be interested to see how it plays out.

[1]This is exaggeration for humorous effect, alluding to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes also known as a joke. Not to be construed as a threat under the Communications Act.

[2]See above disclaimer.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[Anonymous Coward]

doing something that hurts no one

It does hurt someone. It hurts the creators, who would otherwise get some of the money. I know, I know--I'm well aware of the MAFIAA and believe me, I don't support them either. The fact of the matter is, however, that the creators nevertheless do gain revenue from their works (even though the MAFIAA does divest them of a large slice of the aforesaid monies), and illegally obtaining said works deprives them of money.

I'm not saying the system isn't broken--it is. Its brokenness, however, should not predicate the suffering of content creators from revenue lost due to illegal copying/downloading.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[MoonBuggy]

I more or less agree with you, but I'll add that calling something "wrong" without further qualification severely undermines your argument.

A more convincing point to make would be that the ability to enter a movie for free works to degrade the perceived value of the paid tickets. Basically, consider all the customers who did pay turning around and questioning why they parted with $x while those guys in the front didn't, and subsequently concluding that they shouldn't have to pay either next time. Perception of value drops like a stone.

Sure, it's all based on a more or less imaginary value to start with, but that's how a lot of our economy works - those who want to argue about the validity of that have a much longer debate on their hands.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[Score Whore]

Free riders are a problem. Learn some economics before you start with the "hurts no one" crap.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[cheekyjohnson]

It does hurt someone. It hurts the creators, who would otherwise get some of the money.

"Potential profit," then? For one thing, in order for it to explicitly hurt them, something that they previously owned must be taken from them.

Suppose someone decides not to buy a product from a store. Would the store have had more money if they did? Yes. Using the logic of those who utilize the potential profit argument, this would mean that they have 'stolen' potential profit from the store, and have therefore 'harmed' a legitimate business.

Suppose that someone tells all of their friends who were originally going to buy a product not to buy it. They ultimately decide not to buy it. Would the store have had more money if the person hadn't told their friends not to buy the product (or if the friends had given them their money anyway)? Yes. Using the same logic above, it can be concluded, then, that the business was 'hurt'. This is an example similar to piracy because many argue that piracy affects sales, but so does this.

Whether the pirate has the product or not is irrelevant. Merely obtaining the product deprived no one of anything (because they copied the data and didn't take anything from anyone).

Its brokenness, however, should not predicate the suffering of content creators from revenue lost due to illegal copying/downloading.

Likewise, the blame also shouldn't be put on people who do things that harm no one (as explained above).

Re:Intended Reaction?

[sammyF70]

Isn't releasing the game DRM free already an effort in the right made by CD Projekt? They make sure that paying customers are not suffering from any piracy/overzealous protection schemes related problems. The people who wants to play the game should do the logical thing and make a step in the right way too, namely buy the game instead of using the "free unlimited evaluation versions" available through torrents (can't call it cracked without DRM, can you?)

Re:Intended Reaction?

[seibai]

Answer this: if it doesn't hurt anyone, then why does it matter? You know that no one is being deprived of anything that they previously owned.

You can say that they're 'stealing' potential profit, but not only is it impossible to steal objects that don't even exist, but you'd be blaming just about everyone in existence by doing so. You 'steal' potential profit merely by choosing not to give someone money or by interfering with their flow of profit. That effectively means that not buying a product from a store would mean that you have 'stole' potential profit from the store (and have therefore 'harmed' them because they would have been better off if you had given them your money).

Rather than hurting "anyone" is actually hurts "everyone". This is just another case of what's called the "tragedy of the commons". Each person who pirates a game benefits himself or herself, but if enough people do this it's no longer tenable to make games and no one has a game to play, for free or otherwise.

You can talk about people making things "for art's sake", and some people will, but a lot of them won't who would. I used to make games, and I still do in my spare time, but I work for Microsoft as my day job, so my productivity in making games isn't nearly as high as it would be if I could do it full time. Other people, people who might be fantastic artists but have a family to feed are going to be in similar spots because people pirate games. Piracy has a direct impact in reducing the profitability of the art, meaning there are fewer people who can practice it.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[Sancho]

You 'steal' potential profit by not giving someone money or by interfering with their flow of profit. That means that if you decide not to buy a product from a store, for example, you'd be 'stealing' potential profit (you've 'harmed' the store because the store would have had more money if you would have given it to them). That means that you're 'stealing' potential profit whenever you decide to tell people who are about to buy a product not to buy it (and they decide not to) as the artists would have had more money if you hadn't done that.

The government doesn't guarantee artists money. They guarantee them a chance by allowing the artist control over distribution of their work.

Perhaps the harm is to society as a whole, for if artists weren't given this control, a fairly large portion of our culture likely wouldn't exist.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[seibai]

Friend, if you're going to call the system broken, it seems like you should propose an alternative.

I've not myself encountered another way for artists to be sufficiently supported to continue in their art. I've certainly seen single case examples (Cory Doctorow and his one book, Stephen King and his one book), but these things don't work at scale and it's notable that neither of them did that twice.

What would you suggest?

Re:Intended Reaction?

[Freyar]

"Potential profit," then? For one thing, in order for it to explicitly hurt them, something that they previously owned must be taken from them.

Is time and research not valuable commodities? That is effectively what a lot of development is, time and research. They owned their time with the intent to sell off the fruits of their labor (say for example working in a field) for the price that would be set. Instead, people that pirate the game steal the time and effort put into the development as well as the publisher's return on investment and distribution costs.

You used the generalization that making a physical good is the same as making a piece of IP. Not the case. Physical goods require materials to be handed over to someone at the time of sale, while for IP it's handing over the representation of all that time and effort put into the creation of that work.

A lot of people that say "it doesn't hurt anyone" seem to firmly believe that the "P" word is completely evil. Profit is not evil, profit is what encourages further investments into future projects. Profit is what makes the next game of the series. Profit is what keeps people interested in development, just like profit keeps people interested in making cars, computers and aircraft.

Sure not every stolen copy (yes, I said stolen) is a lost sale, but the representation of the work is now effectively inside the pirate's head and cannot be removed. Simply put, games are a part of media. Publishers don't care if you steal the DVD, they care if you experience the game, movie, e-book, etc. without paying the fee asked to experience the medium.

Why should you get to experience a movie if you don't pay for it? Because you don't take away physical materials from someone by effectively copying that piece of intellectual property? The cost of development is front-loaded on the hopes that there are sales expected to be made.

Various piracy justifications keep falling flat on their face. Do every gamer a favor, buy your games or go do something else, something a little less expensive.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[lexidation]

cheekyjohnson, are you crazy? Christ man, you're not just "copying data". That's just an inane rationalization. The data you're copying IS the game. It's simple economics. If enough people get it for free, the game maker makes no money. That's all people are trying to point out to you here.

Yes, the system is broken. On slashdot, you're not going to find many people arguing against you on that front. But until the system is fixed, the fact is that the game maker will be out of business if everyone copies his "data". Even an idealist occasionally needs to get a grip on reality.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[sonicmerlin]

The few studies that have been done on pirating have found little to no negative effect on game sales. There's a reason the most popular games also happen to be the most pirated ones. A lot of people don't have thousands of dollars to divert solely to games, and by keeping up on the games they *want* to play they remain engaged in the industry and encouraged to buy games later on, when they *do* have capital to spend. Otherwise they'll simply resort to cheaper alternatives, and the games industry will get nothing.

I think the perfect example of this phenomenon is the PS3 vs. Xbox 360, Wii, and NDS. The latter two have been pirated for years while the PS3 was foolproof, but the sales of the 360 have trumped the PS3, while the DS has swamped the other two combined. The DS is on its way to break the record for hardware and software units sold *ever* for a standalone gaming unit (maybe it has already?). The Wii has demolished its competition. Arguing that pirates have harmed Nintendo's sales is just greedy, myopic, and ridiculously short-sighted.

tl;dr: Piracy doesn't hurt anyone. Nintendo's whalloping its competition. Not everyone's super rich.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[SilentSandman]

I try to avoid this subject, and unfortunately, I'm not always successful in that goal.

I'd like to offer you my perspective as an actual, real, game developer. Not some imagined or particularly convenient for your opinion one, a real one.

I disagree.

Some of what you say is correct, but just because those things are correct, does not mean you can make some wild leap into entirely unrelated contexts and base your reasoning on the previous thing.

Piracy is not theft.
WHEN someone downloads a copy of the games I create, it costs me absolutely nothing. -NOT ONE CENT-. I don't care if they enjoy the game, or thing it's the worst thing to have been created since the wheel. Those people are completely, and utterly irrelevant. The ONLY people who matter, are my customers. I create a product that they enjoy, and they pay me for that service.

I will not spend money paying tha 'mafiaa' thugs to bankrupt some sap because he didn't have the cash to pay me. I won't waste my time, money and effort trying to 'punish' or 'disrupt' the imagined boogey-man. I put every cent I have, and every moment of my development time -exactly where it's needed-, improving the product, and making the next product FOR MY CUSTOMERS.

If people don't want to pay me, that's their business. They haven't 'stolen' from me. "Potential profit" IS NOT PROFIT.

Because I spend my time and effort on making products that people want, they buy them. Occasionally I even get the "big bad evil pirates" buy my products. Not because I punished them (and my customers with them) but because they liked what I had to sell, and knew that paying me for it means I can make more.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[hairyfeet]

Actually I'd say it WAS the best system anyone could come up with, now it is shit. Case in point: Abandonware. There should be NO REASON why I can't take games that are no longer being sold, no longer run on modern systems, and package them into a "DOSBox...in a box" style app that lets you run them from a CD. But thanks to the legal minefield we have now you would be lucky if the first PDP apps are now public domain, and by the time anything of the past 30 years enters PD it will be soooo damned old nobody will be able to even find a copy or the machine that can run it.

And THAT to me gets to the heart of the problem. Copyrights are a contract between We, The People, and the copyright holders. In return for a LIMITED monopoly We, The People are supposed to get a richer PD. Instead we have them stealing things OUT of PD, and by the time anything ends up in PD it has been out of circulation so long good luck finding a copy or the machine to run it. Look at how many films have been lost because some short sighted studio couldn't think of a way to "Monitize" it, or how many games from the 80s are most likely gone for good.

To me THAT is what the real problem is. For every "I have a dream" you have a thousand other broadcasts that people might enjoy that will simply be lost forever, for every DOOM the same. I would argue that if we want a functional system than 10 years for copyrights, with one year extensions after that with a raising price upon each extension. If you don't pay you get 90 days notice then it is PD for good. That way if you are still able to make money on it fine, pay for the extensions. But at the same time it would keep the Disneys of the world from hitting the snooze alarm on copyright time limits by treasonous bribery while raising revenue and keeping so much of our history locked behind paywalls. This to me would be a fair and equitable trade and much better than out current system.

Slashdot wants an alternative? Hairyfeet just gave ya one.

Re:Intended Reaction?

[Anarchduke]

Well how about you don't expect to be able to get stuff when you don't have the money. I would love to have a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops right now. But I can't afford it. So, should I whine about how I should be allowed to pirate the game just because I want it?

Hell no. What I am going to do is save up my money until I have enough extra to buy a copy for myself. The problem with people nowdays is that they are whiny little bitches who cry, "I want, I want, I want."

I get tired of their shit.

GO EARN IT

Sincerely,
Get the hell off my lawn...

Re:Intended Reaction?

[bberens]

First of all, you're lying. You will never go back and buy the games you pirated and even if you did you'll pay the bargain discount price because it will be several years old. You won't pay the full retail price. And the other argument about the value of the game based on how long it engages you is complete garbage too. That's why there are game rentals at your local store or any of several netflix style game rental sites. If you pay to go to the movies you can't get your money back because you didn't like the movie. You generally don't get your money back for meals unless it was really atrocious. This idea of having your cake and eating it too. Most games are in the $50 range. If you can't be bothered to cut two lawns on a Saturday to get a newly released video game then you've got problems. And if you don't like the game? It only cost you the time you played + 2 hours and a bit of gas.

Leaking

[Formalin]

'Of course we're not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,'

That makes it sound like they are going to seed the torrents, making it available. I can't see that being airtight - If the copyright owner is making the torrent available, a leacher should be able to assume that they were granted permission to download it, no?

Seems pretty bent to me either way.

Re:Leaking

[ShakaUVM]

>>I think youd have a tough time convincing the courts that you thought being offered a single chunk from a "torrent sneaking firm" constituted permission to download the game;

How about pointing to TFA? The company itself put a version of their software up on a torrent site for people to download from freely. How can they then say said downloads were illegal?

As copyright holders, they have the right to put their software up for free download, but they can't complain when people take them up on it.

Re:that's not how copyright law works

[LordLimecat]

Going after people who bootleg the thing isnt going after customers; its going after freeloaders, and generally thats substantially less bad for business.

Re:Witcher 2 threats could net you publicity

[dougmc]

I haven't heard of the Witcher 2 (until now), but The Witcher (1) was a pretty good RPG game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher_(video_game)

If the sequel is as good as the first, it's well worth paying for. Having no DRM is a definite plus. Going after those who infringe on their copyrights ... well, it sounds like they've decided that any publicity is good publicity. And they may be right.

And really, I don't have any problems with them going after the pirates, especially if they make this "fine" a reasonable figure -- more than the cost of the game, but less than thousands of dollars.

Re:that's not how copyright law works

[damnbunni]

If you're torrenting a game that's sold as a download without DRM, I'm pretty sure you're not a customer.

Just sayin'.

Language, language...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I must object to the use of the term "fine". A "fine" is a monetary penalty imposed under color of law as punishment, or part of a punishment, for a violation of the code of laws, demonstrated in a court of law according to due process.

Calling a private party's essentially extortionate demand to pay up or face (ruinously expensive even if innocent) legal action a "fine" is acccording it far too much legitimacy.

Sure, as a matter of probability, not all the threat letters will miss their mark, and some percentage will in fact be sent to people who downloaded and/or uploaded the game in violation of applicable law in their jurisdiction; but even those cases will hew to no established standards of evidence or due process. Given the known sloppiness(and clear perverse incentives involved) of these sorts of things a fair few won't even be accidentally correct, they'll simply be pure extortion without even coincidental overlap with justice.

No matter how much you hate copyright infringement, conflating vigilante 'justice' with process of law is dangerously sloppy. I don't know whether the CD Projekt spokesweasel is simply internally sloppy, or engaged in deliberate spin; but it is unacceptable.

Re:that's not how copyright law works

[DAldredge]

You aren't a customer if you steal the product.

Maybe I'm missing the point but...

[Rivalz]

I know I'm off based but shouldn't the only person that receives the fine be the one who posted the copyrighted content on the torrent site?
The internet is about sharing content if you put your own copyrighted content out on the web I would assume you are granting the public access to it unless stated in a disclaimer attached to the link to the file.
Since most torrent sites have a disclaimer saying DO NOT UPLOAD THIS UNLESS YOU OWN THE RIGHTS TO IT. Doesn't it mean that either the person who uploaded the file is acting on behalf of the owner with their knowledge and permission or they are violating the copyright of the item? And since I cannot issue a court order to get the persons name of the ip address of the person who originally seeded the torrent how am I to determine if the file is legally there or not? And even if I did have the original seeders name how am I suppose to know he doesnt own the copyright of the file?

I've got a idea. I will make a music cd rip it and let my (friend) have it for free... but he might not be the friend i thought he was and uploaded it to the torrent servers.
Now since he is somewhat still my friend but i'm pissed at him I will take him off my friends list on facebook.
But any dumb fuck that dared download my audio cd I will find you and sue you into the ground.
Btw did I mention every month I will have my name legally changed to whatever the current best selling artist is?

DRM-free means no excuse

[Totenglocke]

I understand pirating games with DRM (why pay a company to screw you over), but since the game is DRM-free, there's no excuse to pirate it. I just bought a few games from GOG.com the other day and seeing as how their most expensive game is $9.99, that eliminates the "but it's expensive.." argument too.

Re:Farewell, gog.com

[Liam Pomfret]

You're angry at them for...what exactly? Demanding reasonable out-of-court settlements from those who downloaded illegally (as opposed to the unreasonable out-of-court settlements commonly placed on people who've torrented music by the RIAA), and releasing their game without DRM. Seems fair enough to me. The only real concern is how many "false positives" they might get from people who never downloaded a thing, or whose internet connections were used illegally and/or without their knowledge.

Re:Farewell, gog.com

[Yosho]

I hope they get wads of ill-gotten fines from allegedly guilty thieves. They'll need it to compensate for the loss of legitimate sales they now won't be getting at gog.com from disgusted people like me. I only learned about the site recently and was moderately impressed. Now I'm disgusted.

Why are you disgusted? I fail to see what's so bad about releasing a game without DRM and then going after criminals who pirate it. That seems to me like the way companies should be doing it, rather than treating customers like potential criminals and loading their games with DRM.

And "allegedly" guilty thieves? Explain to me, how do you download from a torrent of copyrighted material without committing copyright infringement?

Send me your letters.

[Charliemopps]

I remember getting a letter from Direct TV years ago because I had supposedly pirated their satellite signal. Their sole evidence was that I had purchased a USB smartcard writer. Because, as everyone knows, Direct TV invented smart cards and were the only company on earth to ever use them for anything. They promised to forget about the whole thing if I coughed up the small sum of $10k. My lawyer found it very funny and sent them a letter in return asking for contact information for our counter suit. Strangely they never replied.

Re:Farewell, gog.com

[Yosho]

I take it you missed the story a couple of days ago about some British lawyers apparently sending out threatening letters to 'downloaders' when they knew that some significant fraction were completely innocent?

Let me make sure I have your argument right. Some British guys screwed up going after some criminals, therefore the concept of some Polish guys going after criminals who committed the same type of crime is disgusting. Is that right? So what's your suggestion, that nobody bother to enforce the law at all?

Ambiguous reaction

[gringer]

property is thief.

I'm not quite sure where you're going on this one. Did you mean one of the following?

• Anyone who possesses property is a thief
• Some/All properties are themselves thieves
• Posession of property is theft
• Pirates are thieves
• The property of interest is a game called 'thief'
• You currently have a thief in your posession
• It's a somewhat cloudy, but otherwise fine day in Wellington, New Zealand

Ya I have trouble with sympathy in that case

[Sycraft-fu]

When games are DRM'd I can understand. DRM sucks and people want to play but don't want it. Ok, I can understand that position, if not support it. Also I can understand when you can't get a game via download. I'm lazy, I love buying stuff online. I can understand the feeling of saying "screw it" and just downloading it because it is easy.

However when it is downloadable AND DRM free? Well then you are just being cheap. They are giving you what you want and you are refusing to pay for it... That is just cheap.

Re:Meh.

[shutdown -p now]

Right now I am not over the activation energy of playing Witcher 2 even for free, let alone paying for it. If I were over that, via free demo or torrent, I'd be one step closer to thinking "Hmmm... maybe I WILL pay for it."

It's not released yet. But the first game had a free downloadable demo, and the second one probably will, too; so "but I need to try it" is not a valid excuse here.

But hearing that they think their not-that-amazing game is so precious that they want to take money-wasting punitive actions

Regarding "not-so-amazing" - I'm sorry to hear that you didn't like the first one. I didn't, either; but they have 81% at Metacritic, and, more importantly, 9.3 user score - which is pretty high.

For the rest of it, I don't understand why you have a problem with property owner using legal means to defend said property. Even if you disagree with their assessment of its value.