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Patch For The Witcher 2 Removes DRM Shortly After Release
A reader writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica:
"A little over a week after its release, The Witcher 2 is getting its first patch, and with it all versions of the game will now be DRM free. 'Our approach to countering piracy is to incorporate superior value in the legal version,' explained development director Adam Badowski. 'This means it has to be superior in every respect: less troublesome to use and install, with full support, and with access to additional content and services. So, we felt keeping the DRM would mainly hurt our legitimate users. This is completely in line with what we said before the release of The Witcher 2. We felt DRM was necessary to prevent the game being pirated and leaked before release.'"
I bought it from gog so there wasn't any DRM in the first place for me. Still, great attitude for them to take. Hope more companies follow suit.
Finally, a company that understands the DRM is irrelevant past the release date.
I always thought games being leaked and pirated before release was about rogue developers, sharing raw builds with shady pirate folk for kicks. How would DRM help there? Does this mean Badowski tried to substitute some good old team discipline for technical measures?
I bought the game from GoG because they offered a DRM free download. I would not have purchased the DVD edition.
We see a lot of ATARI victims on the GoG forums crying about their games running slower then ours. The DVD version comes with built in DRM so customers can finally see the difference.
DRM sucks!
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
This is a new take on DRM and piracy. On the plus its temporary, BUT if it fails to prevent being cracked before the release it could just annoy legit buyers for a week. I for one think its an interesting and positive strategy. They could gain with day 1 sales, and legit buyers get a DRM free product in 1 week. Personally I would put up with it, some may disagree. If you are super anti-drm simply wait 1 week before playing. Seems like a new, positive step in the right direction, and I'm at least happy to see a company try something new.
slashdot gets to the story..
...except that DRM leaves crap on your hard drive even after its removal. You have systems like StarForce that leave hidden drivers, registry keys, and even data written to normally user-inaccessible parts of your hard drive. I almost bought this game based on what they had said about no DRM to encourage this behavior. Good thing I didn't rush out and buy it on release day.
Wow, I'm really liking this move, and I think it makes sense. Still, quite admirable that they don't leave the DRM on there for longer.
:-D
The first few weeks is when a game is most at risk of being pirated. Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.
Anyhows, this is sortof obligatory: Penny Arcade's view on The Witcher
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
The GOG version never had DRM, one of the reasons why I bought it instantly, I normally wait til a game hits the bargain bins.
You also could have bought the DRM free GOG version :-)
The DRM was causing severe issues with the game. The only logical move they could make aside from telling their users tough luck was to remove the DRM.
It's certainly a nice story but it's not for the right reasons. They're just aiming for some good press by putting a positive spin on the fact that their DRM was defective to the point of breaking the game for its users.
About time - maybe they learned something from customer feedback about the first game which is a pile of drm-facepalms. The DVD version has protection that won't work on 64bit Windows7 machines properly. It also has server-authentication. And good luck with their customer support, I think they try their best but English is not in my experience the language you will get serviced the best.
Been DRM-free from day one on gog.com. So no big surprise there, also the idea that you need DRM to protect it before release is not meaningful. Encrypt the whole thing, release a universal one-key-to-decrypt-them-all on release day.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Kinda feel like buying it now, just to encourage the trend.
Or maybe, they just couldnt get the game to run properly with the DRM they never intended to remove (because well DRM sucks and has a habit of wrecking things), and they thought they could create some positive spin by removing it to fix a broken game.... who knows *shrug*
That could be it. Mind you, the game was available without DRM right from the start, and widely publicized as such, so I think the complete story is that retail publishers demanded that they include DRM, they didn't get it working properly, and after release they dropped it as soon as they could.
At the time of your posting, CD Project had already released a patch that upgrades the retail version of the original Witcher to the Enhanced Edition without checking registration.
But the only way that I know this is because I read a bit of Polish. As far as I know, there is no announcement in English and a bunch of frustrated people are complaining about being unable to play the original Witcher.
No good deed goes unpunished...
For such a small game studio (how they started) in Poland - they really managed to impress me with The Witcher 1 (enhanced edition). The quality of the content, storyline and also game play were worthy of a great book. But one you can swing a sword in, flirt with the ladies and form what felt like well emulated human relationships through your character's choices. This move shows that they're getting it right. If anything piracy may increase their reputation and "fanbois" like me -- and I rarely make a stand about a game. I also enjoyed Assassin's Creed 2 etc - but the DRM annoyed the **** out of me. A paying customer. After owning a few ubi titles - I still heavily dislike the firm. Although I am hooked on AC and will be buying the new one as well. I haven't had a chance to touch any time-intensive games due to finishing uni - but this one is on my list. And with one fell swoop CDPROJEKT won even more of my respect.
ah ok, here in Austria it was the same retail and on gog, but on gog I got a rebate for additional gog games for the difference of the Dollar-Euro price.
Just in case someone wants to reinstall the original Witcher: The Patch 1.4 on this page http://www.en.thewitcher.com/the-witcher/1/ will remove the DRM that comes on the retail CD. You will need to download the appropriate language patch in the same directory. And then you can apply patch 1.5 for extra content.
CD Project are trying. They fucked up big time with the registration servers, but I do not think it was trough malice. Never attribute to malice that which, yada, yada...
No good deed goes unpunished...
I read about this a couple of days ago. I wasn't sure if I was going to buy the game or not, with a wife, kids, and career I have to be careful where my gaming dollars go. As soon as I read this I went out and bought the game, if for no other reason than to encourage more acts like this and I couldn't be more pleased. It's a fun and beautiful game.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
If I'm not mistaken, Atari has been publishing CDProjekt Red's games; I'd like to hear their opinions on this whole ordeal. It's not that surprising to see a developer against DRM, it'd be interesting to hear the same from a major publisher.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
After having my pc ruined by rootkits installed along with the game, DRM-"removal", i.e. patching out cd-checks or whatever just doesn't cut it for me.
Fuck you publishers, I'm not touching any of your DRM laden crap ever again..
GoG was still massively overpriced. Play.com offered DVD version for about 10€ cheaper including delivery anywhere in EU (and of course you got all the boxed game goodies with it).
Actually, it didn't. I had this game installed for about an hour. Then removed it. So, it was (lack of) quality instead of DRM that prevented me from using it.
I'm happy, i got the pirated version instead of paying then throwing it away.
I'm not so sure that the first hour of a pirated, hardcore CRPG is a good indicator of whether or not the game is worth playing (especially since, due to being pirated, it might have issues in it not in the official release). A lot of very good games had slow starts, including many Zelda games (especially Twilight Princess), Final Fantasy XII (which got great critical acclaim, even a perfect Famitsu score, despite it's slow start), the Monster Hunter series (I've put 11 hours into Monster Hunter Tri and I haven't even learned how to capture monsters yet), and so on. I'd give the game WAY longer than an hour before you decide if it's good or not. Some of the most engaging games I've played had slow starts.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
You could have opened the journal and reread the tutorial
also you could have played from the first mission to get a nice step by step intro
you are missing an awesome game.
The problem is the manual contains some things that are wrong.
And there's no indication that you should play the intros in the order given. I picked the dragon one also, because it sounded cool. Very shortly after that I was nearly ready to snap the disk in half.