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GT Interactive Sued for piracy
Ripp writes "Seems that somebody's gotten themselves into a bit of trouble! ZDNet Reports that GT Interactive slapped their label on someone else's product and sold it as such in Europe. " Specifically, a private-computer games company has said, and supported that GT Interactive took their game, and sold it in Germany under their German affiliate's label.
I find it difficult to believe that GT would just go straight out there and steal a game they knew not to be theirs.
I find it more likely that they entered negotiations with StarPlay to distribute the title in parts of Europe, and there was some form of glitch in their communications. Perhaps it had looked like the deal was about to be sealed, so the German GT office started manufacturing the game. The contract negotiations then fail, and the German office is either not informed or the message is misunderstood or lost somewhere along the line.
I'm quite sure that the above scenario is quite possible. My own experience, publishers often get many details wrong, and the appropriate information never gets to the proper person. This gets even worse when a language barrierr is involved.
Another possibility is that the contract went most of the way through, they started production, and at the last minute StarPlay backed out. GT decided that since they had already invested considerable resources into running the product, that they would try and force StarPlay's hand by going ahead with the rollout anyway. They probably figured that StarPlay would then relent and accept the contract.
No, his machine does not "suck". I have a P233 MMX with 64 megs of ram and a V2. Unreal worked well enough in single player - but sucked eggs if you did multiplayer. Even on a LAN, having more than about 3 other people in the room with you was enough to have you doing the lag dance.
Now.. my K6-350 is another story.
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This may start a whole flame war, I don't care.
I have been ticked at GT ever since they pushed Unreal out the door, oh, about a YEAR before it should have been published. I was all psyched up for Unreal but was horribly dissapointed at how poorly the game ran on my 'recommended' machine hardware. After following the discussions for a while at epic megagames' board, it seems obvious that GT was to blame for understating the system requirements and pushing an incomplete product out the door.
Sure, most new games have bugs and developers push numerous patches out the door soon after a game ships. My problem with Unreal was that it was so horribly broken right out of the box, and that it took sooo long for some of these issues to be fixed. The game shipped with Glide support only, IIRC. D3D and OpenGL were promised to be supplied in a patch, but it too forever, and I gave up. The multiplayer was horrible and has not really ever been fixed to my satisfaction.
I'm not really sure what my point is, just felt like ranting a little. Oh yeah, I remember: GT doesn't seem to be sharpest/ethical software publisher I have ever bought from.
I get the feeling there are facts that aren't showing up in that article.
Call me naive and optimistic, but I have a hard time believing the people at GT Interactive are really stupid enough to think they could get away with marketing someone else's software without eventually getting busted big-time.
Someone, please tell me there's more to this story, or I may lose what little faith I have left in humanity.
I remember buying the packaging and disks for shareware versions of Duke Nukem and Commander Keen from those guys, back when modem access wasn't common. It was a bit of a rip-off, selling shareware levels at $20 a pop in some cases, but many people didn't know better and neglected to read the fine print about shareware.
Most likely..... I'd guess that Alley19's shareware version, but it is not COMMERCIALLY DISTRIBUTABLE shareware. Meaning that GT had no right to make money off of selling the shareware "media" that they are so accustomed to doing....
If that _is_ the case, I can't tell yet. Here is StarPlay's press release.
Or not.
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Really, I would think that it would be quite a bit worse to charge no money for stolen goods, for the reason that the customer is that much more likely to choose the illegal product over the honest one. (Infinitely more likely to use your "math").
The rub here comess down to web savvy. I have friends who consider themselves "computer literate" that have trouble downloading and installing new programs. For them to find a Warez site, gain access, and eventually get a working game on their system, is really unthinkable. Compare that to those who buy the game in a story and you can see how the market potential is so much higher for the game sold in stores. Combine this with the fact that the people who bought it were (redundantly) willing to buy it at a store price, and you get 100x worse.
Tons of people able to buy it in stores vs. an 3133t few who can find it for free. Plus, it was a bowling game, definitely NOT aimed at the computer savvy.
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They took a product, not theirs, and charged money for it. This is actual theft of income, not the theft of "potential" income that the Warez practive involves.
Actual income vs. Potential income(or free advertising if you prefer) = 100x worse, like I said.
Anyway, this allays any feeling of guilt or remorse I have about "getting" any GTInteractive (or any of their partners) products. If they want to play be those rules while trying to be a "respectable" company, I can play by them as a "concerned" consumer.
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