CD Projekt sues pirates

And then you learned about WPA and lived happily ever after. The end.

 

that sucks! I assume then that you now have a WPA2 secured network?

 

Yah the FBI originally had set me up with a secure network after they found me innocent, and now my passwords are ridiculously long. That was an experience I never wanna go through again. This happened 7 years ago.

 

The only way to remove piracy from the equation is stop selling the goods (that can be duplicated), and start selling services.

.exe and .iso files can be duplicated. So... Don't sell .exe files or .iso files!

Instead, sell access to your server/database that hosts those files (WoW style), or sell enhancements/character items in an in-game store (f2p style). You can't **** the willing, and you can't pirate a F2P game!

Best of all, minimal DRM needed. Create some sort of reward system for people who login to your server every day. Sure people can play offline (legit, or crack) but the longer they stay offline, the more disadvantage/devalued their game experience (slower XP, or no new power-ups, for instance) will be, which discourages people from playing the entire game in offline mode (avoiding service payment).

You don't need to be online very long, just for 1 minute every week to verify game client, update new content, and make sure the account has payed their time ( ex, $2.50 a month. Over the course of 2 years, you pay $30 bucks...etc. Encourage dev's to keep the game updated to retain clients, PLUS low entry fee to play and try it out, instead of $60 bucks day one with no refund if it sucks). This can even be done on a 56.k or 3g connection for the few verification files and/or updates for people with unreliable net but want a single player experience.

 

Those are actually good suggestions. I'm ok with requiring an occasional net connection, just not constant.

Just take away all the fruit and they'll have scurvy! arrrgh.

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Which one of these will most people think? Pirating is great for indie games and unknown projects that doesn`t cost too much to produce. It will lead to a whole lot of people picking the option #1 and paying for the game to say "thank you". And the rumour will spread like wild fire about how great the game is and more people will buy it. "Magicka" was one of these games.

Big games with several big gaming studios with tons of people on their payroll included marketing etc on the other hand have waaay too many people thinking option #2 and #3. Why? Because they are big companies and people tend to justify their own selfishness that the companies will survive anyway without their money. What they forget is that a whole lot of other people think the same way leading to a major sale decrease for the game studio. And my god how pissed of I would have been if I saw something I (or rather we) created getting downloaded millions of times when we spent so many hours of planning and executing on making it.

Yes the game studios make tons of money anyway but pirating leads to more closed and messed up anti pirating messures that inflicts us the good guys, plus some game studios will produce less good games, and piracy is plain stealing. I cannot say that I have never downloaded something, but I usually get a bad feeling in my stomach when I do.
Examples of recent games I downloaded (pirated) that I felt bad about and bought later:
Magicka, Orcs must die, Portal 1 and 2, Monkey island HD collection.
So yeah, not so innocence really

Pirating and torrents have become WAY too easy if you ask me. On the other hand I think the prices for the games and movies need to go down. I can understand that people do feel that they are too expensive, but I don`t think "Hey your products are too expensive so screw you. I will download your game in protest" help much

 

Anyone who has sympathy for the gaming publishers needs a reality check. A large portion of the cost of a game is to pad the publishers' greedy pockets. And the way these companies are run these days is sad and pathetic. They are in the business of making money. Unfortunately that's all they are into. They don't understand the product or the customer very well. It's all about bottom line, not product quality or customer satisfaction.

You could throw a huge amount of money at any development firm and they could come out with some kind of average piece of crap that would still sell because it looked pretty. Throw that same amount of money put towards BF3 or MW3 to a company that understands the customer and respects the product, you would have one hell of a game and support forever thereafter, would probably cost $30 as a starting point and sell twice as many copies.

I posted this in the Off-Topic section, and interesting read about a comedian who distributed his own video for $5 and made more money than if it sold for $20 through a publisher. It makes so much sense. $5 is a lot more palatable for most people. $20 is harder to swallow, while most of that $20 goes to the publisher.

Wake up, media moguls: Louis C.K. no-DRM video makes $200K - Yahoo! News

Same goes for video games. Valve has admitted that during their big sales where things are 50-80% off they make more money than the rest of the year combined. This shows that things are clearly over priced. Should everything be 50-80% cheaper all the time? No. But $60 as a starting point is absolutely horrendous. Not to mention all the money for DRM passed on the to customer, that probably constitutes 20-30% of the cost of the product. Eliminate DRM, expensive publishers or do it yourself, and prices could be 50% cheaper while the devs probably make same profit from same amount of sales, if not more.

Pirating is not right. It's unethical. But companies need to plan on expected sales and leave it at that. Not sales that could have been. That's like Monday morning quarterbacking, and saying Team A should have beat Team B because of an unfair penalty call. Create quality product, offer it at a reasonable price, and avoid the middle man, simple enough recipe for success that seems to be ignored.

 

HT, you're on a roll today. Spot on after spot on posts. Well at least in my view anyway.

Doubtful anything positive for the consumer will be done. The goal is to condition the upcoming generation to accept DRM, and to think DRM is for good of mankind. Also, to condition them to equate piracy with theft instead of unauthorized use and/or distribution.

But us old timers remember the good ol' days of fair use and better value for the money. Oh, and liner notes. How could I forget. I could name names...

 

WARNING: one of those TL;DR posts is coming...

I fully support CD Project, both for not using DRM and the suing part.

Does DRM really helps protect games? I mean, most of the time the game is being cracked within a -/+2 day interval. I know that there are some kick-@$$ DRMs which are uncrackable or are very unstable cracked. The devs should pay their attention to the flight sim market, specifically PMDG, their DRMs are hard to crack.
And suing is not always an answer in such cases (copyright infringement). Also how mush of those moneyz gonna go to developer and for much to dirty lawyers .

Now I'll be honest with you, I did some dl'ing back in the day, but nowadays it isn't necessary anymore, when there are a lot of great daily sales varying from 2 to 20 EUR it's not worth it anymore.

But still downloading illegally is sometimes necessary in my case. For example - no demo. How will I know if this will run good on my system? I know that developers post sys specs, but are they always true?
The last think I grabbed from the infamous Pirate Bay was a third-party add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (I'm not sure I should post it, The big brother is watching ), some add-on plane. One such plane costs about 50 EUR and usually there isn't any demo nor refund, plus such products may not run even on high-end systems well, so there is a risk of spending hard earned/saved moneyz for nothing and the one thing that's left is a hope that "some day I'm gonna get a computer which gonna run it well".

And even though cracked add-on wasn't fully operational (engines, flaps, most controls didn't work), it showed me what kind of FPS I could expect. Oh and yes, not to forget the happy ending part:

Spoiler

I bought it later .

Should I be sued? I think yes. But did I do anything wrong. Yeah I know dl'ing illegally, but just to get some insurance. Because devs, if asked for refund, just gonna shake their hands and say "not our problem".

Now here's one for you - censorship. Could I sue a country for censoring, thus "stilling" some elements of the game, which most of the time make the games less enjoyable. Even if they have laws forbidding some more "extreme" elements in the games/movies.
One of the examples - Saints Row 2 in Germany. Read this if you like:

Spoiler

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1698270

I have/had various games which are/were cut or limited in some way, like Titan Quest - can't change to a different language, only one option is available also no blood. Both Left 4 Dead were complete non-sense. Video:

Spoiler

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GTA VC and SA have both ratings of 18+ or something, but have no blood. What the hell? I'm the mood for suing someone .

The most concerning thing is, that most of the time such info isn't available upon pre-ordering a game.

 

Is there anyone besides Valve and indie developers who have decided to kick out publishers? I can see that signing with a producer helps a game studio get started, but companies like Activision and Crytek are well known enough now that they could simply publish a game themselves.

 

Crytek is a game company, but Activision is actually a publisher.

 

I thought something was up, I don't really pay much attention to things, but there are devs out there that can make a name for themselves now without having to hand over the maority of their profits to a company which does very little.

 

If you purchase digital books, you can be electronically sent samples before deciding. You are also able to sample music before purchase too.

 

True. Lots of times you can get a chapter of a book to make a choice. And music usually 30 seconds.

 

If and only if the author/publisher chooses to do things that way. That's what people aren't getting. It's the seller's choice, not the buyer's choice, what (if any) sort of "free sample" is offered to buyers. Don't like buying without sampling? The legal and ethical recourse you have is to NOT BUY AT ALL from sellers who don't offer a sufficient sample for your tastes. Kind of like how you have the right to not buy cars from dealers that don't offer test-drives. You don't, however, have the right to sneak onto their lot, steal keys, take it for a ten-mile joyride, and then decide whether to buy it the next day.

Also, I knew plenty of people who pirated games in college. None ever bought them after successfully pirating them, even if they loved the game. Listening to this forum, you'd think people who just use pirating as test-drives and/or social statements are the overwhelming majority of pirates. But I've never met people like this in real life among all the people I know who pirate games. I'm convinced that people who use pirating as test-driving instead of a five-finger discount are nothing more than a small-but-very-vocal minority of pirates.

 

This is what they are doing, and it is the thing PC gamers complain the most about. Games are being simplified for the masses, made for console first, because they know there's more money there. Plain and simple, those of us that want PC exclusive, or more detailed games, also tend technically proficient and therefor more likely to pirate. In the end, we're doing it to ourselves, which is a story retold throughout human history.

Personally, I'd like to see more of this kind of thing. You pay more getting legal advice and taking the time off from work to fight it, so paying the fine is the easiest way to go.

 

99% of the books at Amazon for the Kindle have samples you can read, and actually have 7 days to return them!

Amazon.com Help: Kindle Return Policies
Returning Kindle Books
Books you purchase from the Kindle Store are eligible for return and refund if we receive your request within seven days of the date of purchase.

If I'm not going to be able to test drive a car (tens of thousands of dollars btw, not $60), I'm not buying it period, and that's NOT THE SAME. You keep giving examples that can't be equated to digital media.

Again, as unethical as pirating is, publishers need to know the business and the product, and look for ways to improve sales and estimate what sales will be instead of chasing after something that they can't realistically capture. By this I am saying they sell 10 million copies, 2 million *estimated* to be pirated, just ignore those 2 million because it's fictional. It doesn't equate to total sales. Sure it's aggravating, but you sold 10 million copies. How can you improve those sales?

Also (repeating myself for the third or fifth time), I don't agree with pirating either, but understand it. And gets back to the point of pricing and customer protection.

 

To add to what HTWingNut said above, I purchase the vast majority of my books from Amazon.co.uk for the kindle and have never come across any books that haven't offered me a sample. I get the feeling that if the gaming industry did similar, they would lose sales.

This is just an assumption of mine based on the high number of buggy watered down console ports I have seen. Imagine if Steam offered refunds for their titles, I bet they would make a lot less.

 

There should be demo's and a return period for a game. Plain and simple it's not fair to have to buy something first to see how it is then only to find it's a buggy broken mess to not be able to return it is salt in the wound.

 

No, it is not. And I will ask anyone who says publishers get to make all the rules, do you think it is fair that I purchased a game for $25, literally cannot use it because of the DRM, and have no recourse? If so, I ask you to please send me $25 via PayPal immediately, because you'd be getting the same amount of benefit from it. If Rockstar thinks it's fair to steal my money (yes, that's the term I'd use for taking it and giving nothing in return), then I think it's fair to "steal" their game.

It's a basic consumer right (maybe not in corporate-owned America...) that you shouldn't have to avoid something because it might not work as advertised. If Rockstar tells me that I'll be able to play L.A. Noire, as they've implied in all their advertisements for it, I should be able to take them at their word and purchase the game based on that implication. If they don't live up to their end of the bargain, as they clearly have not, I should get my money back. But I can't, aside from taking them to court, which would cost more than the $25 I paid for the game in the first place. Therefore, I have no moral or ethical qualms about pirating their game. I believe there was even a recent Supreme Court ruling stating it's legal to bypass DRM if it's the only way to make your legally-purchased product work (something about software which required a usb dongle as part of its DRM, and the dongles no longer worked).

Also, if a car dealer refuses to offer you a test drive, you go to a different dealer selling the same exact model of car. Since no retailer that I'm aware of offers refunds on games, that option isn't available.

Back in the day, I also pirated GTA IV due to the lack of demo and many people claiming it would be unplayable on my Core 2 Duo machine at the time (despite the minimum requirements being a 2ghz C2D). On version 1.0, it was unplayable, but with one of the patches, it became smooth. I then purchased the game fotr $20 on Amazon, and then again for $10 on Steam when they were offering it with both expansions.

 

I pirated LA Noire as soon as I found out about how the drm screws you. Its a pity as I seen a friend play it on console and was genuinely eager to try it out on pc. I'm pretty sure Rockstar is a solid game design company, gta was a great series, but whoever ports the stuff to PC should be electrocuted.

 

I thought it was legal to download copies of videos/games/etc if you had purchased the material itself. Like Syberia's example with LA Noire, he legally bought the game itself, and thus is entitled to make 'back-up' copies of it, no?

I'm not sure if those laws have changed as a result of digital distribution, but at least when pirating meant copying a CD, that was how it worked. It sucks that you would have to pirate the game in order to play it, but I can't see how they could go after you if you actually DID buy the game legally.

 

The problem with a return policy is as someone said, there's no guarantee for the reseller that you didn't copy the key down and crack the .exe to reuse the software and unlike other forms of digital media(like music or movies), the presence of the CD key concept makes one person's use of a software detrimental to subsequent uses for others. So really, it's not a viable option to have a return policy if the package is open. What exactly would the retailer do? Call up MS for every MS Office box they get back opened to check if the key's been logged and to unlog it from their system? That'd be a pain. Unless there was a way to insure that a key's validity is "restored" once the software's been uninstalled from all computers it was on (idk if this is possible or viable) this issue will continue alongside the CD key validation model.

So really, demos, betas and trial versions are all that are viable given the current model of softwares in generals.

However I wonder....some Steam games require the Steam portal to play right? What if, maybe even not through Steam if they didn't want. What if Publishers had their own kind of digital distribution portal and access like Steam? Then they could have a refund policy and simply disable access to that game on your account. Couldn't that work?

Obviously though we would need to get internet connections up to standard before

 

It's just a key, random numbers and letters. Who cares. Company can just have that key voided and get a new key. For a company to generate a new key would be easy. It would be automated. It's nothing to worry about at all.

That's exactly what EA did with BF3. Plenty of people called EA after proving they had purchased a game where the key was invalid, not working etc. EA just voided that key probably, (since person provided proof they were the owner of that key), and just generated a new one for them.

 

Read most of this thread and some of you have some great ideas.

I like two suggestions:

1- The one where you get % of refund based on when you return the game up to a certain limit in days that HTWingnut suggested (24hrs -75% refund; 48hrs -50% refund, etc.).

2- New games being offered for free and if you want the content, you have to buy it through the in-game store, which then locks to your account.

Both suggestions combined, in my opinion, would reduce piracy significantly (PC Gaming).

I'm taking HTWingnuts/2.0's side in this debate

Edit: And the suggestion for a watered down DRM where it does a simple verification check once a week or once a month.

 

Yeah but it still takes effort, a significant effort nobody's willing to put in

No store wants to call EA every time a shmop brings in BF3 back "just in case" he cracked the game.

 

Why would it be effort. Person comes in. Scan the game in, automatically connects to server. Voids the key, and a new key is assigned for that bar code. Print the key, put it in the box.

 

Or just do like they do with lots of other products, ship them back to the manufacturer, or just destroy it. Codes are the least of our worries. Easy to void, and a lot cheaper than DRM.

 

I think Gamefly's upcoming PC update will be the best solution.

Pay Gamefly 7.95 a month. You can play any game, as many games as you want, for however long you want. Download them and install on your PC and play. As long as you subscribe that is.

Sounds awesome to me. Not a big deal since I don't usually play a game I've already played a lot a few years later. So this idea of renting games digitally is very tempting for me.

 

Eh, I had a lot of respect for CD projekt for releasing a decent game at a reasonable price without DRM. At best that's just a scare tactic to get them to buy their game. Although I would love to see them actually sue every single person that pirated the game... however impossible that might be.

 

I got this game as it did not have DRM and it was recommended. But it would not let me play without my internet on so I new it was doing something. I do not like this sort of thing as I paid for a DRM free game so adding a trojan to the game launcher is not good. Think I will give there future games a miss.

 

Where did you buy it? It may require internet at installation, otherwise it doesn't need internet.

 

It's all about the bottom line for every business. They exist to make money. They answer to their stakeholders and any regulatory bodies, that's all.

But it's what the market will bear. For every person like you who hates the $60 starting point, there is another who is happy to pay it. Actually, there are a lot more than one other considering that CoD: MW3 had the biggest launch of any media product in history.

Bottom line is that if you have so much hatred for what goes on in this industry, why do you continue to support it?

 

Got it on amazon, it did not need it until the patch after that the lancher just crashed if i was not connected to the internet.

 

Sooo, where does the customer fall in here? That's the problem I have. No customer focus whatsoever. It's whatever they can market and push out the door.

How can you say that's what the market will bear with the proliferation of piracy that's out there? That makes no sense. If that's what the market would bear then piracy would be less significant. Valve has shown time and time again that their mega sales (or whatever you want to call it) brings in more income than the rest of the year. Sure some big titles will rake in the dough at $60 a pop, but not 99% of the rest of the titles out there.

Who says I have hatred? Don't put words in my mouth. I just find it appalling that companies have zero respect for the customer. It will come back to bite them soon enough. Indie game titles at significantly cheaper pricing continues to grow. Many games very unique and even on par with bigger game titles.

And I don't support the $60 price point. I never buy at retail price any more. Usually get it at $30 or less, except for maybe one or two titles a year that I'm greatly anticipating. Even then I look for the cheapest price I can find. I buy maybe 4-6 games a year now compared with probably triple that from several years ago and earlier.

Other games like Sins of a Solar Empire came out DRM free and was very successful. It's simple, provide a product that the customer wants, and respond to the customer's needs and you will be profitable and keep respect with your customers. We seem to have forgotten that this day and age. That's why our economy is in the trash for the last ten years. The push to make the most money... that's it. It's that mindset, with things like outsourcing that has killed our economy.

I have lost all respect for the big publishing companies, and have withheld from buying any products from EA or Activision, with exception of Starcraft 2 (because Blizzard more than Activision), and BF3 (only because I'm a long time fan). I loved the C&C franchise, but last C&C game I bought was years ago. I also love the Splinter Cell games but refused to buy into the DRM crap that Ubisoft enforces, same thing with Assassins Creed and Hawx 2.

 

"CD Projekt CEO says developer will immediately "cease identifying and contacting pirates" as a pledge of faith to its fans."


Witcher 2 dev stops pursuing pirates - GameSpot.com

 

Bold move that I fully support! I might buy another copy of Witcher 2 just to support them and send them a letter stating just that. If even 10% of current owners did that I think it would go a long way in showing them and everyone else that there are a lot of honest people that actually buy games and are willing to support them.

In all honesty though, they probably just looked at the time and cost in pursuing pirates and said screw it... lol.

 

I have not done so yet, but I will buy The Witcher 2, even if I don't play it.

Sent from my SPH-M910 using Tapatalk

 

I'm honestly quite surprised that this is the first real effort to hit the pirate, its great and I really hope it works out for them, showing other companies a means to lessen the impact of piracy and showing a pro-active non DRM measure which doesn't hurt the paying customer.

 

Its the music and film industry I don't support.

They charge way too much for dvd's and cd's, If a game is worth the money I will buy it after trying it

 

i love this game and would encourage anyone interested in rpg's, or anyone interesting in supporting a great developer who prioritizes pc's over other platforms to buy it.

although most of you wont probably agree, i like it much more than skyrim. however it can be a bit confusing for someone who hasnt played the first one actually.

 

I love amnesia! I recently bought that after trying it out.

 

I think a campaign against pirates of this sort is stupid. Just about everyone I know who PC games pirates games. But the same games they pirate they will buy later during Steam, GMG, Origin etc sales. Great, so CD Projekt will sue gamers who demo'd their game via pirating, but are actual customers? That's a swell idea.

So gamers who resort to pirating due to the obscene prices of games for 5 hours of entertainment on average, and lack of demos, but later do purchase the game are going to be sued?

Sounds more like this is a wake up call for the gaming industry to revise how they sell games not blaming pirates. The blame is squarely on their shoulders. If you can't provide consumer protection, demos, and reasonable prices, it's their fault people will pirate their crappy game.

Even in South Korea right now, if a customer is dissatisfied with a phone app, or a if it is faulty, they have the right to FULL refund within 30 days. Right now, Google and Apple will be under scrutiny and under fire in South Korea for this. Taiwan has already went after Google for this as well. Companies in this digital age have no respect for consumer rights and protection and trample all over them. Forcing people to decide whether to keep an app in 15 minutes is ludicrous. I hope South Korea succeeds and this level of consumer protection spreads to Europe and US.

In retail stores, the consumer is right. But with digital and online purchases, consumers are the victims. Games are at the absolute very top of the list as far as I'm concerned.

 

Yeah - I call BS on anyone trying to rationalize breaking the law. It's stealing, period. Stop acting you are entitled to everything, you aren't. You're just a person living in this huge world that owes you nothing. If you are an adult and pirate I hope you get caught and charges are pressed. There's a reason why PC gaming always takes the back seat when it comes to gaming, do you blame them? You cry about DRM, they fix it - you cry about them sueing people who steal their game, you cry....lmfao.

At this rate I support the gaming companies sticking to consoles, if this is the type of attitude PC gamers have we deserve everything that happens to us.

 

You have to look at it the other way too, though. I'm not excusing hardened pirates, but you have to look at what drives them. Some people simply don't want to pay a penny, and they'll never stop, but equally some people do it because they either don't feel it's worth the money for the gameplay, or they flatout don't think the game is worth paying for at all.

Look at valve games. When was the last time you saw a valve release where people said it was bad or that various things should have been worked out before release? I've never heard anyone say "I pirated HL2 and portal today", there's an obvious reason for that.

 

I still waited until I could pick up Portal 2 for $13.95 for two pack before purchasing it. I did not pirate it, just waited patiently.

But same principles, I am not willing to pay $49, 59, 39, 29 or 19 for Portal 2.

 

I purchased L.A. Noire completely legally for $25. I still to this day cannot play the game because of the DRM. If anyone should be sued for that, it is Rockstar for providing me a defective product with no recourse to get my money back, not me for pirating the game so I can get my $25 worth.

 

Agreed !!!

I've been a victim of DRM many times. Most recently I purchased F1 2010 from Steam and can't play the game because "CTD with Securom errors". So I had to resort to a crack.

 

Get off your high horse. The whole industry is flawed. When games became a source of huge corporate profits, their quality control suffered greatly. Most of the companies are pushing deadlines and release unfinished/underdeveloped/awkward console port projects and charge $60 for it. Then gaming magazines and website like IGN and Gamespot give glowing reviews for terrible products. Where is the user supposed to get accurate information on it?
I'm finishing up my degree to become a software engineer. I purchase every game I actually play because I want to reward developers for their effort and time, as well as get appropriate support. I don't wish to support terrible products, but I'm willing to give them a chance. I think steam provides a good alternative with their balanced prices and discounts.
Some games are no longer sold and are not technically abandonware. So what are we supposed to do in that case? Hunt down CDs on ebay?

 

It's not stealing, ask 2.0 about it, he'll be glad to explain it all to you. It's not stealing because it's something that can be duplicated indefinitely at no cost. It's copyright infringement.