CD Projekt, makers of The Witcher 2 and owners of Good Old Games, has not denied that it has hired a law firm to demand payments from individuals who it believes downloaded The Witcher 2 illegally. We reported on this story earlier this week. Speaking to Eurogamer, the company said that, while it supports DRM-free products for its customers who pay for them, it does not support piracy. The response comes after it was revealed that the company had hired a questionable law firm to send demand letters to file-sharerers asking for $1230.
The company told Eurogamer: "As you know, we aren't huge fans of any sort of DRM here at CD Projekt RED. DRM itself is a pain for legal gamers - the same group of honest people who decided that our game was worth its price, and went and bought it. We don't want to make their lives more difficult by introducing annoying copy protection systems."
"Moreover, we always try to offer high value with our product - for example, enhancing the game with additional collectors' items such as soundtracks, making-of DVDs, books, walkthroughs, etc. We could introduce advanced copy protection systems which, unfortunately, punish legal customers as well. Instead, we decided to give gamers some additional content with each game release, to make their experience complete."
"However," CD Projekt added, "that shouldn't be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn't only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry.
"We've seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 percent sure have downloaded our game illegally."
Source: Eurogamer
Comments
Re: CD Projekt Confirms its use of Law Firm to Sue ...
"We've seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 percent sure have downloaded our game illegally."
Is it just me or does anyone else read this as 'we send out letters without proof, but if people don't pay up then we don't sue unless we are 100% sure'
Re: CD Projekt Confirms its use of Law Firm to Sue ...
"We've seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 percent sure have downloaded our game illegally."
I am not really concerned about them suing, I am more concerned with these letters. Since other firms using similar tactics have been less than ethical about whom they target. What's the threshold for an intimidation letter to demand money? As such letter surely can not be considered legal action because they happen to be on this law firm's stationary. All it takes is one shake down letter to an innocent person to completely destroy the considerable good will CDProjekt has built up with GOG and their DRM free offerings. Not to mention the risk of sanctions as is the case for people who ran the Davenport Lyons. I believe at least one of the attorneys has actually been forbidden from practicing law in addition to fines.
Re: CD Projekt Confirms its use of Law Firm to Sue ...
Such demand letters should be considered an attempt to extort.