CD Projekt RED - Won't Sent Letters to Game Pirates Anymore Interview @ PC Gamer

I read an interview with a game developer, I think it was about Titan Quest, where they also introduced this kind of anti-pirate game breaking points. Unfortunately, according to him, it backfired as many people started complaining on the internet about severe bugs giving the game bad publicity.

Which implies that people tend to rather believe pirates than legit owners ?
 
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Which implies that people tend to rather believe pirates than legit owners ?

No, but most sites where people review games, either standardized like Amazon or GOG, or a forum like this, don't require people to prove they legitimately bought a game.

I could pirate a game, then go and make reviews at dozens of places and no one would have a clue that I pirated it.
 
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No, but most sites where people review games, either standardized like Amazon or GOG, or a forum like this, don't require people to prove they legitimately bought a game.

I could pirate a game, then go and make reviews at dozens of places and no one would have a clue that I pirated it.

Well as far as I know Batman was pretty well received. Maybe their glitches were a bit more subtle than Titan Quest's.
The point is: with more creativity you can go round the old DRM model and try to prevent piracy in an uncommon way.
I hear there are games that will even crash and display some joke about the game being pirated.
 
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Well as far as I know Batman was pretty well received. Maybe their glitches were a bit more subtle than Titan Quest's.
The point is: with more creativity you can go round the old DRM model and try to prevent piracy in an uncommon way.
I hear there are games that will even crash and display some joke about the game being pirated.

Serious Sam 3 had interesting anti-piracy model.On pirated game giant unkillable scorpion appears,follows you around and attacks you.I don't know how efficient system was but when I first heard it I found it hilarious.
 
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After this interview I'm really starting to dislike CDProjekt RED since they outright lied about the letter. Like Thoth posted they were threatening people with a "pay up or be sued" scheme and not the nice letter they claim in the interview.

PS. An IP address is not evidence and many people that gt these letters are innocent but end up paying out of fear.

PPS. Me and probably many other people that hate DRM will download cracks for their games (which is now entirely legal) which could cause the same effect as a pirated copy so even legit owners can end up with those bugs introduced to screw with pirates. Since it is now legal to download cracks they shouldn't do those piracy induced bugs anymore since they can be sued for it.
 
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What bullshit. This isn't what CD Projekt was doing at all. They hired a lawfirm and sent out legal notices that people had to pay thousands of dollars or else. These blackmail letters were sent using IP addresses, a method shown over and over and over and over again to not work for identifying pirates. Many innocent people have been caught in these slash and burn tactics and THAT is why people took issue with this. They were originally very clear with what they were doing. pretending otherwise months after the fact doesn't change what they did.
 
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After this interview I'm really starting to dislike CDProjekt RED since they outright lied about the letter. Like Thoth posted they were threatening people with a "pay up or be sued" scheme and not the nice letter they claim in the interview.

PS. An IP address is not evidence and many people that gt these letters are innocent but end up paying out of fear.

PPS. Me and probably many other people that hate DRM will download cracks for their games (which is now entirely legal) which could cause the same effect as a pirated copy so even legit owners can end up with those bugs introduced to screw with pirates. Since it is now legal to download cracks they shouldn't do those piracy induced bugs anymore since they can be sued for it.

How can they be sued for it? Downloading a crack may be legal, but that doesn't mean that they can't put in anti-piracy measures that get activated with that crack.
 
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"The letters were sent out by a Berlin-based German law firm called Reichelt Klute Aßmann on behalf of CD Projekt Red. They demanded the payment of 750 euros (nearly $1,000) and the signing of a cease-and-desist declaration, otherwise threatening a lawsuit in the amount of 30,000 euros (almost $40,000). Furthermore, the cease-and-desist declaration included a contractual penalty of 6,000 euros. "

http://www.rechtsanwaltskanzlei-urh...g_CD_Projekt_RED_Sp._Z.o.o._RKA_The_Witcher_2
 
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ha, its even worse than i thought. haha. I would feel so stupid if I ever supported them, lucky I was not only unknowing but also poor at the time.

such overrated studio, bleah, I'll fight everyone I know who will try to buy their games.
 
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How can they be sued for it? Downloading a crack may be legal, but that doesn't mean that they can't put in anti-piracy measures that get activated with that crack.

Exactly what I was going to say. From a programming standpoint you can insert in a game an uncountable amount of triggers that discover if the copy is pirated or not and therefore activate the bugs. Detecting the crack is only one method and in my opinion a very inefficient one because it can get legit copies as well.

@Nameless One
That`s pretty cool =D That`s the kind of creativity I was talking about. Maybe an unbeatable pirate that gunned you down with his revolver every time you approached a shore would be cool too =D
I think if done right, in a good game, this could even induce people that were ignorant about the game to actually download a pirate copy, get frustrated by the bug and then buy the original version.

@borcanu
Peace man... I like CDProjekt very much for their games. I did not know about these letters or their content but now I see it was quite wrong but still I`ll support them for their games which I find very high quality. But please don`t fight me for that :-/
 
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It is a bollocks article, for sure. Still, CDP is a business, and businesses hardly ever admit that they make mistakes if they can avoid it, especially publicly traded ones. See also Ubisoft with their "we're changing drm strategies because, um, well... Ooh look a parrot!"

For those defending the issuing of the letters please note that the claimed 100% accuracy was based on simple sophistry and not any technical wizardry. Every person who settled admitted they pirated whether they actually did so or not, that is where the 100% accuracy claim comes from. So that 100% includes people who settled because they were simply frightened by a nasty letter threatening court action and didn't have the technical expertise to recognise a fishing expedition.

Whole thing is not much better (and in some ways a whole lot worse) than if the honourble Mr Mbuku, chairman of CPD and former god-emperor of the Central African Empire desperately needed some funds freed up for his current games development project and Only You Could Help!
 
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While I agree that they deserve harsh criticism for their blatant lie about the contents of the cease & desist letter, I am finding it difficult to criticize them for teaming up with a law firm to protect their IP by sending out these kinds of letters in the first place.

I know that the piracy community and their supporters want us to believe that every pirate is an innocent minor or a poor grandma with insecure WLAN but as far as I am concerned that is just another excuse from the never ending supply pool of piracy apologists.
A lot of innocent people get interrogated by the police all of the time and there have been many cases where innocent people -under pressure- confessed to crimes they hadn't even committed. So what do we do about that? Get rid of the police? Hardly.
Anyone has a right to defend themselves against these letters and a letter imposes much less pressure than a police "interview".
I do not see any reason why this practice should be condemned just because a few innocents got sacked. The way I see it is if you get this letter you're more like a witness at first. They just want to hear what you have to say in your defense. If you are 100% convinced about your own innocence then by all means defend yourself and if they insist on an in-depth investigation then that should usually bring up final evidence on whether you are truly innocent or not.
 
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While I agree that they deserve harsh criticism for their blatant lie about the contents of the cease & desist letter, I am finding it difficult to criticize them for teaming up with a law firm to protect their IP by sending out these kinds of letters in the first place.

I know that the piracy community and their supporters want us to believe that every pirate is an innocent minor or a poor grandma with insecure WLAN but as far as I am concerned that is just another excuse from the never ending supply pool of piracy apologists.
A lot of innocent people get interrogated by the police all of the time and there have been many cases where innocent people -under pressure- confessed to crimes they hadn't even committed. So what do we do about that? Get rid of the police? Hardly.
Anyone has a right to defend themselves against these letters and a letter imposes much less pressure than a police "interview".
I do not see any reason why this practice should be condemned just because a few innocents got sacked. The way I see it is if you get this letter you're more like a witness at first. They just want to hear what you have to say in your defense. If you are 100% convinced about your own innocence then by all means defend yourself and if they insist on an in-depth investigation then that should usually bring up final evidence on whether you are truly innocent or not.

As they say, ''Everybody is innocent until the opposite is proven'' and ''In dubio pro reo''
 
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As they say, ''Everybody is innocent until the opposite is proven'' and ''In dubio pro reo''

Exactly. The IP address is proof that copyrighted material has been downloaded from that address. So a further investigation is warranted and justified and whoever's (household/individual/corp/whatever entity) IP address it was has every right to prove they are innocent.
Naturally the "in dubio pro reo" and innocent until proven otherwise concepts hold true and need to be obeyed until the investigation has been concluded. There is no contradiction here.

Or are you trying to imply there should not be any investigation in the first place at all? Why? Let's say someone finds a dead body in the street with no clue who might have done this. Well, should the police not start an investigation at all because they might run into and have to interview innocent people during the investigation? Right.
Anyone trying to make a case for no investigation is asking for an "innocent a priori" assumption and not "innocent until proven guilty". Big difference.
 
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An IP address is not in fact proof that any download has occured. The eponymous academic study of such methods found that a network printer- a device which is fundamentally incapable of 'pirating'- got flagged as pirating when using an IP based system. That is because torrents regularly spoof IP addresses, giving false positives. You need more than just an IP to have solid proof.

Also in many places innocent until proven guilty does not apply in small scale piracy cases as they're usually civil rather than criminal proceedings and civil proceedings typically have a far lower burden of proof, often simple "balance of probability".
 
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An IP address is not in fact proof that any download has occured. The eponymous academic study of such methods found that a network printer- a device which is fundamentally incapable of 'pirating'- got flagged as pirating when using an IP based system. That is because torrents regularly spoof IP addresses, giving false positives. You need more than just an IP to have solid proof.

Sure. No problem. If the investigation yields that result (IP spoofing), fine. There is, however, still no reason why an investigation should not even begin.
Criminals use stolen/fake IDs all of the time and such cases are investigated all of the time, too, including the interrogation of the (usually innocent) real ID owners. Why should Internet crime be treated differently than real world crime?
People need to get used to the thought one day that the Internet is not a playground for everyone's anarchic fantasies where your home is your untouchable ivory tower and where you can just reign as you will :biggrin: . More regulation is inevitable exactly because people think that way, however.
 
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Sure. No problem. If the investigation yields that result (IP spoofing), fine. There is, however, still no reason why an investigation should not even begin.
Criminals use stolen/fake IDs all of the time and such cases are investigated all of the time, too, including the interrogation of the (usually innocent) real ID owners. Why should Internet crime be treated differently than real world crime?
People need to get used to the thought one day that the Internet is not a playground for everyone's anarchic fantasies where your home is your untouchable ivory tower and where you can just reign as you will :biggrin: . More regulation is inevitable exactly because people think that way, however.

I see you welcome the formation of a police state then. Innocent till proven guilty is flawed and doesn't work in the court of law anyway. To many people think the person is guilty merely due to the media and peer pressure.

We even have a Hearsay Law were you can be jailed because one person says he heard you talk about doing something. Basically they don't need solid proof to arrest you anymore.

To get back on topic I cant blame CD Projekt RED. The problem was the law firm they hired went about it the wrong way.
 
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Exactly what I was going to say. From a programming standpoint you can insert in a game an uncountable amount of triggers that discover if the copy is pirated or not and therefore activate the bugs. Detecting the crack is only one method and in my opinion a very inefficient one because it can get legit copies as well.

@Nameless One
That`s pretty cool =D That`s the kind of creativity I was talking about. Maybe an unbeatable pirate that gunned you down with his revolver every time you approached a shore would be cool too =D
I think if done right, in a good game, this could even induce people that were ignorant about the game to actually download a pirate copy, get frustrated by the bug and then buy the original version.

@borcanu
Peace man… I like CDProjekt very much for their games. I did not know about these letters or their content but now I see it was quite wrong but still I`ll support them for their games which I find very high quality. But please don`t fight me for that :-/

I don't know what triggers can be used when using your own copy with a crack and downloading a copy and using a crack usually is identical (as long as the copy was made correctly). It doesn't matter anyways since the way they put the triggers with the intentional bugs is based on the drm in every case (that I have checked) so using a crack with your own copy will cause the bugs and you cave to wait for the group making the crack or someone else to get around it. I have ran into those intentional bugs in a couple games I bought and used a crack on in the past.

The reason why they could be sued is because it would be intentionally sabotaging the product.

PS. I forgot to mention that the main reason why they switched to online activation of games is because anyone can make an identical copy of any game so disc based drm wouldn't be able to detect the game as a copy. With games that use online activation the same process is used by the people cracking their own copy as what would be used by pirates.

Moriendor: Most people won't defend themselves in these pay up or else schemes since it costs more to defend themselves then it does to pay the fine. That means most people that are innocent will admit to guilt because of that. You can't really compare civil and criminal cases for the above and many other reasons.

PS. If someone is using a fake ID they can look it up and find that out but a person spoofing an IP address would be like having someone that is identical to you using your ID.
 
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Moriendor: Most people won't defend themselves in these pay up or else schemes since it costs more to defend themselves then it does to pay the fine. That means most people that are innocent will admit to guilt because of that.

In Germany it's not that expensive. We have a lot of lawyers who need every penny they can get and usually you can get out of these cease & desist orders with a settlement payment of around €150 if it is just a single or very small number of downloads they are after (as someone else posted above the law firm initially demands much more than that, sometimes even ridiculous sums in the thousands of €/$). You're definitely much better off defending yourself than just paying the crazy sums they demand.
Not sure why anyone who is truly innocent would be crazy enough to pay. If you are really innocent, well, let them sue ya. Bring it on. If you are innocent they'll lose and they need to cover all of the costs so it's free entertainment for you if they sue.
Seriously, I call "myth" on innocents paying out of fear. I think most of the time it's more like "phew at least it's only this one game they are after so I'll pay this rather small fee before they dig any deeper and find my terabyte large archive of other games, mp3s and p0rn" ;) .
 
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