An Open Letter to the Gaming Community from CD Projekt RED

[Art Vandelay]

An Open Letter to the Gaming Community from CD Projekt RED
In early December, an article was published about a law firm acting on behalf of CD Projekt RED, contacting individuals who had downloaded The Witcher 2 illegally and seeking financial compensation for copyright infringement. The news about our decision to combat piracy directly, instead of with DRM, spread quickly and with it came a number of concerns from the community. Repeatedly, gamers just like you have said that our methods might wrongly accuse people who have never violated our copyright and expressed serious concern about our actions.
Being part of a community is a give-and-take process. We only succeed because you have faith in us, and we have worked hard over the years to build up that trust. We were sorry to see that many gamers felt that our actions didn’t respect the faith that they have put into CD Projekt RED. Our fans always have been and remain our greatest concern, and we pride ourselves on the fact that you all know that we listen to you and take your opinions to heart. While we are confident that no one who legally owns one of our games has been required to compensate us for copyright infringement, we value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual.
So we’ve decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates.
Let’s make this clear: we don’t support piracy. It hurts us, the developers. It hurts the industry as a whole. Though we are staunch opponents of DRM because we don’t believe it has any effect on reducing piracy, we still do not condone copying games illegally. We’re doing our part to keep our relationship with you, our gaming audience, a positive one. We’ve heard your concerns, listened to your voices, and we’re responding to them. But you need to help us and do your part: don’t be indifferent to piracy. If you see a friend playing an illegal copy of a game–any game–tell your friend that they’re undermining the possible success of the developer who created the very game that they are enjoying. Unless you support the developers who make the games you play, unless you pay for those games, we won’t be able to produce new excellent titles for you.
Keep on playing,
Marcin Iwinski
co-founder
CD Projekt RED​

 

[Volourn]

Cowards. They should stand up to bullies not be intimidated by them. FFS

 

[groke]

Gonna go pirate TWitcher 2 again so CD Projekt lose another $60.

 

[Chuck Norris]

Oh great, we only needed you tell us we should not be indifferent to piracy nad buy our games Mr Iwinski. Thanks for giving us so much insight and wisdom about the matter.

I hope they go bankrupt next year for making an extremely shitty and worthless game and marketing it as some sort of RPG God.

 

[Grim Monk]

How fascinating, an anti-piracy PSA by S.S Captain himself:



And also:
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/mirrors/amigascne/Scrollers/K-Groupstext/Katharsis/Katharsis-LetsStrip.txt

 

[attackfighter]

free good press, poland wins again for the first time!: x

 

[lefthandblack]

A good decision IMO.

If even the possibility exists that someone could be wrongly accused and therefore dragged into an expensive court process, it's a bad policy.

I don't know how this site works or even if it is simply someones idea of lulz, but look at this link:

http://www.youhavedownloaded.com/

According to this link, my IP has torrented a full pages worth of torrents that are absolutely not me. I have never had any torrent software installed on any of my machines as my connection is simply not capable of handling it.

Not only that, but there have been a couple of occasions where I have tried to access a site, only to find out that my IP was banned from access, even though I had never been to the site before. In these cases a simple restart of my modem got me access. My IP is dynamic, so there have been people who have done all kinds of questionable things from the IP that I am using right now. A look at my ISP's logs (if they bothered to keep them for the time period in question) would exonerate me, but only after I had dumped a wad of cash on a lawyer to defend myself, never mind the lost productivity and inconvenience of having to defend myself against something that I was not guilty of.

 

[Phelot]

LOL damage control.

 

[hiver]

 

[janjetina]

Game industry needs to get rid of the fallacious opinion that piracy somehow results in lost sales and that preventing piracy would result in former pirates flocking to stores and buying legal copies of the game. There are three (not strictly separate) types of pirates: those who can't afford to buy games, those who don't want to buy games (this phenomenon has something to do with inertial quality of human nature, due to lack of copyright laws pertaining to computer games and even unavailibility of legal copies in the past: hence in the past games were free for them and they want to continue playing games for free) and those who buy games only after testing them and confirming their quality.

Regardless of potential anti-piracy measures, members of first two groups will not buy computer games. Regardless of potential anti-piracy measures, members of the third group will buy those games they've played and judged to be good and won't buy the rest.

Hence, investing resources into anti-piracy measures does not result in increased sales. On the other hand, directing those resources into game development process (anywhere from analysis and design to quality assurance) could result in improvement in the quality of games and could win over potential costumers who are more demanding, resulting in increased sales.

In addition, backlash from anti-piracy measures among current customers needs to be considered. It appears that CD Project's anti-piracy crusade has shattered their purported image of a small independent developer that is close to its costumers and does not conform to the standards of huge heartless game industry machine. This open letter represents the correct decision that image is more important to CD Project than a little bit of extra cash they made from the settlements, but it has to be perceived in the light of the fact that they've already probably milked all the money they were able to milk without going to actual trials.

TLDR: if you want us to buy your games, try making good games for a change.

 

[RRRrrr]

TLDR: if you want us to buy your games, try making good games for a change.

Making good games is not the answer. Troika made good games. Black Isle made good games. I agree with your comment, except the TLDR: part. The masses don't really care for quality, they just want to play a game that everybody likes.

 

[janjetina]

Making good games is not the answer. Troika made good games. Black Isle made good games. I agree with your comment, except the TLDR: part. The masses don't really care for quality, they just want to play a game that everybody likes.

Making good games is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient. Project management skills, managing development and operating costs in general and publisher relations and contracts are important parts of the picture. Troika failed in all those areas, while the story of demise of Black Isle (which was not a separate company but a division of Interplay) has nothing to do with this, and everything to do with Herve.

The thing is, you need to identify scope of the project and your target audience. If you go for the mass market (making THE ONE GAME as everyone else), then marketing will drive the sales. If you go for the niche market, making a good game is necessary. CDP tries to project the image of a niche developer. They know how to talk the talk, unfortunately there is nothing more to it than that.

 

[waywardOne]

they’re undermining the possible success of the developer

This sounds like an incentive to pirate every AAA house out there if it were true.

 

[hiver]

Ill just copy one comment from RPS because im lazy and i dont want to seem as really happily applauding:

So the long and the short of it is that the money recouped is not measuring up to the money they reckon they will/have lose/lost due to the PR fallout.
“Hey we’re good guys, honest!”

Anyway, i guess i could buy Torment off the GoG these days. That went on indefinite hold, let alone anything else.

 

[janjetina]

I find it funny when pirates try to rationalize their actions.

Almost any action, including piracy can be rationalized. There are always motives and circumstances. That is not sufficient for moral justification and doesn't make piracy morally acceptable. Examining motives and circumstances for piracy can give insight into whether anti-piracy measures could possible work (and the answer is no).

I pirate games that I enjoy all the time. Mount & Blade: Warband is the most recent game that I torrented. However, I would never try to claim some moral high ground for pirating games - what I'm doing is wrong.

I agree with you on that, but different views are possible and cannot be dismissed out of hand. An interesting take on the subject can be read at http://www.conservapedia.com/Essay:Is_File-sharing_a_Moral_Action? .

If I don't want to pay the price that the developers/publishers want for the game, then I shouldn't be stealing it.

Using the word stealing in this context is incorrect. There is no stealing involved. Stealing involves taking of the property of another entity (the owner) without owner's consent. There is a transfer of property from the owner (which constitutes loss for the owner) to the thief (constituting gain for the thief). With software piracy, this is clearly not the case. This is the case of (a victimless crime of) copyright infingement, as defined by applicable laws.

 

[Metro]

CD Projekt is the most over hyped developer out there -- it's all marketing to them with the 'gamers first' and 'DRM free' oversell. But people lap it up. Witcher series isn't even that great.

Using the word stealing in this context is incorrect. There is no stealing involved. Stealing involves taking of the property of another entity (the owner) without owner's consent. There is a transfer of property from the owner (which constitutes loss for the owner) to the thief (constituting gain for the thief). With software piracy, this is clearly not the case. This is the case of (a victimless crime of) copyright infingement, as defined by applicable laws.

Talk about rationalization. Guarantee you that if you created some media product capable of being pirated you'd scream bloody murder whenever someone did so and send the lawyers out to reap in every cent.

 

[Davaris]

So there it is. Intimidating pirates does not help your bottom line.

As I said last time this story came up, if you are a dev that thinks single player games do not sell well due to piracy, make a game that is tied to an online account and see if you get better sales. Surely an outfit like CD Projekt could have tried that, before embarking on this PR disaster.

 

[Kz3r0]

Fuck the retards.
We should support developers that cater to their customers, whatever the reasons, and, get real, Skyrim is RPGCODEX most played game, so bawing about Witcher's quality is quite inane.

 

[Volourn]

iT IS STEALING. trAKING SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU WITHOUT PERMISSION IS STEALING. gAME OVER. game fukkin' over.

 

[janjetina]

Talk about rationalization. Guarantee you that if you created some media product capable of being pirated you'd scream bloody murder whenever someone did so and send the lawyers out to reap in every cent.

Are you illiterate or just trolling? I would call it exactly what it is, copyright infringement, and would pursue it along those lines (or not, depending on many factors involved, including costs, potential benefits and public reaction).
Let me repeat: illegally downloading and sharing a program constitutes copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is one particular offense, theft is another particular offense.

I wouldn't say it isn't stealing. Digital media is relatively new and thus it does not make sense to use outdated definitions of stealing in such discourse.

This is incorrect, as copyright infringement did not start with digital media (and digital media industry is not that new anyway). It has been present for a long time in the music industry, with bootleg tapes, for example. Also, copyright infringement laws have been present for a long while and copyright infringement and theft have always been distinct offenses.

When somebody rips a game and uploads it to a torrent sharing site; he is doing two things:
1. Breaching the contract that he agreed to upon installing the game, and

In most legislatures, EULA is (still) not a legally binding contract, due to the fact that it is not signed at the purchase. Even if it was, it could be circumvented / cracked. Even with the legally binding "signed" EULA still wouldn't transform software piracy from copyright infringement to theft.

2. Distributing the product for free to hundreds/thousands/millions, a percentage of whom (no matter how small) would have purchased the game legally had they no other recourse, thus harming the sales of said product by breaching the aforementioned contract.

You are discussing hypothetical quantities that cannot be verified. I claim that the number of pirates that would have bought the game is zero, as argued in my first post on the topic (I've even included those who torrent AND buy the game, as I often do and you've stated yourself that you do - how can that be a "lost sale"?). What is your estimate? In any case, the best we can do is pull the numbers out of our asses. There is no informed estimate. Hence, we are discussing hypothethical damages that may or may not exist and cannot be proven to exist (and the burden of proof is on the claimant). Calling something theft based on imaginary damages doesn't cut it.

I hope you realize that I'm not arguing about morality or legality of software piracy. I'm arguing about nomenclature. My argument still stands: what took place was not transfer of property, which would make it the case of theft, but unauthorized copying of someone's (intellectual) property, making it a case of copyright infringement.

The fact is that both legislature and the industry (given that they pursue the offenders through copyright violation laws) recognize this dinstinction. There is no reason to use incorrect terminology or to redefine current terminology, which is clear and logical.

and, get real, Skyrim is RPGCODEX most played game, so bawing about Witcher's quality is quite inane.

Ah, the dreaded imaginary hivemind. The opinion of some portion (be it majority or not) of RPG Codex users about Skyrim has no bearing on my opinion on Skyrim, let alone on my evaluation of quality of The Witcher. Some prefer a hard turd to a diarrhea to grace their dinner plate, but I'll choose steak instead. Of course, de gustibus...

 

[DraQ]

LOL damage control.

Not unlikely, but actually buying Witcher 3 becomes an open possibility for me again, and, on the account that it *might* not be a cynical attempt at damage control, CDPR has regained some lost respect with me.

If only they could only hire proper musician this time like in TW1, repair alchemy they broke and maybe provide some additional wiggle room around the rail (credit where it's due - there were more than one, and you could choose which to ride), if they could also design a decent interface, throw away QTEs and polish the combat a bit (just moving vigor cost from blocking to rolling would be a huge improvement), I'd not just consider buying it but would be positively delighted to.

Game industry needs to get rid of the fallacious opinion that piracy somehow results in lost sales and that preventing piracy would result in former pirates flocking to stores and buying legal copies of the game. There are three (not strictly separate) types of pirates: those who can't afford to buy games, those who don't want to buy games (this phenomenon has something to do with inertial quality of human nature, due to lack of copyright laws pertaining to computer games and even unavailibility of legal copies in the past: hence in the past games were free for them and they want to continue playing games for free) and those who buy games only after testing them and confirming their quality.

Regardless of potential anti-piracy measures, members of first two groups will not buy computer games. Regardless of potential anti-piracy measures, members of the third group will buy those games they've played and judged to be good and won't buy the rest.

Hence, investing resources into anti-piracy measures does not result in increased sales. On the other hand, directing those resources into game development process (anywhere from analysis and design to quality assurance) could result in improvement in the quality of games and could win over potential costumers who are more demanding, resulting in increased sales.

In addition, backlash from anti-piracy measures among current customers needs to be considered. It appears that CD Project's anti-piracy crusade has shattered their purported image of a small independent developer that is close to its costumers and does not conform to the standards of huge heartless game industry machine. This open letter represents the correct decision that image is more important to CD Project than a little bit of extra cash they made from the settlements, but it has to be perceived in the light of the fact that they've already probably milked all the money they were able to milk without going to actual trials.

This.

While I wouldn't go as far as calling piracy victimless, its impact varies wildly on case-by-case basis, to the point of being positive, rather than negative in not so few cases, not just when it comes to acts, but also when it comes to games.
Of course your point that vast majority of pirates won't ever buy the game no matter, and some will buy the game on their own volition still stands, anti-piracy measures don't and won't work.

I'm rather happy that CDPR seems to be coming back to senses after all, though (very real possibility that this is just another calculated stunt notwithstanding), even if they should have known all this from the beginning, having successfully competed on the market dominated by pirates via legitimate means.

Still, a kick, to the 'nads in time saves nine, and I'd rather not see CDPR becoming cock-ticks.

 

[Excommunicator]

A wise decision on their part. Now they need to hope people don't keep bringing it up when they think of their company, and that they can make better games from now on

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I don't know how this site works or even if it is simply someones idea of lulz, but look at this link:

http://www.youhavedownloaded.com/

According to this link, my IP has torrented a full pages worth of torrents that are absolutely not me.

Checked it out:

Hi. We have no records on you.

 

[Art Vandelay]

It seems that greedy fucks shot themselves in the foot.Can't say I'm sorry.Their games were shit,anyways.

 

[hakuroshi]

In theory, there should be a number of impatient dorks who want to play game 'right now' upon release and won't pay more than absolutely nesessary. With such folk there are 'lost sales' of a kind, because they would pirate the game instead of buying, but would buy if unable to pirate.