CDProjekt explains their anti-piracy measures
CDProjekt explains their anti-piracy measures
Interview - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Tue 20 December 2011, 12:55:50
Tags: CD Projekt; The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings... on RPS. A few snippets:
“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, 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% sure have downloaded our game illegally.”
But what about all the innocents?
“Before we took this step, we have investigated the subject, spoke to other developers and publishers using the same method and company we are using, and are convinced that the method used by them is targeting only 100% confirmed piracy act cases. When we investigated the subject, we were made aware and looked into the infamous Davenport case, and again, we are convinced the methods used in our case are not going to hurt innocent people. After all the months since release piracy of The Witcher 2 was tracked, not a single person denied act of piracy when addressed with that subject. At least not to our knowledge.
On whether such actions are merited – I feel that we are really trying to do a lot in terms of being pro-consumer ie. By removing the DRM experience for the users, delivering a lot of free extra content, etc. These people do repay us by being with us, and also by showing their support by means of paying for our games and allowing us to make new ones in the future. The purpose of this action is not to get rich on piracy – believe me, the numbers coming through as a result of this action are petty to say the most. We do hope, however, they may be a sort of deterrent for future pirates; maybe they cannot afford to buy the game here and now, but if they want it really bad, maybe they will consider buying it when the price drop happens as it always does for all titles eventually. It will not fix the world, as nothing ever will, but maybe it will stop some of the most notorious pirates from downloading our game and sharing it further. As for the more casual pirates I want to believe they will eventually become our legal customers because of how we try to work on our customer’s satisfaction.
As for the unauthorised duplication not counting as a lost sale – I guess this is not so simple really. I agree in some cases people just download “whatever” to have a look but would not buy otherwise, but there are also quite a few people who have financial means, have interest but feel that they should not pay becaue it is out there for free. It is this last group that is the most problematic, and I do not feel fine with this way of thinking, and we have never officialy supported this kind of behaviour. Being DRM-free is not a shout to all the folks out there – “hey, come and take our game – it’s free.” It is DRM-free, which means we really had to go through huge efforts with our publishers to make this happen so that people can enjoy the game without the hassle that pirated copies are already circumventing. Am I afraid this makes us look bad? I do not feel we are doing anything wrong, as long as people targeted are really 100% confirmed pirates. So far nothing has happened in the past couple of months that would indicate otherwise.
I cannot go into details on how can we be sure such information is correct, as this is trade secret of the company working on that on our behalf, but as much as we could see the reasoning behind the method, it is actually leading so far only to 100% piracy cases.”
I do not feel we are doing anything wrong, as long as people targeted are really 100% confirmed pirates. So far nothing has happened in the past couple of months that would indicate otherwise. WHAT.A.SUPRISE.
Let the pirate butthurt commence.
“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, 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% sure have downloaded our game illegally.”
But what about all the innocents?
“Before we took this step, we have investigated the subject, spoke to other developers and publishers using the same method and company we are using, and are convinced that the method used by them is targeting only 100% confirmed piracy act cases. When we investigated the subject, we were made aware and looked into the infamous Davenport case, and again, we are convinced the methods used in our case are not going to hurt innocent people. After all the months since release piracy of The Witcher 2 was tracked, not a single person denied act of piracy when addressed with that subject. At least not to our knowledge.
On whether such actions are merited – I feel that we are really trying to do a lot in terms of being pro-consumer ie. By removing the DRM experience for the users, delivering a lot of free extra content, etc. These people do repay us by being with us, and also by showing their support by means of paying for our games and allowing us to make new ones in the future. The purpose of this action is not to get rich on piracy – believe me, the numbers coming through as a result of this action are petty to say the most. We do hope, however, they may be a sort of deterrent for future pirates; maybe they cannot afford to buy the game here and now, but if they want it really bad, maybe they will consider buying it when the price drop happens as it always does for all titles eventually. It will not fix the world, as nothing ever will, but maybe it will stop some of the most notorious pirates from downloading our game and sharing it further. As for the more casual pirates I want to believe they will eventually become our legal customers because of how we try to work on our customer’s satisfaction.
As for the unauthorised duplication not counting as a lost sale – I guess this is not so simple really. I agree in some cases people just download “whatever” to have a look but would not buy otherwise, but there are also quite a few people who have financial means, have interest but feel that they should not pay becaue it is out there for free. It is this last group that is the most problematic, and I do not feel fine with this way of thinking, and we have never officialy supported this kind of behaviour. Being DRM-free is not a shout to all the folks out there – “hey, come and take our game – it’s free.” It is DRM-free, which means we really had to go through huge efforts with our publishers to make this happen so that people can enjoy the game without the hassle that pirated copies are already circumventing. Am I afraid this makes us look bad? I do not feel we are doing anything wrong, as long as people targeted are really 100% confirmed pirates. So far nothing has happened in the past couple of months that would indicate otherwise.
I cannot go into details on how can we be sure such information is correct, as this is trade secret of the company working on that on our behalf, but as much as we could see the reasoning behind the method, it is actually leading so far only to 100% piracy cases.”
Let the pirate butthurt commence.
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