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Interview The Witcher 2 DRM and Piracy

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: CD Projekt; Witcher 2, The

<p><a href="http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/" target="_blank">This interview</a> on PCGamer with CDProjekt's&nbsp;<span>Marcin Iwinski covers the topics of DRM and piracy in The Witcher 2.</span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>PCG: Can you offer any concrete numbers or percentages as far as Witcher 2 piracy goes?</strong></p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>MI</strong>: There are no stats available, but let&rsquo;s make a quick calculation. I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let&rsquo;s take 20k as the average and let&rsquo;s take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let&rsquo;s assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let&rsquo;s multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads. This is only an estimation, and I would say that&rsquo;s rather on the optimistic side of things; as of today we have sold over 1M legal copies, so having only 4.5-5 illegal copies for each legal one would be not a bad ratio. The reality is probably way worse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/105883-good-old-games-interview-the-witcher-2-pirated-millions-of-times.html">Gamebanshee</a></p>
 

mikaelis

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DwarvenFood said:
Because the sales could have been better.

Yeah, looks like people stole from CDProject safe depo in Swiss bank 4.5 mln x 50 $ = 225 mln $. Kotick would be outraged :troll:
 

commie

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How much better could they really have been? From 4 million torrents(bullshit exaggeration of course, as you just take a look at the most popular private tracker numbers and take a glance at TPB and other public torrent sites to see that there would NEVER be that many downloads of this game) I doubt that even 10% would have considered buying it. You look around and there's still many people who barely have heard of The Witcher, so where are all these millions of pirates of this game?

Yes there were losses, and yes there would be losses regardless of DRM or no DRM, but no point exaggerating how much is lost.
 

made

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VentilatorOfDoom said:
let’s make a quick calculation. I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let’s take 20k as the average and let’s take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let’s assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let’s multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.

The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads.
Might as well have pulled a random number out of his ass.

At least he realizes that Nazi DRM is not a solution.
 

mikaelis

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commie said:
How much better could they really have been? From 4 million torrents(bullshit exaggeration of course, as you just take a look at the most popular private tracker numbers and take a glance at TPB and other public torrent sites to see that there would NEVER be that many downloads of this game) I doubt that even 10% would have considered buying it. You look around and there's still many people who barely have heard of The Witcher, so where are all these millions of pirates of this game?

Yes there were losses, and yes there would be losses regardless of DRM or no DRM, but no point exaggerating how much is lost.

From how he sounds in the whole interview, he doesn't seem to really give a fuck. Just a rough estimation of the numbers. What's very nice is that in a way he acknowledges that illegal download =/= lost sales:
I do not believe in forcing anyone to buy our game. If they do not want it and they pirated it, it means we did not have the right offer for them – maybe the price was too high and they will buy it later on a year or two after the release when it will be more affordable.
Sounds bro to me, or? Also, funny how he mentions Excel guys responsible for this DRM bullshit. Most of the developers/publishers in public interviews just shit meaningless slogans out their mouths about how DRM is helping them (though every fucking blind man and his dog can see that it just doesn't work).
 

Infinitron

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Since CDProjekt is behind GOG, it would make absolutely no sense for him not to disparage the effectiveness of DRM.
 

Shannow

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MI: There are no stats available, but let’s make a quick calculation. I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let’s take 20k as the average and let’s take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let’s assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 3 days of download. Since torrents aren't always reliable many people tend to have several instances of the same game. So lets say every 4th download was a double.
6 weeks iabout 60 days; and with 3d of average download time to get the game it would give us 20 downloads, then let’s multiply it by 15k simultaneous downloaders.



The result is roughly 300k illegal downloads. Since our game is awesome we have to estimate 50% of the pirates then went and bought it. An average of 80% of pirates say they never intended to buy the illegally copied products in the first place. That means we had roughly 100k more sales due to piracy than what we'd have had without. This is only an estimation, and I would say that’s rather on the optimistic side of things; as of today we have sold over 1M legal copies, so selling 1 copy due to illegall copies for every 9 purely legal ones would not be a bad ratio.
I like the optimistic outlook on how piracy improved the sales instead dwelling on "lost" sales. But I'm not sure I agree with his assessment of TW2's quality and the "purchase after demoing"-rate he derives from that :M
 

tindrli

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let’s make a quick calculation. I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let’s take 20k as the average and let’s take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let’s assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let’s multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.

The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads.

This is the worst calculation ever.

and another thing. .i have never ever, im my entire life or dreams downloaded something like 14 GB in 6 hours from torrent and i have 4 Gb/s DSL.

P.s. I just want to mention as well that i didnt download TW2 in anycase and ....

4.5 mils illegal downloads my ass
 

Heresiarch

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You know, if they sold the game to those 4.5 million guys for 1$ each, that's still some pretty good income.

As a gameplayer who have yelled yaaarrgh since the early 90s, I think the main problem with me not buying legal copies even now that I have good income, is probably laziness. I just find it easier to go TPB and search for a torrent and start download it, even though it's more troublesome in the long run because I must fiddle with the game and sometimes even my PC to get the game running, and need to find proper cracks in current and future versions, and I can't have awesome only achievements.

Although I do like buying hard game copies over the internet now, internet shopping is perfect for lazy men like me.

BTW I've bought a legal copy TW2 AFTER torrented and played it till chapter 2.
 

Infinitron

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tindrli said:
let’s make a quick calculation. I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks there was around 20-30k ppl downloading it at the same time. Let’s take 20k as the average and let’s take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let’s assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let’s multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.

The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads.

This is the worst calculation ever.

and another thing. .i have never ever, im my entire life or dreams downloaded something like 14 GB in 6 hours from torrent and i have 4 Gb/s DSL.

P.s. I just want to mention as well that i didnt download TW2 in anycase and ....

4.5 mils illegal downloads my ass

Which brings us to what may be the ultimate solution to piracy. Come up with a storage medium much larger than a DVD, fill your game with tons of uncompressed fluff, and sell it on that. Let's see the pirates download 100GBs per game.

Of course, that would also fuck up legal digital distribution...
 

Black

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Infinitron said:
Which brings us to what may be the ultimate solution to piracy. Come up with a storage medium much larger than a DVD, fill your game with tons of uncompressed fluff, and sell it on that. Let's see the pirates download 100GBs per game.

Of course, that would also fuck up legal digital distribution...
I don't think it would solve anything.
 

Forest Dweller

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Anyone know how those piracy ratios compare to some other AAA game released recently, especially those with shitty DRM?
 

attackfighter

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14 GB in 6 hours... lol

For me that would take about a day to torrent. ANd plus at release it would've been a lot worse, due to poor seeder/leecher ratio. Divide his number by 4 or so, then you've got more accurate pseudo estimation results.
 

meeneque

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tindrli said:
i have never ever, im my entire life or dreams downloaded something like 14 GB in 6 hours from torrent and i have 4 Gb/s DSL.
P.s. I just want to mention as well that i didnt download TW2 in anycase and ....
4.5 mils illegal downloads my ass

14GB in 6Hrs is ~680K/s, seen better than that, especially with thousands of peers.
BTW, 6Gb DSL, really?

edit: switched b for B
 

Bruticis

Guest
Infinitron said:
Which brings us to what may be the ultimate solution to piracy. Come up with a storage medium much larger than a DVD, fill your game with tons of uncompressed fluff, and sell it on that. Let's see the pirates download 100GBs per game.

Of course, that would also fuck up legal digital distribution...
I don't think that's going to work at all, they already have rips for PC games. Some console games do this too and hackers just scrub the crap and distribute it in a manageable size.
 

Infinitron

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Black said:
Infinitron said:
Which brings us to what may be the ultimate solution to piracy. Come up with a storage medium much larger than a DVD, fill your game with tons of uncompressed fluff, and sell it on that. Let's see the pirates download 100GBs per game.

Of course, that would also fuck up legal digital distribution...
I don't think it would solve anything.

That depends on whether Internet speeds would eventually catch up with those sizes.
I remember that when games started coming out on CD-ROM, and had both floppy and CD versions, the CD versions would often have the copy protection removed! The developers didn't believe the data on the CDs would be duplicated.
And for a while it made sense, because burners were extremely uncommon and hard drives capacities were at most a gig or two.
 

Edwin

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here is what you can see if you have some kind of IP blocking program/block list(when you connect to RPG codex):

-CD-Projekt:70.84.191.74:80
so is this a CD-Projekt site? :roll:

70.84.191.74 Server Details
IP address:
70.84.191.74
Server Location:
Houston, TX in United States
Zip Postal Code: 77002 Latitude: 29.7523 Longitude: -95.367
ISP:
THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES

-Verestar:213.244.183.199:80
anti peer 2 peer company,monitoring file sharing
Whois:
ISP: Level 3 Communications
Organization: EXTREME-NL
Hosted in: Netherlands
1 Hosts on this IP address


-China:184.75.248.104.80
184.75.248.104 Whois
184.75.248.104 Website Information
184.75.248.104 Server Details
IP address:
184.75.248.104
Server Location:
Houston, TX in United States
ISP:
Elvsoft Corp.

I am not a computer expert so I am wondering what this all means(CD-Projekt and that torrent sneaking company).For the record I am not using torrents(and never was torrenting program installed on this system) for me these blocklists provide just an additional layer of security(on top of noscript,ghostery,zone alarm,better security,superantispyware,mailwarebytes,avast,spybot search and destroy etc.).
 
In My Safe Space
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mikaelis said:
commie said:
How much better could they really have been? From 4 million torrents(bullshit exaggeration of course, as you just take a look at the most popular private tracker numbers and take a glance at TPB and other public torrent sites to see that there would NEVER be that many downloads of this game) I doubt that even 10% would have considered buying it. You look around and there's still many people who barely have heard of The Witcher, so where are all these millions of pirates of this game?

Yes there were losses, and yes there would be losses regardless of DRM or no DRM, but no point exaggerating how much is lost.

From how he sounds in the whole interview, he doesn't seem to really give a fuck. Just a rough estimation of the numbers. What's very nice is that in a way he acknowledges that illegal download =/= lost sales:
I do not believe in forcing anyone to buy our game. If they do not want it and they pirated it, it means we did not have the right offer for them – maybe the price was too high and they will buy it later on a year or two after the release when it will be more affordable.
Sounds bro to me, or? Also, funny how he mentions Excel guys responsible for this DRM bullshit. Most of the developers/publishers in public interviews just shit meaningless slogans out their mouths about how DRM is helping them (though every fucking blind man and his dog can see that it just doesn't work).
He lives in a high piracy, low income country, so he doesn't have delusions about millions of people out there being able to afford more than a small fraction of the stuff they download. And he probably had many occasions to see pirates switching to buying originals when their incomes increased.
I knew several people who were "why buy it when it's available for free" who suddenly started buying originals when they have finished studies and got a stable above-average income.
 

BLOBERT

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BROS I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ACTUAL RESEARCH ON SOFTWARE PIRACY

I WOULD AGREE THAT A LARGE PERCENTAGE WOULD BE GAMES THAT WOULD NOT BE PURCHASES ANYWAYS EITHER BECAUSE THE PERSON HAS NO MONEY OR THEY JUST TRY EVERYTHING OUT FOR FREE OR THEY ARE USED TO PIRATING EVERYTHING

I WONDER WHAT THE REAL NUMBERS ARE FOR UBISOFTS SHIT AND IF THERE SALES INCREASED WITH THEIR NEW SHIT I DOUBT IT

IVE ONLY BOUGHT ONE PC GAME OVER 10 DOLLARS IN THE LAST FEW YEARS SO FUCK IT I JUST AM NOT BOTHERED I HAVE TORRENTED GAMES IN THE PAST THEY WERE OLDER AND I DID HAVE TO SPEND A BUNCH OF TIME LEARNING ABOUT HOW TO GET THEM TO RUN RIGHT BUT AFTER THE INITIAL TIME INVESTMENT I COULD FIGURE OUT MYSELF EASIER
 

sea

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Terpsichore said:
Make the prices and the content reasonable.
I agree, though to be perfectly honest, for most games, the price is already pretty reasonable. Budgets these days are colossal, bigger than many films in the biggest cases, and yet games have a fraction of the market films do... you just can't expect to pay $10 for a brand-new game the same way you can with a movie. Yes, sometimes profits are huge, but for most games that only do a million or two copies, recouping that $20-30 million dollar investment is certainly not going to happen when you're selling your games so cheap. Even if you say sales go up, I don't think that's a sure thing. If publishers started charging $10 a pop for games, yes, you'd see a massive explosion in sales... for the first few months, or a year or two. But once that became the norm, I don't think you'd see those sales sustaining, at least not enough to make up for the price drop. Meanwhile, pirates would start saying "well iPhone games are 99 cents, why isn't yours?" or they'd find some other excuse to pirate anyway, because in the end piracy isn't usually about ideology, it's about the fact that paying nothing at all is a better deal than paying anything at all.
 

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