Game News The Witcher 2: BitTorrent Collector's Edition now only $1230

[circ]

Dear Sir, have you ever created anything? You should try it, know the sweet feeling, when the stuff you spent countless insomniac night to create, pops up on pirate sites, being downloaded by thousands, while you manage to sell whooping twenty-odd licences.

Yes, yes, I have. (...)

And you never felt the urge to create some sort of virus, that will make the bastard's PCs explode? Killing them, their families and theirs pets?
I guess I am a bad person.

More like just plain retarded. No one gives a shit about your little hobby. Get a real job. Why would I want someone's things to explode when I had fun making whatever I made? Should I be compensated for having fun? Why? That's like crying because a hooker gave you a free handjob and you wanted to unload in her filthy worthless whore mouth.

 

[hiver]

hiver have you paid the fine yet?

No crispy, nor i will get one.
I really dont have an IP that belongs to me and i can change it more or less easily if i need to. Nor i have witcher 2 at all.

rofl the dude who thinks it's ok to pirate games labels the dude who apparently buys his games legally as a "parasite".

I did not call him a parasite because he buys games and maybe doesnt pirate some.

Enjoy your superb games where you have no fucking idea what you will actually play before you give your money for it you retarded cunt. Enjoy companies that outright lie about features of their games and you have no idea and no way to check is that really true before you pay for the game - and then you can go fuck yourself.

Yeah because watching videos on YouTube and reading reviews and such is so hard these days what with the internets and all. I mean we all know YouTube lies! LIES I TELL YOU!

No, i cannot tell what my gameplay will be like from watching videos.
I can MAYBE see some detail but i can feel what my gameplay will be only if i play.
And most of the things devs lie about are not really visible in most videos nor watching videos makes it alright to spout such lies.

reading reviews? you mean hype dispensaries? i wont even waste time talking about that at all cause i have a headache and that would make it much worse.

all i want to do know is shoot assault weapons on random idiot humans... or at least imagine it.

My point is not making it an excuse for piracy.

My point is.... that we are living in society and under rules dictated by real parasitic and completely non-human systems or whatever you want to call them - companies and economy based on making a profit.
Its not made to care about you, your kid, your family or anything except profit.

So anyone trying to portray all of piracy as the only evil or wrong in such a system can go fuck himself as far as im concerned, because that person is either a retard or a tool of the parasitic inhuman system who doesnt even realize it.

CDproject is doing this to get more money, not to reduce piracy.
The system doesnt care about that - it just wants more money, more profits.
They never even tried removing witcher2 torrents from any torrent sites.

They spouted outright lies about the game before releasing it and are doing the same thing right now.

 

[DalekFlay]

No, i cannot tell what my gameplay will be like from watching videos.
I can MAYBE see some detail but i can feel what my gameplay will be only if i play.
And most of the things devs lie about are not really visible in most videos nor watching videos makes it alright to spout such lies.

reading reviews? you mean hype dispensaries? i wont even waste time talking about that at all cause i have a headache and that would make it much worse.

I decide whether to buy games or not based on youtube let's play style videos. I think they are incredibly informative, I don't understand why you would say they aren't. The gameplay mechanics, graphics and voice-over quality, writing, story, world and pretty much every other damn thing are all on full display in an unedited video. About the only thing you miss out on is how the game will perform on your system, but forums and hardware sites clear that up pretty quickly.

As for reviews, the key is to find reviewers you generally agree with and a forum community you generally agree with and read their specific comments. It can be immensely informative.

Honestly in 20+ years of PC gaming, never pirating a game once unless you count abandonware, I have only bought one or two duds for a significant price.

 

[quasimodo]

I've never needed to pirate a game to tell how good it is. I just read about it on the Codex. Thats really the main reason I lurk around here.

 

[Gord]

If you erroneously get a letter, reply that it is inaccurate and why. If they STILL harass you, THEN I have a problem.

That's the problem, you cannot get out so easily.
From what I've read/heard/seen on the news over the years, once you recieve such a letter, there's not much you can do about it (save for maybe they have send it to the wring address or such).
AFAIK they track you down according to your IP address, which they get from your provider (without much hassle, if they even need some judge to order the provider to do it, there are more than enough judges who do so easily). Once they have the name connected with the IP you are pretty much fucked.
They then simply make some rough estimations on how much damage you have caused due to the automatic uploading while downloading.

Most you can do, is go to court, but you will likely loose as they will try (and likely succeed) in dragging you in front of some technophobic mummified old idiot who thinks internet belongs to satan (sorry Konjad) and has zero technical understanding.

 

[LoPan]

No, i cannot tell what my gameplay will be like from watching videos.
I can MAYBE see some detail but i can feel what my gameplay will be only if i play.
And most of the things devs lie about are not really visible in most videos nor watching videos makes it alright to spout such lies.

reading reviews? you mean hype dispensaries? i wont even waste time talking about that at all cause i have a headache and that would make it much worse.

I decide whether to buy games or not based on youtube let's play style videos. I think they are incredibly informative, I don't understand why you would say they aren't. The gameplay mechanics, graphics and voice-over quality, writing, story, world and pretty much every other damn thing are all on full display in an unedited video. About the only thing you miss out on is how the game will perform on your system, but forums and hardware sites clear that up pretty quickly.

As for reviews, the key is to find reviewers you generally agree with and a forum community you generally agree with and read their specific comments. It can be immensely informative.

Honestly in 20+ years of PC gaming, never pirating a game once unless you count abandonware, I have only bought one or two duds for a significant price.

Yes but when you've spent money on something that is not of pragmatic value then you tend to be more forgiving of its actual worth, and you'd end up letting the fact that you spent money on something like Oblivion slide because it was just sort of bad and not Stronghold 3 unpardonably terrible. Even those let's plays are not actually legal I don't think, or at least when this SOPA thing starts spreading (America does seem to have an innate ability to create and spread social diseases) they won't be any longer.

Piracy is really rather a lovely way for the proletariat to regain some measure of power. Companies and corporations go to great lengths to fool people into buying things they did not want in the first place and should probably not ever desire. With piracy the common sap has a tool and a weapon to defy the clearly clandestine intentions of a capitalist society that praises and supports swindle and Randian pursuits.

What I wonder is who made the decision to do this. Did the CEO get into a misty-eyed rage and set this all into motion due to a genuine desire for profit and punishment to whoever he could get at; did the market or legal department set out on this independently out of personal drive or desire for a raise or promotion, or were they acting under some sort of general incentive or task. Someone green-lit this and went through with it, probably even planned this. Sometimes I get the feeling most people repeatedly forget, or constantly attempt to repress, the fact that they die in the end.

 

[hiver]

I decide whether to buy games or not based on youtube let's play style videos. I think they are incredibly informative, I don't understand why you would say they aren't.

Im not saying that.
Im saying it cant tell me all i want to know.

The problem issue is that i said a lot of devs LIE about their games and that was answered by saying "well you can watch the video of someone playing!"

that makes me


when we are talking about those bastards blackmailing people for money as if they are fucking angels and all pirates are total evil assholes.

 

[villain of the story]

Dear Sir, have you ever created anything? You should try it, know the sweet feeling, when the stuff you spent countless insomniac night to create, pops up on pirate sites, being downloaded by thousands, while you manage to sell whooping twenty-odd licences.

Yes, yes, I have. (...)

And you never felt the urge to create some sort of virus, that will make the bastard's PCs explode? Killing them, their families and theirs pets?

What the fuck are you talking about? Are you trying to tell us that you make bombs? That you're a bomb maker? Muslim piece of shit, I'm reporting this shit to CIA right now.

 

[Davaris]

Dear Sir, have you ever created anything? You should try it, know the sweet feeling, when the stuff you spent countless insomniac night to create, pops up on pirate sites, being downloaded by thousands, while you manage to sell whooping twenty-odd licences.

If you think your games would sell better, if it were not for pirates, then make your next game online only and see if there is a difference. Easy.

 

[SCO]

Dear Sir, have you ever created anything? You should try it, know the sweet feeling, when the stuff you spent countless insomniac night to create, pops up on pirate sites, being downloaded by thousands, while you manage to sell whooping twenty-odd licences.

If you think your games would sell better, if it were not for pirates, then make your next game online only and see if there is a difference. Easy.

Lol. I think they may well in the future understand that when they finally figure out that "Cloud gaming" thing.
Then i'm going to laugh when their sales are the same (or less due to less publicity).


Pirates will not buy. That's what makes them pirates. If you think you can threaten a pirate into becoming a customer by making pirating dangerous, they'll just find out that the world is wide, and there are many better ways to waste time than games. Money is much more important that shit entertainment.

But really, that is besides the point. I think we all know the reason for this strategy: lawyers vultures using enslaved para-legals to file out 1000's of fines in the hope that 1 in 30 pay approach the company and offer a cut.
Nothing else.

 

[hiver]

Yes but when you've spent money on something that is not of pragmatic value then you tend to be more forgiving of its actual worth, and you'd end up letting the fact that you spent money on something like Oblivion slide because it was just sort of bad and not Stronghold 3 unpardonably terrible. Even those let's plays are not actually legal I don't think, or at least when this SOPA thing starts spreading (America does seem to have an innate ability to create and spread social diseases) they won't be any longer.

Piracy is really rather a lovely way for the proletariat to regain some measure of power. Companies and corporations go to great lengths to fool people into buying things they did not want in the first place and should probably not ever desire. With piracy the common sap has a tool and a weapon to defy the clearly clandestine intentions of a capitalist society that praises and supports swindle and Randian pursuits.

Right on.

What I wonder is who made the decision to do this. Did the CEO get into a misty-eyed rage and set this all into motion due to a genuine desire for profit and punishment to whoever he could get at; did the market or legal department set out on this independently out of personal drive or desire for a raise or promotion, or were they acting under some sort of general incentive or task. Someone green-lit this and went through with it, probably even planned this.

I really doubt it is anyone that actually made the game.
The devs themselves are actually nothing, a cog in the machine.
The work and create and own nothing nor they get any profit. All they have is their monthly pay check and the right to get fired.

Sometimes I get the feeling most people repeatedly forget, or constantly attempt to repress, the fact that they die in the end.

The usual earthly everyday, man.


[/quote]

 

[Turjan]

What I wonder is who made the decision to do this. Did the CEO get into a misty-eyed rage and set this all into motion due to a genuine desire for profit and punishment to whoever he could get at; did the market or legal department set out on this independently out of personal drive or desire for a raise or promotion, or were they acting under some sort of general incentive or task. Someone green-lit this and went through with it, probably even planned this.

As I said further above, I can see some relation to the lawsuit with their publisher. They might have to prove something.

 

[Johnny the Mule]

Cant tell if srs. You do realize that the freeriders by their nature are not participating in the game?

Well, as the pro-pirates constantly tells us, the companies have to find new business models. So the companies and their creators, like Sid Meyer, looks at their products and sees that, well, this shit is almost completely single player and is so extremely easily copied that a pirate can play all of it with impunity. So they move features to where they can't be copied, like online, or make the game be about cooperation with other people - like in civworld. Same with C&C alliances. And sadly, single player RPGs happens to have all of the losing traits and none of the winning ones in this new business model environment.

Of course this doesn't mean single player RPG's are 100% totally unmakeable, just that they are much less profitable and numerous than they could have been.

The new business models are in no way the pirates fault. I repeat, freeriders dont participate in the game.
And even if they do, as you assert, by pushing down profits. Its still negative reinforcement.
The dumbing down, MMO shit, Shitbook games, Consolitis, etc, all come from positive reinforcement of paying customers. You see, if the shitty trends didnt pay off, you would not have them... The "death of singleplayer rpg" is not our fault, if I may say so.
M:

 

[Volourn]

"I hope that most of the people who got the letters are those who downloaded it for a test ride and then bought it."

Probably cna count those folks on a couple of hands. L0L

That said, their 4.5mil figure is utterly bullshit.

 

[MetalCraze]

Except that you fully know that none of the negatives you mentioned apply in this case. What activations? What spyware? What staying online forever? What DRM? Eh... it's just you again Skyway - making shit up to back up your feeble reasoning.

My original comment was referring to the "we'll have to include DRM!"

But yes - in this case it is even more retarded since CDP hand picked users at random who may or may NOT pirated their shitty CoDMedieWal. What the fuck happened to innocent until proven otherwise?

Fucking game publishers and devs treat anyone like some guilty fucktards who just dream about pirating their shitty crap.

But those greedy bastards at CD Projekt. For all the evil they inflicted on the gaming industry and community, they shall justly suffer. MUHAHAHAHA!!

For what they do right now they should. They could've just STFU and keep getting millions from next-gen ReallyProfitableGame cattle.

The cost was over $10 million - and that's making the game. There are also people like publishers that get significant part of your profit, logistic costs, making the actual DVDs, boxes and frills, and FREE DLC. I am starting to doubt the investment was returned.

So let's see. Selling 1 mln of copies at full price (and their shit sold more) means $50 mln of "dirty" income. Then let's say that 50% (and that's the worst case) of it went away. That's $25 mln. The game as you say costed $10 mln to develop. It's 250% PROFIT. And that's only from a PC version. The only way for them to not get a profit was to sell 400k copies or less.

So if 250% profit is not a returned investment what the fuck is?

And according to this:
http://polygamia.pl/Polygamia/1,96455,9 ... .html?bo=1

It costed about 6.5 mln euro to develop (which isn't over $10 mln unless euro costs almost twice as much as dollar in wherever the fuck you live)

While according to this they got 940k copies sold "in the first half of 2011", and if I'm good at math that means May and June
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3685 ... _To_1M.php

Poor fucking CDP and pirates forcing them to live the semi-luxurious life by not detracting anything from sales at all.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

"I hope that most of the people who got the letters are those who downloaded it for a test ride and then bought it."

Probably cna count those folks on a couple of hands. L0L

So, you assume that vast majority of buyers are moralfags?

 

[Coyote]

Woah, full stop. What happened CDP? I thought you didn't give a shit about pirating and said shit happens whatever.

I don't think they've ever claimed that. They've said that people will pirate your game no matter what and DRM only penalizes legitimate customers, but those are arguments against DRM, not for piracy.

As I said further above, I can see some relation to the lawsuit with their publisher. They might have to prove something.

If you mean that they sent out these letters in response to the lawsuit, keep in mind that they first announced they would do this in November 2010, nearly six months before the game came out (link). There was even a Codex thread about it. Similar letters were also sent to people who pirated the first Witcher in the UK (this is mentioned in the TorrentFreak article linked in the OP), but the articles I've found on the subject are unclear as to whether it was CDProjekt or Atari that hired the firm responsible for sending them.

 

[Gord]

But really, that is besides the point. I think we all know the reason for this strategy: lawyers vultures using enslaved para-legals to file out 1000's of fines in the hope that 1 in 30 pay approach the company and offer a cut.
Nothing else.

I agree on your opinion on the lawyers motivation, but this is much more serious than a simple scam scheme.

If it is what I think it is (a so-called "Abmahnung"), their letters are in accordance with german law. You can not simply ignore it.

The new business models are in no way the pirates fault. I repeat, freeriders dont participate in the game.
And even if they do, as you assert, by pushing down profits. Its still negative reinforcement.

Of course they participate. They create an impression of demand. If a publisher sees that his game gets sold 1 million times and pirated 2 million times the message to him is that he did something right with the game, but people are greedy thieves and cheapskates (no wonder considering that this is probably a good characterisation of many publishers themselves).
Therefore measures to impede piracy are an obvious (if often futile) solution to the problem.

The dumbing down, MMO shit, Shitbook games, Consolitis, etc, all come from positive reinforcement of paying customers.

There are obviously a lot of people who like that shit. Certainly more than the people that like classical rpgs.
We are increasingly becoming a marginalized minority.
But that doesn't have much to do with piracy.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Lol at people who think that buying AAA games supports art. Nope, it supports an industry that is called entertainment industry for a reason-it is there just to please the masses and it doesn't express anything in any way artistic or creative.

Not to mention that destroying piracy would do the exact opposite of improving the video game quality. Just following your "logical" and "rational" one dimensional argument that this would expand the video game market. Well, the video game market has been expanding for the last decade at extremely fast rates and that brought us the
The bigger the market the wider the target audience and dumbed down games would be.

The more pirates we have and the less one-dimensional gamers, the more games targeted at intelligent people with attention span bigger than 30 seconds.

Because, morons, it was the expansion of the market that destroyed RPGs, not the pirates, and the reason we got better games in the past was because talented people were not suppressed by greedy publishers. Buying an AAA title today is like buying a product manufactured in a third-world country -you know people were working in horrendous conditions and got their potential wasted because of greedy "modern-day slavers".
I refuse to support this injustice.

This sums up my thoughts on the issue. I think piracy in theory is bad but I just don't care any more. In the 90s and early 2000s I bought a shitload of games to support companies, all of them are gone now.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

It costed about 6.5 mln euro to develop .

And marketing?

 

[Havoc]

I bought TW2 CE and if I knew that CDP would do this shit, I wouldn't buy it in the first place.

CDP, you lost a customer.

 

[circ]

That figure must be made up by the way. You could make 50+ low budget 2 hour movies for that kind of money that would rake in considerably more profit. Or alternatively buy 50+ Ferraris. For 6.5 mil euros, I sure as hell would expect a better polished (hoho) game than what it turned out to be.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yes but when you've spent money on something that is not of pragmatic value then you tend to be more forgiving of its actual worth, and you'd end up letting the fact that you spent money on something like Oblivion slide because it was just sort of bad and not Stronghold 3 unpardonably terrible. Even those let's plays are not actually legal I don't think, or at least when this SOPA thing starts spreading (America does seem to have an innate ability to create and spread social diseases) they won't be any longer.

Piracy is really rather a lovely way for the proletariat to regain some measure of power. Companies and corporations go to great lengths to fool people into buying things they did not want in the first place and should probably not ever desire. With piracy the common sap has a tool and a weapon to defy the clearly clandestine intentions of a capitalist society that praises and supports swindle and Randian pursuits.

I'm much more understanding and sympathetic to those views than I may appear. My piracy philosophy is: put some in to get some out. If you suck on the developer tit forever without giving them something in return then I have a problem with you, but if you contribute to the ones you enjoy and want to support then I will never complain. So I'm not some anti-piracy zealot. I actually have a bigger problem with people who wait to buy great games until they're $5 than I do people who pirate everything and pay $50 for the good stuff.

All that said though, I think you're message misses a critical point which is basically that abstaining is a more powerful tool than piracy. Not buying AND not adding to piracy stats shows the company no one wanted to play their piece of shit.

 

[Turjan]

As I said further above, I can see some relation to the lawsuit with their publisher. They might have to prove something.

If you mean that they sent out these letters in response to the lawsuit, keep in mind that they first announced they would do this in November 2010, nearly six months before the game came out (link). There was even a Codex thread about it. Similar letters were also sent to people who pirated the first Witcher in the UK (this is mentioned in the TorrentFreak article linked in the OP), but the articles I've found on the subject are unclear as to whether it was CDProjekt or Atari that hired the firm responsible for sending them.

OK, I see your point. This came with a clear announcement before the game was even released. Then, regarding the lawsuit, it explains why Namco Bandai lost this part of their suit. CD Project could believably show that they had measures in place to curb alleged losses from piracy.

 

[commie]

I don't think I'll buy any CD-Project game again. I don't buy from child-abusing monsters.

But you don't have any money to buy games anyway, so what's the difference?*



* Reference to the Indie game thread where Awor was too poor to pay $10.......

 

[Darth Roxor]

I find it pretty amusing that some people in this thread are going 'waaaaaaah if I knew they'd do that I wouldn't buy OMG YOU LOST A CUSTOMER' when they've been announcing such measures way before releasing the game.

But then, I also remember how everyone's reaction to that announcement was 'haha yeah like they will ever try it'.

R00fles!