CD Projekt Admits Writing Letters to Pirates Doesn't Help

[Milanezi]

Blah blah blah blah

A few things:
1. Okay - go ahead and prove to me that everyone who could have possibly gotten one of these letters could totally get free legal defense. I know I sure as hell can't in civil case cases.

2. This exact practice is a large part of the reason why the RIAA is vilified as much as it is.

3. With you supposedly being a lawyer and all one would think you familiar with the concept of 'Trial by Jury', and you know the actual truth of matters not mattering quite as much as what you can convince the jury of. Same thing applies here - much of the public sees these kinds of practices as shady as hell for the reasons I listed; to the point that enough have spoken out against it as to convince CD Projeck that "Yeah, when you put that way - it is kind of shady, we'll stop".

You asked why the practice got such a negative response and I answered that. I'm not trying to make out CD Projekt to be a bad guy - in fact they should be commended for actually listening to other people's arguments on the situation and considering them.

I'm sorry, but in Brazil, that would NEVER happen. Ok, I should have listed that, being Brazilian, that's obviously the law I studied. As I said in another post, here you'll ALWAYS get a lawyer, unless it's a "simple" case and none of the parts have lawyers, but you'd still have a Judge or arbitrer. Also, our Trial by Jury only exists in cases of "crimes against life", such as homicide, and even then they don't get to decide half of what is allowed in the USA, simply because they have no tchnical knowledge on the legal system and it would be just wrong to, you kow, decide someone's FREEDOM with someone who just wants to get back home asap.

 

[Icehearted]

Valve might actually have the only viable strategy against it.

Except many of us hate Steam and refuse to use it. I'd be completely against digital distribution if not for GOG, which is unintrusive and doesn't demand I agree to an "all or nothing" ELUA for everything to be accessible. I also, as far as I know, cannot be banned from playing my GOG titles ever. I can download them all and back them up six ways from Sunday and they will be there for me, because I paid for them, because I cannot be blocked from them, because I am in control of how I play them. Origin and Steam cannot offer the same.

The game industry as a whole has a lot it needs to fix. The arbitrary price of $60 for all new releases, on disc/day one dlc, and stepping on the rights of consumers do nothing to instill loyalty and by virtue, sales. Treating your customers like crap for years will get you nowhere and this has been their approach (as a whole) for years, and it hasn't really gotten better.

Maybe when more companies admit they're contributing more to the problem than the solution?

 

[lancar]

Valve might actually have the only viable strategy against it.

Except many of us hate Steam and refuse to use it. I'd be completely against digital distribution if not for GOG, which is unintrusive and doesn't demand I agree to an "all or nothing" ELUA for everything to be accessible. I also, as far as I know, cannot be banned from playing my GOG titles ever. I can download them all and back them up six ways from Sunday and they will be there for me, because I paid for them, because I cannot be blocked from them, because I am in control of how I play them. Origin and Steam cannot offer the same.

I used to be completely against steam like you, but then I took a ridiculously cheap deal to the face.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I read the article twice
Still can't understand what was that "awful" thing they did

That's because the article doesn't say what it was.

In essence, the legal firm that CD Projekt hired for the 'recovery program' turned out to be a bunch of ambulance chasers who went apeshit sending out the legal notices.

 

[blackrave]

I read the article twice
Still can't understand what was that "awful" thing they did

That's because the article doesn't say what it was.

In essence, the legal firm that CD Projekt hired for the 'recovery program' turned out to be a bunch of ambulance chasers who went apeshit sending out the legal notices.

Oh, that IS bad.
Thanks for info.

 

[Entitled]

Exactly. While companies like CD projekt, Valve, and similar companies are infinitely more decent...

I'd not be so hasty as to hold Valve up so highly as a publisher. These guys are really starting to push their luck with the Steam side of things. If you're American, well go pat yourself on the back. For the rest of us, we're getting shoehorned with exploitative prices and sometimes even game sales that cannot be played due to store regionalisation gaffes.

I was referring to their often quoted statement that "Piracy is a service problem, so offer a better serice than the pirates to combat it", that is freqently held up along with CD projekt's system as some deep wisdom.

And while it really makes sense as a general direction, anti-DRM people repeating it too often as a mantra, just creates these unrealistic expectations, with people leading themselves to believe that if any DRM-free game has anything worse than 0% piracy rates, that's a proof of how immoral mannkind is, after all, normally accessible games OUGHT TO BE bought by every moral person, just as Valve declared.

These are a bit like the american cuture warriors, who insist on these supposedly "self-evident" arbitary rules of ethical sexuality, and whatnot, and then when humankind doesn't really follow them, flagellate themselves about how depraved we all are.

 

[Thoric485]

Thing is, quite a few gaming companies partake in this legal service - Atari, Techland, LucasArts, Eidos, Square Enix, Codemasters, Ubisoft, many German developers and publishers. Doesn't seem to bother anyone.

I guess CDP's unusually good standing in the gaming community is what brought the backlash on their heads, and they took it like champs, further cementing that reputation. I don't know how many other companies would've had the good sense to do that.

 

[Olrod]

You catch more good Karma with honey than with vinegar.

You shouldn't have threatened the pirates, but tried to make them like you so they'd feel like they'd WANT to pay, rather than they'd have to.

Make them feel like they're doing you a favour by not pirating your game, instead of you trying to make out you're doing them a favour by not prosecuting them.