The Witcher 2 Pirated "Roughly 4.5 Million" Times, Says Dev

[DataSnake]

So installing DRM hinders a minute number of people(the crackers).

Actually, it encourages them, because the tougher the DRM, the bigger the e-peen of whoever cracks it. Nobody would bother to climb Mount Everest if it was only 3 feet high. Unless companies find a completely uncrackable DRM (which they won't, since DRM is pretty much where Murphy's Law and Gödel's incompleteness theorems intersect), all they're doing is providing more of an incentive to crack it.

Edit: also, it encourages people to download the cracked version, because then they won't have to put up with whatever asinine "anti-piracy" measures the publishers put in.

 

[Sethzard]

This is a great attitude by them, the idea of giving people value for money is one I fully support. Sadly I wish that they would make games which I enjoyed.

 

[DTWolfwood]

"DRM does not work and however you would protect it, it will be cracked in no time," he continued. "Plus, the DRM itself is a pain for your legal gamers - this group of honest people, who decided that your game was worth the 50 USD or Euro and went and bought it. Why would you want to make their lives more difficult?"

Sound reasoning? WTF?! shocking

Anyways, I bought this game because the demo said to please buy it and that the game will have no DRM. The thought immediate went like this: WTF no DRM!?! O i am so buying this game! ...wait huh? no thats right they are doing right by me therefore i should do the same!

Yeh go figure that it actually works to just ask politely

 

[Callate]

One of many reasons GOG gets my business. Thank you, CD Projekt!

(And, EA? If you want my business on Mass Effect 3, it had better be possible to get a version without Origin!)

 

[sniddy_v1legacy]

I think it must have been pirated about 7,000,000 times surely - no it's more like 8,246,321..and 3/8ths where someone didn't finish

*rolleyes*

Seriously - WTF

I can make up numbers all day long, and even at say $30 a pop that's still $30,000,000 made...so go you! Yeh It's been pirated a lot, DRM free or not at best you prevented the 'evil' hackers and crackers about 1/2 a days head start....so basically people will vote with their wallets and I know most of my friends and me do pirate stuff we also support good developers - those of us who can run it all own Skyrim - one person has the collectors edition of witcher 2....

 

[FamoFunk]

This makes me sad. Someone on our side and they're taken advantage of :/

 

[RDubayoo]

4.5 million times? Eh, I'm sure they were all just "trying" it. As in playing it to completion. Multiple times. But they wouldn't have bought it, oh no.

 

[Thoric485]

That math is bad and statements like these are pointless either way. If this was pirated 4.5 million times, CoD was pirated 45 million times, they weren't cheated out of some revolutionary sales numbers.

Still, good on them for keeping a cool head and sticking with their no DRM and free DLC policy, it really is working in their favor and i'm happy with my GoG purchase.

CDPR are a studio worth supporting because they're one of the few nowadays with full control over the development and publishing of their games. They can make good, progressive choices like these and go out of their way to cater to their fanbase with things like the free Enhanced Edition or TW2 2.0, something that a studio part of some bloated publisher like EA or Activision, would never be allowed to do.

So instead of going on about how they're feeding starving developers in Uganda with their 60$ game + 30-60$ DLC purchases, console players should ask themselves why 3+ million selling games get sequels with half of TW2's development time.

And a fun fact: TW2 didn't have a working crack before release day, yet there was a fully working version of AC:Revelations on torrent sites two weeks before the official PC release.

 

[Olrod]

But how many of those pirated copies were actually lost sales?

How many of those pirates would have actually bought the game to begin with?

 

[Jamieson 90]

Well there is the proof if we needed any that pirates are jerks. They went to all the effort to make a great game without DRM and people still felt the need to pirate it. In my eyes all the arguments for pirating are just lame excuses to try and justify their actions.

The price argument doesn't work here since the game retailed cheaper than most titles of the same quality. I bought the game and probably played it for 10 hours just because I wanted to help make a statement. I got bored of the game after those 10 hours but it was worth it to make the statment.

If you pirated the game and didn't go buy it afterwards then shame on you.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Still the facts are, it is a quality game, and it sold shedloads.

How many actual sales were lost to piracy, and balancing that against how many people were nudged towards buying it because of the wonderful stance on DRM taken by the company, is something no-one can ever no.

I've neither bought nor pirated, I imagine I'll get it in a Steam sale, but I'm still playing Witcher 1!

 

[CaptainKoala]

Good for them. In the face of blatant and rampant piracy they stick to their principles and what they know to be true. Good job, guys.

 

[Aidinthel]

The more I hear from this company the more I like them. I bought a copy of the game even though my current computer can't run it just because I wanted to support this sort of business practice.

 

[ElPatron]

But how many of those pirated copies were actually lost sales?

How many of those pirates would have actually bought the game to begin with?

An even better question is...


How many of those "pirates" are actually individual downloads?

Don't forget that many torrents use the same trackers.

If you sum all the numbers you find in torrent websites, you will just be multiplaying the number of downloads by the number of websites you used as source.



Also, a lot of dowloads are actually seedboxes, which are needed for a torrent's high speed download before they reach a good number of seeders.

 

[Asehujiko]

stuff

So why does the escapist believe that a person who sends extortion letters to network printers is a credible source on piracy?

 

[aisu]

Imo its smart move... Drm is cracked on same day as release or day later anyway and pirates have undisturbed gameplay when people who actually bought damn game but have problems with interest because it broke or is unstable suffer... So atm drm hurts honest buyer instead of pirate... Its not for free and its ineffective... Other companies should learn from cd projekt... Imo its pretty logic move...

 

[Asuka Soryu]

It just makes it worse when you hear about the good guys who understand that DRM is horrible and don't do it, yet still they get screwed over by people who want everything to be free for them.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

But how many of those pirated copies were actually lost sales?

How many of those pirates would have actually bought the game to begin with?

While that argument is valid, I counter: How many of them wouldn't have bought it? I'm sure plenty of them avoided buying the legal version, because the alternative was free. If they didn't have the free option, how many would decide to avoid the game? I can assure you it wouldn't have been 4.8 million who wouldn't buy the legal version then.

I love soda, I buy soda. But if someone handed me free soda, of course I'd stop buying soda(but only if it was legal, I unlike pirates don't feel right about stealing)

But just because I'm taking the free version doesn't mean if it wasn't free, I wouldn't buy soda.


Yeah, games cost a lot, but I doubt that 4.8 million of those thieves were in such a tight pinch, they just couldn't afford the game, legally.


And just because some of those people wouldn't have bought the game anyway, does not make it right to steal.