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

[Double A]

I believe that if there was DRM, that number would have been, if anything, higher, due to protesters, trolls, and people who quite simply don't want to put up with DRM. I myself am more inclined to simply not buy games with excessive DRM (excessive being any).

 

[instantkarma5]

Best game of the year so far(for me). Its such a shame to see it pirated so much, great games should be supported, even with the great attitude these guys have. Cant wait for Witcher3!

 

[Lithuasil]

I really want to give the guys credit for their stance on this matter - but it's kind of hard, given the kind of product they've inflicted upon humanity :/

 

[Jfswift]

Just drop the price a little bit. I don't want extras, just a more reasonable price. Look at Steam's business model and how often they offer discounts, then look at my game library on there. I usually drop a few bucks if it's less expensive.

Edit: I like that they refuse to incorporate DRM though and I was considering trying out that game. That is cool of them.

 

[Meight08]

This is just abominable im sorry but this is why i believe the pc gaming market should just die quickly and painlessly
How does it make any kind of sense when a company makes a loveletter to pc gaming or decides to thank pc gamers this is their thanks!

crysis 1 1/20 of the people who played it actually bought it so crytek refuses to stay pc exclusive and you get angry when they do!.

90%of the people who played world of goo pirated it.
My freaking god!

and now this!

all you pc games who think developers who put drm on their games are complaining.
I hope you see now you are forcing devs away by stealing everything that is not nailed down.

 

[Meight08]

Do you really think dropping the price will work?
its already 40 dollars.
and the humble indie bundle which you can buy for one cent if your a douchebag.
was pirated for 25%
they will pirate everything no matter the price or value.

 

[Bonecrusher]

man, I love CD Projekt, I like their enthusiasm, their honesty, and because they are from Europe.

I hate DRM and I bought Witcher 2 from Gog.

 

[irishda]

This is the vicious cycle video gaming has become for the PC market. Consumers fuck over the developer. Developers fuck over the customer because the consumers are trying to fuck them over. It's nice to see that at least one developer is trying to break this cycle. But let's face it, I don't know that it can be broken. The gaming world is full of very self-entitled people, and no where is this more apparent than with the Humble Bundle. Nine games offered for whatever price the consumer wanted, even as little as 1 cent, with whatever amount they desired going between charity and the developers. Yet nearly a quarter of the owners of Humble Bundle pirated the game, refusing to pay even as little as one cent. Developers sure may be exacerbating the piracy problem, but lazy, entitled consumers are only fueling devs' actions.

 

[theultimateend]

I like these guys. Still, it sucks how much it got pirated, this studio doesn't really deserve it.

Those numbers are very loose. They are hardly accurate. If it was pirated 4.5 million times that would make it as popular as some of the most popular games ever made.

I find this highly implausible. It doesn't take dozens of factors into account.

This is the vicious cycle video gaming has become for the PC market. Consumers fuck over the developer. Developers fuck over the customer because the consumers are trying to fuck them over. It's nice to see that at least one developer is trying to break this cycle. But let's face it, I don't know that it can be broken. The gaming world is full of very self-entitled people, and no where is this more apparent than with the Humble Bundle. Nine games offered for whatever price the consumer wanted, even as little as 1 cent, with whatever amount they desired going between charity and the developers. Yet nearly a quarter of the owners of Humble Bundle pirated the game, refusing to pay even as little as one cent. Developers sure may be exacerbating the piracy problem, but lazy, entitled consumers are only fueling devs' actions.

It's more accurate to say:

a) People who are highly unlikely to buy a product copy it.
b) Developers who think those people would have bought it had it been impossible to copy ruin their next game with intense DRM (more intense than the previous DRM).
c) DRM is cracked, leaving the unlikely purchasers still not purchasers.
d) Legitimate purchasers are either punished or pushed away by Harsh DRM.

Process repeats.

Customers don't steal or copy things. People do. Customers are the only real victims in the situation because they are being told they are criminals.

Also the gaming world is not full of entitled people. The world is, it just happens that much of the world games when able.

We could just as easily argue that people who drink water are entitled because everyone who pirates or steals drinks water. Gamers aren't entitled, by necessity people who pirate games are gamers, people in the broad sense are entitled. For a variety of reasons.

Logically, DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. The moment one person cracks it, it's out there for everyone to take. The only way to stop piracy is to create fullproof DRM, and have you ever heard of DRM that wasn't eventually cracked? DRM exists because companies need to do something to comfort shareholders, and this is the easiest way to go.

It's this sort of rationalism that really disturbs me. It's so out of place on the escapist forums.

Makes me feel warm inside.

More people like you should have forum accounts online.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Besides finding the Witcher average overall (some parts great, some parts downright bad) I would have bought Witcher 2 on opening day. Except my PC couldn't handle it. So I picked it up this past weekend with it on sale at Steam. My PC still can't handle it, but it's in the library for when I upgrade.

 

[mooncalf]

I bought Witcher 2 and it cost me more than $60 (minirant) Australia blah blah etc. (/minirant) and this is icing on the cake. I don't want to be collateral damage in the war on piracy, so thanks CD projekt, I'll probably have bought the third game before I've finished the first.

 

[BakedZnake]

You know what might happen? If The witcher 2 does very well on 360 next year, we might see another developer leaning more towards the console market. It is the sad truth, as much as people like to argue and play down piracy on PC, all they have to do is do a quick google search on the popular torrent sites and see how many seeders and leechers there are for The Witcher 2 still after 6 months.

 

[The Lugz]

well i bought it with real cold hard cash, and i have my letter from the king and my commemorative coin to prove it, and i'm quite happy.

 

[LordRoyal]

Satisfied owner of the Witcher 1 and 2 here. These guys are probably the only gaming company that doesn't hate the consumer. So I tip my hat to them and look forward to whatever they make next.

*points to Bethesda and the creation kit they release for free*

Modding tools aren't hard to produce, especially considering it's going to be based on an earlier version of the software for Oblivion.

That and it's smart business sense for Bethesda, the PC version tends to sell enormously well after release due to mods. It's more killing two birds with one stone for Bethesda and all they have to do is spend a few weeks making it less buggy and they make a couple million more years after release.

How is it pirating if it's legally offered for free? How many of those people that downloaded it for free would have pirated it if it weren't the legal route? You really skew the numbers when you say, "You can have it for free (legally)...we'd like to get paid, but whatevs."

It's not legally offered for free... I don't know where you received this information.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_witcher_2

40$

You can only get it for free if you pirate it. What CD Projekt is saying is that they don't mind the fact the game was pirated because it would have been anyway. DRM just pisses off the 1 million that bought it legally.

I would love to know where they get these numbers from and on what basis he thinks that it is worse than that.

He means if those numbers are accurate those are just the people that admitted to it, or those were just the torrents they found while searching for statistics. If it was accurate then there would be significantly more that pirated it.

they will pirate everything no matter the price or value.

Stopping piracy isn't possible, people will still do it no matter what.

What CD Projekt was doing was not treating the consumers that actually payed for it like criminals. Especially considering companies that do use DRM end up having more people that would have payed for it pirate it out of spite.

 

[maxmanrules]

They have good policies regarding DRM. That's as far as my praise of CDP will stretch.
But yes, excellent attitude regarding value of product.

They have bad business sense is what they have. 4,500,000+ copies pirated is kind of a large number. A really large number.

If those people paid even a single penny for the game, that's still $45,000+ lost. More than what most people make in a year.

But adding loads of DRM wouldn't make that number go down. They probably gained loads of sales by not adding tons of DRM because of all the good press it got them.

Unless someone builds a time machine, we'll never know how it would have turned out differently if they'd used DRM.

Yes, but they'd still get that many pirated anyway. That's how pirates work, that's part of the point that Marcin Iwinski (awesome name) was making. Whatever level of DRM you have, the level of pirating, which has no DRM, will remain the same in proportion to sales if there is the same level of DRM in games. If there is less DRM people are more likely to buy a legit copy. I've seen plenty of people pirating BECAUSE of DRM in a product.
And you don't need to use a time machine, that statement is logically correct, they will have earned plenty of positive publicity, which translates to more sales, especially with all the rage gamers have towards DRM nowadays.

 

[j0frenzy]

I haven't had the chance to try Witcher 2 and can't play my copy of the first game (not a good computer for that one, unfortunately), but I can definitely see myself dropping money more for these fantasy RPGs then a "Dragon Age" copy going for any price.

Steam was having a sale earlier this summer and I got the entire "Dragon Age" game for a little over 10 bucks. It was fun, but the DLC wouldn't activate until I made a Bioware account, EA account, and then tell the developers I legally purchased all of that extra content. The main game I tried was okay, but I felt like I was a criminal due to EA's way of confirming I bought all the DLC from Steam. Kind of reminds me of how Jim Sterling said that a game fails any time it discriminates against legally paying customers [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/4568-Online-Passes-Are-Bad-For-Everybody].

You think that is bad? How about the menu screen saying "You can't connect to our servers so you can't play our game," on a 360 where piracy is less of a problem. Better yet, the problem has been well documented for over a year and no one has done anything about fixing the server issue.
I would happily buy Witcher or Witcher 2 if I had any sort of machine that could run it. Hell, I considered buying that super awesome Collector's Edition because it looked so cool and I wanted to support a developer who had its head on straight. I will almost definitely pick up Witcher 2 on the 360 when it does come out.
The 4.5 million is a rough estimation and is meaningless. You can't track how many people copied the game. The number proves nothing and I'm willing to bet that CDP won't use that number as an excuse to add DRM next time. The most effect it will have is on who publishes the game and what demands they make.

 

[irishda]

It's more accurate to say:

a) People who are highly unlikely to buy a product copy it.
b) Developers who think those people would have bought it had it been impossible to copy ruin their next game with intense DRM (more intense than the previous DRM).
c) DRM is cracked, leaving the unlikely purchasers still not purchasers.
d) Legitimate purchasers are either punished or pushed away by Harsh DRM.

Process repeats.

Customers don't steal or copy things. People do. Customers are the only real victims in the situation because they are being told they are criminals.

Also the gaming world is not full of entitled people. The world is, it just happens that much of the world games when able.

We could just as easily argue that people who drink water are entitled because everyone who pirates or steals drinks water. Gamers aren't entitled, by necessity people who pirate games are gamers, people in the broad sense are entitled. For a variety of reasons.

The world is full of entitled people. The gaming world is part of the world. Ergo, the gaming world is full of entitled people. Just look at the forums for an MMO game.

Logically, DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. The moment one person cracks it, it's out there for everyone to take. The only way to stop piracy is to create fullproof DRM, and have you ever heard of DRM that wasn't eventually cracked? DRM exists because companies need to do something to comfort shareholders, and this is the easiest way to go.

It's this sort of rationalism that really disturbs me. It's so out of place on the escapist forums.

Makes me feel warm inside.

More people like you should have forum accounts online.

I don't buy this argument that everyone who pirates wouldn't buy the game anyways, so no customer base is lost anyways by combating it. What subset of piracy though would buy the game if it was unavailable as a free pirated copy immediately? What subset of pirates would've bought the game but didn't because the option to NOT have to pay was there? It takes time to crack DRMs, and people, by nature, don't like being left out of a fad (i.e. being among the first to play a well-marketed/hyped game). Some people just HAVE to play a game when it's available. But we can never know just who would or wouldn't buy the game.

 

[theultimateend]

I don't buy this argument that everyone who pirates wouldn't buy the game anyways, so no customer base is lost anyways by combating it. What subset of piracy though would buy the game if it was unavailable as a free pirated copy immediately? What subset of pirates would've bought the game but didn't because the option to NOT have to pay was there? It takes time to crack DRMs, and people, by nature, don't like being left out of a fad (i.e. being among the first to play a well-marketed/hyped game). Some people just HAVE to play a game when it's available. But we can never know just who would or wouldn't buy the game.

Name one game that had extended success with DRM that saw statistically significant higher sales?

As far as I'm aware there has never been one instance of a game having higher sales during a period of Piracy drought.

When I say extended success I mean what game has seen better sales per capita on the PS3 versus the 360 (where you can currently pirate games).

What game has had better sales per capita on the PC before the DRM was cracked? I'm not aware of a single one. What I have seen is sales lower than expected on games that had vicious DRM, I've also seen forums of legitimate customers complaining about DRM.

As for the other part about gamer entitlement, /shrug, it's a weak point. By necessity a person needs to be a gamer to game, its the person part that is entitled and it is something that carries into all facets of life. Loss Aversion and a plethora of other cognitive biases.

 

[Smooth Operator]

They have bad business sense is what they have. 4,500,000+ copies pirated is kind of a large number. A really large number.

And if they put in draconian DRM that number would be the same, the only difference would be that legit customers get shafted.

 

[LordRoyal]

They have bad business sense is what they have. 4,500,000+ copies pirated is kind of a large number. A really large number.

And if they put in draconian DRM that number would be the same, the only difference would be that legit customers get shafted.

I think the number would have been higher actually. Considering a lot of people bought the Witcher 2 legally (I know some people that bought multiple copies) just because CD Projekt was being nice about it. With DRM it would have had more PC gamers pirating it out of spite.