Witcher 2 'leaked' video

[mkreku]

I would laugh out a lung if they managed to fine the mudeating pirate I'm not allowed to name by name or nickname according to the mods.

[Starwars]

It amuses me that people are actually angry about this on some other sites I frequent.

 

It seems to me that it is full within their right to go after people who pirate their games. While I think the "scaretactics" is a bit lulzy, the people raging about it is even lulzier.

 

"I'm not a pirate BUT CDPROJECT HOW DARE YOU DO THIS ARGHARGHRAWR HATEHATEHATE"

[Nepenthe]

It amuses me that people are actually angry about this on some other sites I frequent.

 

It seems to me that it is full within their right to go after people who pirate their games. While I think the "scaretactics" is a bit lulzy, the people raging about it is even lulzier.

 

"I'm not a pirate BUT CDPROJECT HOW DARE YOU DO THIS ARGHARGHRAWR HATEHATEHATE"

Yeah. I mean, they deliberately chose NOT to have customer-unfriendly DRM in their product, but instead to pursue actual pirates aggressively. Better approach, and one in which they certainly are morally justified. I'm actually considering picking this one (and w1) up, now. When I have more time...

[Sannom]

I have my doubts on the efficiency of that policy, though. And aren't fines a government's prerogatives?

[Nepenthe]

I have my doubts on the efficiency of that policy, though. And aren't fines a government's prerogatives?

 

Fines =/= compensation for damage

[Zoraptor]

The problem is that the 'enforcement agencies' are lazy, use standover tactics of dubious legality- based on bulk mailing people based only on IP lists that torrent sites admit to seeding with spoofed IPs and the principle that many people will pay up rather than have a potential court case even if innocent- and have a very bad false positive rate because, well, they're lazy and doing it for the $$$.

 

A few links blatantly stolen from RPS comments (and hence rather UK centric): one two three

 

I'd have a big diddums reaction to pirates being targeted if the vermin doing the enforcing weren't worse. CDP would be very well advised not to associate with that sort of garbage under any circumstances as it may make them some money but a few pensioner-gets-extortion-letter type headlines will destroy their carefully built up good will very quickly.

[LostStraw]

Doing due diligence on trying to reduce false positives is probably very costly considering how many letters they'd have to send out to even make a dent in the pirate population. Note that the RIAA had trouble with this during their lawsuit campaign even though they only went after relatively few individuals.

 

If the game sells 2 million units and the piracy rate is 50% that makes sending out 20,000 letters only cover a potential 1% of all people pirating said game. The resources to individually verify that each those 20,000 actually pirated the game would be astronomical in and of itself -- let alone actually to sue all of them individually. A company telling someone they will sue them unless they pay, even though the company would probably not actually go through with the lawsuit, sounds an awful lot like extortion to me.

 

This is much worse than DRM of which I don't oppose for the most part (except for the restrictions on fair use). With DRM there's the option not to buy the product, or to possibly return the product (not true in all cases) if it's defective. With the mass mailing it's essentially a lottery that you're automatically entered into no matter what -- only the prize really sucks.

[entrerix]

The proposed action by CD projekt seems like a great idea.

 

The "false positives" is not really a big deal, if you receive the letter in error, then ignore it.

 

If they decide to follow up and sue an innocent person without spending more time fact checking, then they deserve the countersuit for libel and defamation. They, after all, are the ones who must prove that you in fact pirated the game. Truth would be their defense here and it would fail (you still must prove the amount of damage that the ridiculous and unwarranted claim of piracy caused you, but in my profession, an accusation of moral turpitude is an extremely serious one, and potentially worth a hefty sum)

 

Even if there were no damages incurred by the defamation, a successful countersuit would likely at the very least recoup attorney fees and lost wages for the defense against the unwarranted action.

 

Everytime I hear someone say, "what about the false positives" I assume they are a pirate and are whining because they know they would lose such a suit.

 

Heck, a layperson probably wouldnt even need an attorney. just show up in court with the bank statement from the month of your purchase and then watch cd projekt counsel's face.

 

Of course, none of these are actually going to result in a court battle. this is reality, and in reality CDProjekt doesn't want to spend $20,000 to recoup $50 plus damages. Also, they (with their medium size corporate pockets) stand much more to lose from an action against an innocent party than they do to gain from a likely insolvent pirate.

 

also: no corporate counsel will sign off on an expensive lawsuit against a person who maybe pirated a $50 game. they will only bother suing people who ACTUALLY pirated, and more probably ACTUALLY DISTRIBUTED pirated copies, and even then, only those pirates who actually have any assets worth pursuing.

Edited November 25, 2010 by entrerix

[Zoraptor]

Let's see:

The innocent have nothing to fear?

You must be a pirate to complain (thinly veiled, natch)?

Failure to read links provided?

Ignorance of how things work technically (ie you can be accused of piracy whether you even know what The Witcher is so just turning up to court with your receipt statement is the reddest of herrings)?

Ignorance of how civil court works (ie it is not decided on 'beyond reasonable doubt' as with criminal court but on balance of probability and ignoring them/ not turning up is pretty much automatically an admission of guilt)?

 

Most piracy demand letters are little better than Nigerian Money Scams and work on pretty much the same principle- that a given proportion of people will always pay.

 

There are ways to get far better levels of proof (still not 100% accurate though; hopefully if CDP does decide to press ahead those will be the methods used) but since they take actual time to do and cannot be done easily in bulk they tend to get ignored even by such strident organisations as RIAA and the like.

Edited November 25, 2010 by Zoraptor

[Hassat Hunter]

Lol, how anyone can prefer hefty DRM above this baffles me.

[funcroc]

Eurogamer interview - The Witcher 2: We're not afraid of Dragon Age

[Labadal]

At this point, they shouldn't be. Besides, the games comes out two months after eachother. Enough time to play both.

[Gorgon]

'Afraid'

 

lol.

 

Dragon Age might be good, we can't really know, but it would surprise me if it turned out as nice as Witcher 2.

[Gorth]

I really want to look forward to The Witcher 2, but I worry about the changes. Part of me is (optimistically) hoping for more of the same whereas a different part of me is (pessimistically) dreading that all their efforts have gone into expanding on areas that I do appreciate.

 

Lets see when it gets out

[mr insomniac]

I really want to look forward to The Witcher 2, but I worry about the changes.Part of me is (optimistically) hoping for more of the same whereas a different part of me is (pessimistically) dreading that all their efforts have gone into expanding on areas that I do appreciate.

 

Lets see when it gets out

Emphasis is mine, as that's how I feel about Dragon Age 2. For me Witcher 2 is very much wait-and-see, since I couldn't get through the first one in two attempts.

Edited November 29, 2010 by mr insomniac

[Humanoid]

I would be happy with The Witcher 2 was The Witcher 1 without the swamp.

[sorophx]

I liked the swamp and the boss battle was very nice

[Gorth]

I liked the swamp and the boss battle was very nice

The swamps were even better than the sewers and that's saying something

 

It would have helped if the sewers had had more rats and less drowners.

[mr insomniac]

The swamp is where I quit playing the game both times. I just felt like whatever momentum the game had built up to that point, with the atmosphere, the music, and just being generally cool... it just ran out of steam in the swamp.

 

Also, Valve killed the Witcher. Twice. First with Portal, since I bought both The Witcher and The Orange Box at the same time. Secondly with L4D, which came out shortly after I decided to give Witcher another go.

[Gorth]

You people just don't appreciate swamps

[Orchomene]

I'm confident with the Witcher 2 and thus preordered it. Of course, if the game ends being as bad as a new Bioware games, I will just remove this confidence for following games.

In the result, I've preordered The Witcher 2 and can't even imagine preordering DA2.

[mkreku]

I also quit playing in the swamp. Now that's a sign of a badly designed area if I ever saw one..

[Hassat Hunter]

The swamp wouldn't have been that bad if it was fully open, instead of partially blocked. You couldn't just go to the tower in the middle, you had to make a circle. Which wasn't fun when you had to do it the x-th tenth of time, and navigate haphazardly around areas designed as non-passable .

 

Yeah, I didn't like the swamps. Though the end-game one was worse than the one in chapter II and III.

[Guest Slinky]

The swamp had way too many drowners. Actually the whole game had too many drowners if you ask me. But the swamp was also pretty much the first place ever that got me feeling "Hell, I really don't want to be here during night" and head to safety when sun started to go down. So I pretty much tolerate it.

 

And the swamp in end-game... I just ran from point A to B the whole time, was painless that way.

Edited November 29, 2010 by Slinky

[Gorgon]

I liked the swamp , and I didn't think it hard to navigate at all. Obstacles in the center, everything else more or less had a clear path. The final swamp, well I felt pretty swamped out by then so I didn't do anything but the main quest.

 

I disliked the sewers and dungeons, rather than have 3 feet of visibility I would crank the brightness and gamma all the way up, instantly making everything very ugly.