Pretty much.
Witcher 2
- Thread starter Operation Mindcrime
- Start date
Pretty much.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
You banned the products of a company for the name of one of their graphics cards.
Anyway as far as I can tell noone is really going after the developer. It is infact the publisher they are targeting for previous unethical behaviour. As far as I can tell the developer is unfortunately an innocent party in all this.
Pffft, I am neither stealing from AMD nor defending people who steal from AMD nor blasting AMD if they decided to go after people that may have stolen something from them.
Not the same. I'm actually happy that CD Projekt will be actively pursuing those that they feel are pirating their product. Just as I'm all in favor of the RIAA protecting their producers who are protecting their artists.
Regards,
SB
Pffft, I am neither stealing from AMD nor defending people who steal from AMD nor blasting AMD if they decided to go after people that may have stolen something from them.
I'm actually happy that CD Projekt will be actively pursuing those that they feel are pirating their product. Just as I'm all in favor of the RIAA protecting their producers who are protecting their artists.
Regards,
SB
As a concept, I have zero problem with this. I lust for this, actually. I want pirates to pay. They are slowly ruining the PC gaming industry. I don't think there will be a PC gaming industry per se(As in, one we would recognize or enjoy) in ten years due to those fucking bastards.
The problem? Their execution is at best immoral and at worst illegal.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Pffft, I am neither stealing from AMD nor defending people who steal from AMD nor blasting AMD if they decided to go after people that may have stolen something from them.
Difference between theft and copying is that in the former, someone loses something, in the latter, someone does not. An important difference that is deliberately blurred by the content cartels, because they don't want to talk about "potential" or "possible" sales.
These are the companies that think I am "stealing" because I spend money on a something other than what they want to sell me, or I'm stealing because I format shift my legally bought music from CD to a ipod, lend my CDs to friends, or leave the room during commercials.
How is that going to make me want to spend my money with such antagonistic people? Why should I stay to a higher moral standard, when they show such low morals? And so the seller-buyer relationship is again made more toxic.
Ha - you know none of the money collected by the music cartels in these settlements has gone to the artists? They've said it themselves - they keep the money to feed into more of this speculative invoicing system, because they see it as a new business model. It's disgusting.
Pffft, I am neither stealing from AMD nor defending people who steal from AMD nor blasting AMD if they decided to go after people that may have stolen something from them.
For a second there I had a vision of my sending a speculative invoice to Dave. I know his work address now because of a sneaky parcel that Valve and I collaborated in sending to him. I wonder what would happen if I threaten legal action for stealing office supplies?
Think about it, I could demand a review sample for Digi and for AlexV so the site can do a Cayman review quicksmart. Anyway I was trying to draw a parallel between your moral stand on purchasing AMD cards and the moral stand of people who are against a company doing what they consider to be ethically abhorent. There are many similarities in the two positions given they are rooted in the persons individual sense of morality and ethics. Quite likely anyone willing to take a stand on any topic like this has a strong morality drive.
Just as I am in favour of those willing to boycott products because of the actions of the company which makes them. We are again on two different sides of a boycott. This is quite ironic in a way. However im not against their taking action against pirates, im against taking action against pirates in such a morally bankrupt way.
NO ...
Developer: CD Project RED
Publisher for Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech, Slovakia, etc): CD Project RED
Publisher for rest of the Europe and USA: ATARI
green.pixel
Veteran
After the game is released, nothing. But for starters, the industry should consider the following WRT to PC gaming and how it affects piracy rates and sales:
- no second hand market
- no rental option
- no (good) demos. For example, read Esha's comment on that article. Hell, even a demo of the recent Settlers had DRM ffs. Metro 2033's demo was released nearly half a year after the release of the game.
Here, I wrote a post about the rest of the stuff. I was going to put it here, but I thought it's better there.
You know how many people buy console games because they know they can sell them and get some of the money back? You think it is a coincidence that the second hand market is so big right now? Hell no. Publishers are delusional if they think that second hand sales and rentals don't help the market. On top of that, PC gamers aren't suckers for low quality titles or poor value DLC. On consoles bad games can sell, on PC nearly never. Just look at the Ubisoft's Imagine Babies and EA's Littlest Pet Shop series.
10k+ torrent source doesn't give you reliable information about the lost sales. It is not a coincidence that the largest piracy rates are in low per-capita GDP countries where the prices of games are ridiculously high compared to the income and purchasing power. Some part of the torrenting audience downloaded it and bought it after, or in the cases of resource-heavy games like Crysis downloaded to see how it would run on their PCs, and so on. As I've linked earlier in the thread about music (here's another one), piracy can be used by the savvy consumer to find what is good before purchasing. Read here what NiN's Trent Reznor thougth about one of the largest music trackers. The industry continues to deny that piracy played a major role in gaming not being a niche hobby today and made some of the people handsomely rich. And it will continue on its path of growth just fine, unless they continue making original copies more inconvenient to play than the pirated ones.
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A bit of a laugh for everyone ( a bit ot but copyright related)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...rs-Sue-Lawyer-Who-Helped-Copyright-Defendants
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...rs-Sue-Lawyer-Who-Helped-Copyright-Defendants
That actually makes me very sad.
I still fail to see what the problem is and why people from this forum are talking about not buying what looks like an obviously sweet game to play. Baby steps people. This game is one of the handful of games if not the only game to go DRM free. We should applaud and thus open our wallets just for that. The game will be pirated no doubt. There will always be those sorts of a-holes out there. If a lawyer company starts suing people and demand payments, I say go for it, they should in all rights. Some will be innocent and a LOT won't be. Do we know how CD Projekt intends to distinguish and sort out who is innocent and who is a wrong doer? No I don't think we have enough information on that topic. Let's see how it gets handled. If CD Projekt fubars this approach well they will lose their fan base and they have shot themselves in their own feet. But for now it just seems if the community responds to their move positively something good will come out of it. My 2 cents.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Should we buy all PC games just to reward the company that deigns to give us a game? Should we all buy two or three copies to reward them? Maybe we should just send tham cash because we are so grateful?
There is no "good" way that these "sue-em-all" systems work. CD Projekt signs on to some scummy lawyers who say "it'll cost you nothing, we'll take our cut out of the settlements", lawyers then employ some unreliable company to note IPs from a swarm, then get the account holder's details from the ISP in order to send threatening letters.
The client doesn't know or care how the system works, they just want a cheque at the end of the month, just like the scummy lawyers, innocent or guilty damned together. There is no "honest" system out there, just dodgy lawyers wanting to cash in and promising clients like CD Projekt free cash.
There is no "good" way that these "sue-em-all" systems work. CD Projekt signs on to some scummy lawyers who say "it'll cost you nothing, we'll take our cut out of the settlements", lawyers then employ some unreliable company to note IPs from a swarm, then get the account holder's details from the ISP in order to send threatening letters.
The client doesn't know or care how the system works, they just want a cheque at the end of the month, just like the scummy lawyers, innocent or guilty damned together. There is no "honest" system out there, just dodgy lawyers wanting to cash in and promising clients like CD Projekt free cash.
bitwise xor
Newcomer
The amount of effort gone into TW2, in terms of game and packaging (digital and retail), and how good it looks like its shapping up to be (especially compared to a certain other project that seems so far like it was given a year and a half to rush in the 'press a button and something awesome happens' feature), doesn't exactly suggest a bunch of people that want something for nothing because it's a pc game.
Argue against what they are doing, but theres no need to get carried away with the generic hyperbole.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
I'm arguing against the people who suggest we should forgive a company anything merely because they are bringing out a game for the "dying" PC platform. It's not going to bring about the apocalypse of PC gaming if some people don't buy Witcher 2 as a protest against the scummy practice of signing up with these low-life lawyers.
green.pixel
Veteran
If the protest has any effect, the lower sales figures will be, mark my words, be attributed to piracy and not customers passing the purchase, just like with other boycotts with the gaming companies.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Yes, because as I said upstream, gaming execs will blame everyone but themselves for low sales. They could bring out a buggy game that no one wants, and they would still blame piracy rather than take the responsibility themselves.
That doesn't mean I'm just going to say "well I might as well buy the game anyway". I'll spend my money elsewhere. Maybe I'll have a nice evening out with my wife and the publishers can complain how I'm "stealing" from them because I bought her a meal instead of a PC game.
If anything, I think people will simply pirate the game and justify it by saying that if they are going to be treated and counted as pirates no matter what they do, they might as well be pirates. Sure, it's s circular argument, but it's one supplied by the publishers, and is another element of the toxic relationships being fostered between the publisher and the customer that does neither side any good.
The irony of the moves they are making is that a lot of the people who bought their software would do so in part because of morality. Since their buying public is already making a good moral choice in buying rather than pirating, any morally unsound action ought to hurt them harder especially as it is more of a niche market compared to say the failed MW2 boycott.
