CD Projekt Red to "immediately cease" threatening alleged Witcher 2 pirates

By Robert Purchese Published 12 January, 2012

Risk of wrongly accusing a fan too high.

Otherwise evangelised game developer CD Projekt Red has promised to "immediately cease" its questionable practice of sending letters to alleged pirates of The Witcher 2, and threatening legal action against them unless they pay nearly €1000.

Marcin Iwinski wrote an open letter to gamers that PC pusher Rock, Paper, Shotgun duly published.

In a nutshell, CD Projekt backed off because of the risk of wrongly accusing a fan of piracy. "We value our fans, our supporters and our community too highly to take the chance," wrote Iwinski, although he's convinced no such error has yet occurred.

That was the official excuse; this could be CDP simply crumpling under immense fan fury. Nevertheless, it's good news. As Iwinski put it: "We're doing our part to keep our relationship with you, our gaming audience, a positive one."

Your part is to not be "indifferent" to piracy.

"If you see a friend playing an illegal copy of a game- any game - tell your friend that they're undermining the possible success of the developer who created the very game that they are enjoying," urged Iwinski.

"Unless you support the developers who make the games you play, unless you pay for those games, we won't be able to produce new excellent titles for you."

"So we've decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates."

Marcin Iwinski, co-founder, CD Projekt Red

Marcin Iwinski's full letter follows.

"In early December, an article was published about a law firm acting on behalf of CD Projekt RED, contacting individuals who had downloaded The Witcher 2 illegally and seeking financial compensation for copyright infringement. The news about our decision to combat piracy directly, instead of with DRM, spread quickly and with it came a number of concerns from the community. Repeatedly, gamers just like you have said that our methods might wrongly accuse people who have never violated our copyright and expressed serious concern about our actions."

"Being part of a community is a give-and-take process. We only succeed because you have faith in us, and we have worked hard over the years to build up that trust. We were sorry to see that many gamers felt that our actions didn't respect the faith that they have put into CD Projekt RED. Our fans always have been and remain our greatest concern, and we pride ourselves on the fact that you all know that we listen to you and take your opinions to heart. While we are confident that no one who legally owns one of our games has been required to compensate us for copyright infringement, we value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual."

So we've decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates.

Let's make this clear: we don't support piracy. It hurts us, the developers. It hurts the industry as a whole. Though we are staunch opponents of DRM because we don't believe it has any effect on reducing piracy, we still do not condone copying games illegally. We're doing our part to keep our relationship with you, our gaming audience, a positive one. We've heard your concerns, listened to your voices, and we're responding to them. But you need to help us and do your part: don't be indifferent to piracy. If you see a friend playing an illegal copy of a game-any game-tell your friend that they're undermining the possible success of the developer who created the very game that they are enjoying. Unless you support the developers who make the games you play, unless you pay for those games, we won't be able to produce new excellent titles for you.

Keep on playing,

Marcin Iwinski

CD Projekt Red has been applauded for its hefty post-release development of The Witcher 2.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 4 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Spuzzell #1 4 months ago

    Probably for the best, I did not like how much this felt like blackmail.

    Anything that increases the general cultural acceptance that piracy is morally wrong is fine by me though, and I'd say CD Projekt have contributed towards that end.

  • Shikasama #2 4 months ago

    You're forgiven.

    Now go and make Witcher 3 so I can give you more of my money.

  • glottis0 #3 4 months ago

    These guys are my favourite.

  • RoOhDaMite #4 4 months ago

    Yeah right!

    "Now that we got those thousands of euros from all those unprepared dudes we ain't that desperate anymore."
    Edited by RoOhDaMite at 12/01/12 @ 17:24

  • pauleyc #5 4 months ago

    Well done. It was too much of an grey area, with the possibility of false positives being rather high. Kudos to CD Projekt for rethinking their approach.

  • oupe #6 4 months ago

    Personal ban lifted!

  • Der_tolle_Emil #7 4 months ago

    @RoOhDaMite Yeah right!

    "Now that we got those thousands of euros from all the other dudes we ain't that desperate anymore."

    That's exactly what I thought as well. It might not be that way but that did cross my mind.

  • Kaonazhie #8 4 months ago

    I'm still waiting on the xbox version as my PC would slam-dunk me straight to the final level of hell if I so much as looked at the Witcher 2 for PC.

  • PlugMonkey #9 4 months ago

    @RoOhDaMite & Der_tolle_Emil

    I'm pleased to hear they've made this decision, but sadly, my first thoughts were also of how much of the 'low hanging fruit' had already been 'monetised'. :(

  • Aradiel #10 4 months ago

    Back-peddling? Whatever happened to the "100% confidence" they boasted about previously?

  • bad09 #11 4 months ago

    Well that's good, they are awesome with their games and their stance on DRM but this tactic and reading up on their previous use of this shamefully legal scam (which resulted in the shiteating scumbag slime lawyers being fined and suspended for practicing for 3 months) was deeply worrying.

    Is anyone else getting sick and tired of the entertainment industries constant whinging about piracy and greasing of politians to get control of the internet in quite disgusting ways? It's really putting me off buying stuff these days.

    I know some of it is indeed actual lost revenue but get a grip, christ in music they claim losses of hundreds of trillions more dollars than are on the bloody planet!! Constantly whinging to and screwing over people who do pay and trying to kill the internet dead for everyone is not really the way to stop it. Sometimes I wish we could just unplug entertainment from the net, it was much better for customers and our freedoms with content when these companies had no clue about what went on and concentrated on selling products instead of looking at torrents hoping one day that will be their sales.

    Just fuck off entertainment industry, I to think people should support you to but just fuck off. Please.
    Edited by bad09 at 12/01/12 @ 17:43

  • jogyourmind #12 4 months ago

    Fucking idiots.

  • geox30 #13 4 months ago

    I was against this approach from the beginning.CDP,do what you do best,making great games and respect your customers that is and we will continue to support you.

  • mastablasta #14 4 months ago

    Thanks for letting me know I can download the game for free without being sued. Off to download the game. :)

  • uninspiredcup #15 4 months ago

    What other reason would you be on a torrent site? Too much bullshit, continue the letters, kill this scum, improve pc gaming.
    Edited by uninspiredcup at 12/01/12 @ 18:29

  • uninspiredcup #16 4 months ago

    @Kaonazhie Then get a better pc?

  • INSOMANiAC #17 4 months ago

    It's a real shame these companies cant successfully hunt down the thieving bastards and make them pay without a load of left wing arseholes talking shit

  • the_mtfr #18 4 months ago

    @bad09 I was going to rant on the same topics as you did. Amen brother. There's terrible news on a daily basis (e.g. from EFF and OSNews) about what's cooking for us. Hollywood and the other big media companies, making more money year after year (which is OK as a stand-alone fact) are wielding that money to change laws that trample the privacy, freedom of speech and innocent-until-proven-guilty principles for almost the entire planet.

    So yeah, GOG going after illegal downloaders doesn't make much sense as long as there are university studies telling that people who download illegally don't equate to a lost sale.

    By the way:
    http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right_All_Along

  • bad09 #19 4 months ago

    @the_mtfr

    Yeah it's quite frightening what control these companies are trying to get through all in the name of some hypothetical, and more importantly, unprovable lost revenue.

    I'd like to think it won't happen and America will do the right thing on SOPA but all the right polictians have been greased and things will go down this route maybe not this time but it WILL happen and corporations will control internet content, they have spent an absolute fortune "lobbying" governments they'll want a return on that. It's like over here in the UK with that shit DEB, Mandelson had already been greased up nicely so he owed that's why he rushed that thing though at the last minute when it was clear his party would be out. Politicians are as corrupt as the corporations sadly.

    Whats worrying is if you look at some of the evidence it atually seems that the piracy problem was the corporations doing in the first place to secure this control of our internet! :eek:

    Edited by bad09 at 12/01/12 @ 21:24

  • JayKwon #20 4 months ago

    Dudes, aplaude that they ceased pursuing, if they would've continued it would've been worse. And a lot of big men up their just deny any faults on thei side, I think it's strong of them to say they were wrong and follow up with the right action.

  • Wot_the_Melon #21 4 months ago

    @Aradiel Nothing. This is clearly them just ceasing because of fans complaining... about a method they didn't know about. Honestly, financially this doesn't matter to CDProjekt either way. The only reason they started it in the first place was the principle, to show that piracy is bad. That clearly wasn't how people interpreted it, so they stopped.

    As to the 100% confidence, we can't say anything about it, but considering their repeated assurances, CDProjekt's ideological reputation and the fact that every case was handled on an individual basis, I'd say they were probably right no-one was fined unjustly, nor would anyone have been had they continued.

  • callum9999 #22 4 months ago

    At the end of the day, this world is packed full of liars and cheats. If they did nothing, then piracy would be even more rampant than it is now (I know it's still really high so you may question the point - but particularly parents of teenagers doing the pirating etc. do tend to crack down when they get threatening letters through the post).

    I know people on here like to think of gaming as a hobby for you and them, but it's not. No matter how much they may say they love developing games - these companies are in it for the money - end of. Any other business in other sectors would be doing exactly the same if their business was under threat, it's just a shame there is no practical way of stopping without severely irritating the people who legitimately buy these products.

    Especially absolutely ridiculous DRM - these companies must be moronic to keep paying the licence fees for it. You can have all the DRM on the retail copies you want, but once a single copy gets cracked - that copy can be instantly turned into millions of copies, making the DRM utterly pointless (and ironically, irritating to the people who legally buy the game while not bothering the people who get it illegally!).
    Edited by callum9999 at 12/01/12 @ 23:07

  • SpaceMonkey77 #23 4 months ago

    Smart move, IMO. CDP taking a more Valve like approach is a good way to go. I think the best thing for CDP to do, moving forward, would be to sell their games through Steam, since they are still a small developer, and are more likely to fold.

    Seeing as The Witcher games are awesome, and I have a nice new PC, I'm going to buy both games and give them my support, so that they can continue being awesome and making awesome games.

  • Trigg3rHippie #24 4 months ago

    I bought The Witcher 2 on Steam sale for around £10 (I can't remember how much it was exactly). The premium edition with all the extras. Do you really need to pirate the game? Really? With all the games to play surely people can wait a bit until the game they want will be discounted (and it WILL be).
    Don't be a dick- support and respect other peoples' hard work.

  • Snake_2011 #25 4 months ago

    hope there finishing the 360 version & making a start on the PS3 version.

  • Nico4 #26 4 months ago

    Probably for the best.

  • Inmediasress #27 4 months ago

    I agree that pirating is bad at least for the smaller ones like CD propject but interestingly they manage to come over as simpathetic and human unlike some of the others.
    What gets my clock ticking is the big ones like EA/Acti and the like, going on about their eternal moaning how they need more money and pinning it all on piracy and secondhand sales.

  • geeza2020 #28 4 months ago

    I wish I could give these guys some money for The Witcher 2, I cant right now because I think my PC would melt into the desk if I tried to play it.

    Bring on the 360 version :)

  • desomondo #29 4 months ago

    Kudos to CD Project for seeing the light in this one. It sucks to have your baby stolen after spending so much time and effort making it, but the law suit wasn't helping anyone. I'd urge them (and all game developers) to release a demo next time (like they did for the original Witcher) and maybe the piracy problem might be lessened somewhat. Games aren't movies and trailers don't cut it.
    Edited by desomondo at 13/01/12 @ 23:18