This is an interesting approach from a company that earned a lot of credit by releasing DRM-free games. CD Projekt doesn’t want to bug legitimate consumers with DRM, but for some reason they don’t see it as a problem that their piracy witch-hunt will undoubtedly lead to accusing people who haven’t downloaded the game at all.

How easy things can go wrong once again became apparent this week, as a retired woman who doesn’t own a computer or even a router was ordered by the court to pay a hefty fine for downloading a Hooligan movie.

But perhaps we’re wrong. Could it be that CD Projekt has some super-secret technology that magically allows them to identify real people instead of IP-addresses? A comment CD Projekt’s Michal Nowakowski gave to PC Gamerlast week suggests that this is indeed the case.

“We’re addressing only 100% confirmed piracy cases that are 100% possible to prove,” Nowakowski said.

“We are not worried about tracking the wrong people. As this is the trade secret of the company working on this, I cannot share it. However, we investigated the subject before we decided on this move, and we are aware of some past complications.”

The previous complications Nowakowski refers to are the many wrongful accusations that were widely published in the media after the notorious file-sharing lawyers Davenport Lyons started sending out settlement letters to people who allegedly downloaded The Witcher. But this is no longer a concern according to Nowakowski.

“The method used here is targeting only 100% confirmed piracy cases. No innocent person was targeted with the letter so far. At least we have not received any information as of now which would indicate something like that,” he said.

That’s great news of course, if only it were true. The reality is that CD Projekt is making bogus claims. It is by definition impossible to know that the right people are being targeted and there are still many complications that come with the scheme.

Although there are measures that can be taken to improve the quality of the evidence, such as confirming that a certain IP-address is actually sending data, it’s still a fact that an IP-address doesn’t identify a person. The game may have been downloaded by a neighbor over an unsecured WiFi-network for example.

The only identifying evidence CD Projekt can have is an IP-address and a time-stamp, so it is impossible to know with 100% accuracy that the right person is targeted.

While it may be safe to assume that most of the letters do indeed go to the right household, claiming that it’s possible to identify pirates with 100% accuracy is bogus. On the contrary, when you target thousands of people with these pay-up-or-else letters you can be 100% sure that there will be wrongful accusations.

If CD Projekt is not willing to accept that their anti-piracy scheme comes with collateral damage then it would be better if they drop out.

DRM is bad, but demanding cash from people who have never even heard of The Witcher 2 isn’t the best PR for a company either.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to the makers of the game, DRM only hurts people who buy the game, not those who download the pirated versions where the DRM has been stripped.

“Yes, it is then hard to crack, but you start messing with the operation system, the game runs much slower and – for a group of legal gamers – it will not run at all. None of these solutions really work, so why not abandon it altogether?” CD Projekt’s CEO Marcin Iwinski explained recently.

In the same interview the CEO also said that despite selling over a million DRM-free games, many people still pirated it. According to his own accounting some 4,5 million copies were shared on BitTorrent alone. Although this is a few million more than TorrentFreak’s tracking systems report, there have indeed been lots of downloads of the game.

However, for CD Projekt this is not necessarily a bad thing as they had plans all along to cash in on piracy.

“Yes we will track illegal file-sharing hoping people will find the game good enough to actually change their mind and be willing to pay for it,” CD Projekt’s Agnieszka Szostak told us earlier.

Although this initially sounded quite reasonable, away from the spotlight the company followed in the footsteps of so-called copyright trolls, by signing up for a so-called “pay-up-or-else” scheme. CD Projekt hired a law firm and torrent monitoring company to track those who illegally downloaded and shared the game, and has been sending them hefty cash settlement proposals.

The price CD Projekt is asking through their lawyers is slightly higher than what gamers have to pay in stores, to say the least. Over the past several months thousands of alleged BitTorrent users in Germany were asked to cough up 911,80 euros ($1230) to pay off their apparent debt to the company.

As is often the case, these mass settlement schemes do not exist without collateral damage. Aside from targeting many people who indeed downloaded and shared the game without paying, CD Projekt’s lawyers are also wrongfully accusing people who have never even heard of the game.

After all, an IP-address doesn’t identify a person, and Wi-Fi piggybacking is not unusual. But CD Projekt, who don’t want to bug legitimate consumers with DRM, apparently take this collateral damage for granted.

The company, however, is no stranger to the business model which a US federal judge recently described as a shakedown. In 2008, large numbers of Internet users started receiving letters from notorious file-sharing lawyers Davenport Lyons in the UK demanding cash settlements. Among those letters were demands for payment on an Atari-published game with a familiar title – The Witcher.

At the time the actions were widely criticized in the UK by consumer rights groups and the media, mainly because of the many wrongful accusations. Despite this critique, CD Projekt continues to pursue BitTorrent users in Germany, probably because it earns them good money.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

He was referring to the DRM present in certain versions of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, the hot new title from CD Projekt. His calculations revealed the following:

* With SecuROM: 41 sec game launch, 16 sec savegame, 16-43 fps
* Without SecuROM: 9 sec game launch, 8 sec savegame, 24-73 fps

Although the performance hit is dramatic, only retail versions of the game are affected since Steam versions and those from GOG.com are supplied DRM-free.

“I bought the game from Amazon,” said our concerned reader. “I am an idiot, apparently.”

However, after listening to complaints like these around the web, today CD Projekt will release a patch which will remove DRM from all versions of the game.

“Our goal is to make our fans and customers happy and to reward them for buying our game and DRM schemes does not support our philosophy as they might create obstacles for users of legally bought copies,” reports CD Projekt’s Adam Badowski, refreshingly.

“Our approach to countering piracy is to incorporate superior value in the legal version. This means it has to be superior in every respect: less troublesome to use and install, with full support, and with access to additional content and services. So, we felt keeping the DRM would mainly hurt our legitimate users.”

Interestingly, TorrentFreak had already been in contact with CD Projekt who told us their main concern was avoiding a pre-release situation, something they achieved.

“Nowadays most PC games are available for download with a working crack at least couple of days before official release,” Agnieszka Szostak of CD Projekt told us. “We’re happy we were able to avoid it with our game.”

While CD Projekt’s approach to DRM in this instance is to be commended, and piracy can indeed be deterred by making it more worthwhile to get the official copy, this announcement should perhaps not be read in isolation.

As reported last year, CD Projekt already warned that DRM aside, they might take another and even more controversial approach to dealing with piracy.

“Of course we’re not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,” CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski explained at the time.

“In quite a few big countries, when people are downloading [The Witcher 2] illegally they can expect a letter from a legal firm saying, ‘Hey, you downloaded it illegally and right now you have to pay a fine’,” Iwinski added.

A couple of weeks ago TorrentFreak heard rumors that a pre-released but uncracked version of a Witcher 2 torrent on The Pirate Bay had been put there as “a trap”. Our investigations didn’t show any evidence to back up that claim. So, along with a link to the company’s earlier statements about getting law firms involved, we contacted CD Projekt and asked them outright – is this torrent a trap and do you still intend to go ahead with tracking illegal file-sharers?

We received no answer on the first question, but we did on the second.

“Yes we will track illegal file-sharing hoping people will find the game good enough to actually change their mind and be willing to pay for it,” Agnieszka Szostak told us.

If CD Projekt do indeed go ahead with their threats, this will be the second time that a Witcher title has been involved in these so-called “pay-up-or-else” schemes. In 2008, large numbers of Internet users started receiving letters from notorious file-sharing lawyers Davenport Lyons in the UK demanding cash settlements. Among those letters were demands for payment on an Atari game with a familiar title – The Witcher.

We asked CD Projekt if that scheme had been successful. We received no response.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.