CD Projekt Taking Legal Action Against Alleged Witcher 2 Pirates

The Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt RED is taking legal action against people who have allegedly pirated its million-selling RPG title, although it noted that it is only contacting people who it is "100 percent sure have downloaded our game illegally." It's not often that companies actively go after people who have allegedly pirated their games. Piracy is still a chief concern among many game developers, and finding the balance between protecting property rights and giving paying customers a smooth experience is a tricky proposition for companies like Poland's CD Projekt. A report from TorrentFreak last week alleged that the company's lawyers are claiming 911.80 euros ($1187.10) from users who have illegally downloaded the game through torrent websites. The report also suggested that CD Projekt is wrongfully accusing some people of pirating the game, as the company is apparently using just the IP address to determine those who pirated the title. CD Projekt has now given Gamasutra a statement regarding the situation, confirming that it is indeed contacting those who pirated the game and asking for compensation. However, it noted that, "we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 percent sure have downloaded our game illegally." Gamasutra is also waiting for confirmation regarding the 911.80 euros figure. The statement reads, "We aren’t huge fans of any sort of DRM here at CD Projekt RED. DRM itself is a pain for legal gamers - the same group of honest people who decided that our game was worth its price, and went and bought it." "We don't want to make their lives more difficult by introducing annoying copy protection systems... We could introduce advanced copy protection systems which, unfortunately, punish legal customers as well. Instead we decided to give gamers some additional content with each game release, to make their experience complete." It continues, "However, that shouldn't be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn't only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry. We've seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 percent sure have downloaded our game illegally."