Pirates Of Game Witcher 2 Charged $1,230 Each For Their Efforts

This week it's become clear that those users who have pirated the game Witcher 2 from game developer CD Projekt were not alone in receiving a $1,230 bill in damages for illegally downloading the game – thousands, apparently, of these pirates have been given the throw down signal. I should mention here that the alternate title for this post is "Game you never heard of is pirated, developers mad about it," since it's not the most likely event that you've played this game before, and it's certainly not the first time that a developer group has grumbled about their games being stolen on a mass level. It is a significant event, on the other hand, because of the awesomely simple solution CD Projekt has initiated here: bill them!

This isn't the most creative way to do away with pirates – not by a long shot – but it's certain to wake more than a few of them up to the fact that they're certainly not going unnoticed, and the chance that they will get caught taking what they didn't pay for is certainly no non-existent. Torrentfreak is one of the websites that is claiming they've been contacted by these thousands of recipients of bills for €911.80 ($1230) as sent out by CD Projekt. They're also saying, though, that the recipients aren't always who CD Projekt assumes they are:

"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." – Torrentfreak

Back in 2008, as some of you may remember, UK based file-sharing lawyers Davenport Lyons sent out very similar cash settlement demands. This set of demands was instead for the original Witcher game. CD Project has affirmed, contrary to what Torrentfreak says, that they "only take legal actions against users who we are 100 per cent sure have downloaded our game illegally." Sound alright to you?

[via Venture Beat]