CD Projekt Red Calls off Legal Threats

CD Projekt Red has called off its witch hunt for…. pirates, and in an open letter to the community is asking for forgiveness. Just in-case you missed the back story, CD Projekt Red is the development studio behind The Witcher 2, and about one month ago, set off on a campaign to hunt down everyone they suspected of pirating the game. Making pirates cough up cash for stolen software sounds reasonable enough; the real controversy was in the tactics they used to collect. Threatening letters asking for money in exchange for legal immunity might have sounded like a great idea to a bunch of cash strapped PC exclusive developers, however in the real world we often give this strategy a different name, extortion. 

Here is the full press release:

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.

The Witcher 2 represents the very best PC Gaming has to offer, and not only do we commend CD Projekt Red for realizing they’ve made a mistake, we hope anyone who does pirate the game recognizes a development studio worth supporting.