But CD Projekt insists it will not resort to DRM technologies
For every copy of The Witcher 2 that’s been legitimately sold, more than four copies have been pirated, according to the CEO of creator CD Projekt.
Marcin Iwinski insisted it would be pointless for his company to use digital rights management (DRM) technologies to attempt to curb piracy, but believes Witcher 2 was a recurring victim to illicit file sharing.
“I was checking regularly the number of concurrent downloads on torrent aggregating sites, and for the first 6-8 weeks [since the game’s release] there was around 20-30k people downloading it at the same time,” Iwinski told PC Gamer.
“So let’s take 20k as the average and let’s take 6 weeks. The game is 14GB, so let’s assume that on an average not-too-fast connection it will be 6 hours of download. 6 weeks is 56 days, which equals to 1344 hours; and with 6h of average download time to get the game it would give us 224 downloads, then let’s multiply it by 20k simultaneous downloaders.
“The result is roughly 4.5 million illegal downloads. This is only an estimation, and I would say that’s rather on the optimistic side of things; as of today we have sold over 1 million legal copies, so having only 4.5-5 illegal copies for each legal one would be not a bad ratio.”
Advertisement
The reality, he said, is probably worse.
“But still, DRM does not work and however you would protect a game, it will be cracked in no time. Plus, the DRM itself is a pain for your legal gamers – this group of honest people, who decided that your game was worth the 50 USD or Euro and went and bought it. Why would you want to make their lives more difficult?”
Iwinski said that, in his two decades in the industry, he hasn’t come across a DRM solution that worked.
His comments comes days after research firm Envisional claimed that illicit game downloads in the UK have climbed 20 per cent over the last five years.
However, PC games kingpin Valve believes that piracy is no longer an issue for the company.
Can't help to feel that the estimate is off. Torrents never have the same number of downloaders at different times, for one thing.
Anyway, not resorting to DRM like so many other producers have, especially with the disproportionate amount of illegal downloads, certainty demands a bit of respect, and if I were to want the game (I'm not currently interested in it), I'd be a lot more likely to make the purchase then to download it as I would consider with a DRM-ridden release from a certain DRM-happy publisher.
Not promoting illegal downloading in any form.
-Pixel.
14GB on a "not-too-fast connection" it will be 6 hours of download.
Where do I sign up, I want one of those.
If you have a 5 Mbps connection and you are accessing a direct download(ftp or http) then 6 hours seems fine.
But on a torrent it is more likely 6 days or more.
Downloading on torrents depends on the number of people seeding(the more the better) and the number of people leaching(less is better). And if there 20-30k seems a pretty high number of leechers.
His numbers are probably off. Then again we'd never know for sure.
One thing I know for sure is I bought the Collector's Box of The Witcher 2 and I bought 2 copies of The Witcher (Physical copy and one on Steam). I'll continue to buy their products and so I hope they stay in business. They are one of the better European Devs out there and truly deserves consumer support.
It's a shame they can't put rock solid DRM into the patching procedure. Pretty sickening to see such high levels of piracy despite the tremendous level of support they have shown this title.
The retail package was astonishingly good and it's easily up there with Skyrim and BF3 for my GOTY. Thank you CD Projekt!
