here in canada, they will be billing people if they pirate something. no if ands or buts

I'd just like to mention that I did buy the game, in case that was directed toward me specifically. My mother is just going to have to bite the bullet on this one.

But yeah, this has kind of played out one too many times. I was just hoping to avoid it snowballing into a "hey let's go harass illegal downloaders" thread.

Source? I've been following internet related issues here in Canada, and I haven't heard of that before.

Why the hell do you guys care about the piracy of this game?

GOOD GAMES SELL.

It doesn't even matter that Witcher 2 will get pirated. Some of my friends pirated the game then bought it because it was good.

See Portal 2 on ThePirateBay before? Its got a couple of thousand of downloads, yet it sold almost 1 million in a week.

PIRACY DOES NOT AFFECT SALES.

yes it does . people who cant pirate many of them would pay but did not because hey free vs paid

The only game I would mention that was significantly hurt by it that I can think of offhand was world of goo. It matters, believe it or not. Certainly not as much as some companies would like people to believe but it matters.

If those were complete downloads and they actually worked, say 5000 worked for simplicity sake, if you go by portal 2 preorder price of 45 (rounded up) that would be $225,000 in lost sales. I think that would matter to valve or any company for that matter.

This is quickly turning into a witcher morality grey area choice, lol.

But it's not necessarily $225,000 in lost revenue, because they have no mechanism for measuring how many people stole it and then liked it so much they bought it, nor do they know how many people, if given the choice between buying and not buying with no option to steal available, would just not buy it.

Worrying about it is completely pointless, but let's at least get our arguments straight :)

It's all speculation in the end. As for worrying about it, I do because then we have more companies who try to bring back old drm schemes. That's my main concern.

Thankfully there are companies that are emerging that are fighting it, this means you CD Projekt, gog, and stardock. Thanks for trusting your customers.

It's not a lost sale because most of those wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

If piracy was impossible (for the sake of argument), sure there would be those who'd buy it anyways, but it would be a small portion of the pirates. Furthermore, a year later when the game is lower in price, more than that small portion would potentially buy it.

However, the rest simply would not buy it no matter what.

Worrying about "potential lost sales" due to the option of piracy is pointless. What companies should be doing is extolling the virtues of not pirating and giving those who have pirated an option to come clean, perhaps at a reduced price. Or maybe, if you buy it we'll give you a thing to get the sequel or another of our games at a discount? Anything to add a sale where there wasn't one.

alot of the people who downloaded illegal are paying customers who couldn't wait for the game to unlock.
so if they have already paid for the game are they still pirates for just downloading the game from another source?

and it is not a lost sale.
there are alot of people who pirated the game to test it on their PC or just as a demo.
as is the case with TW1, alot of people who pirated the game actually went to buy it after playing the pirated version.

if you make a good game you don't have to worry about people pirating it, because people that are not gonna pay for your game is not gonna but it either why.
and there are alot of people out there who will buy your game even if they have already pirated it.

Yeah, here, a digital copy. That’s not exactly a trade-off for a DRM-ridden retail version.

By the way, special items like armor, weapons, sword diagram, and potion recipes in the form of paid DLC would force INDIVIDUAL PIRATES to buy the game or not since DLCs can also be pirated.

Actually CDProject would not have sold me the game, at least not full price if it was not for the DRM free gog version. I nowadays mostly buy the games when the hit the bargain bin, and rarely make an exception due to lack of gaming time (I am a father) but selling something non drm is usually a good way to attrackt my attention. I am somehow sick of fighting with the drm scheme years after i bought a game and finally have time to play it.
Btw. i also checked out gog more deeply and so far they have sold me another bunch of classics which I missed back then in my gaming days. So in my case they got more the 60$ :-) just by selling the game drm free.
I wont make a huge difference but I guess there are others like me who bought it over gog just because of the DRM issue.

Me for example. See, I am grateful for having CDPR publishing it here (although the registration process might turn out to be problematic) without DRM. This has become very rare. But I still think they should’ve told the publisher to shove it. Now, I really hope they will do this next time around when they have the huge sales of TW2 as back-up.

Here is a breakdown poll I organised a long time ago, it may put some perspective on the # of pirated copies. If anything, to go by TW2 piracy numbers, TW2 should do extremely well. In fact, I'd dare to say, CD-PROJEKT is pulling a "RIFT" - Release a game that's received so incredibly well that they can not handle the volume of interest as shown by the frantic problemsolving going on right now.

Here's the piracy breakdown for TW2.

I'd like to think the sample pool gives a reasonably accurate display; at the end of the thread I'm doing some calculations too. If you so wish, interpolate the actual piracy numbers to find out the estimated sales numbers. You may be shocked (in a good way!)