CD Projekt Allegedly Suing The Witcher 2 Pirates

CD Projekt has been hard at work sending thousand of emails to gamers who downloaded hit RPG The Witcher 2, demanding as much as $1,200 and threatening legal action against those who don't pay. After digging up some personal info on the pirates with the help of a torrent monitoring company, the emails began to fly.

Although this initially sounded quite reasonable, away from the spotlight the company followed in the footsteps of so-called copyright trolls, by signing up for a so-called pay-up-or-else scheme. CD Projekt hired a law firm and torrent monitoring company to track those who illegally downloaded and shared the game, and has been sending them hefty cash settlement proposals.

The price CD Projekt is asking through their lawyers is slightly higher than what gamers have to pay in stores, to say the least. Over the past several months thousands of alleged BitTorrent users in Germany were asked to cough up 911,80 euros ($1230) to pay off their apparent debt to the company.

As is often the case, these mass settlement schemes do not exist without collateral damage. Aside from targeting many people who indeed downloaded and shared the game without paying, CD Projekts lawyers are also wrongfully accusing people who have never even heard of the game.

After all, an IP-address doesnt identify a person, and Wi-Fi piggybacking is not unusual. But CD Projekt, who dont want to bug legitimate consumers with DRM, apparently take this collateral damage for granted.