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Estimated 4.5 Million Copies Of Witcher 2 Pirated
Fighting piracy is an ongoing battle for companies like Poland's CD Projekt, developer of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, which believes that its latest game has been hit hard.
In an interview with PC Gamer, CD Projekt CEO and co-founder Marcin Iwiński estimated that more than 4.5 million copies of the game have probably been pirated, but he still counts the company lucky in a way. "...I would say that’s rather on the optimistic side of things; as of today we have sold over one million legal copies, so having only 4.5 to 5 illegal copies for each legal one would be not a bad ratio. The reality is probably way worse."
Regardless, Iwiński says he's skeptical of the effectiveness of the DRM used by other companies.
"We have seen a lot of different protections," he said, "but there are only two ways you can go: Either you use light DRM, which is cracked in no time and is not a major pain for the end-user, or you go the hard way and try to super-protect the game. Yes, it is then hard to crack, but you start messing with the operation system, the game runs much slower and – for a group of legal gamers – it will not run at all. None of these solutions really work, so why not abandon it altogether?"
Head over to PC Gamer for the full interview for more of Iwiński's views on DRM.
Also, check out Adam's glowing review of the PC version of the game. The Xbox 360 edition of The Witcher 2 is being published by Warner Bros., and is scheduled to hit shelves early next year.
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