Eh, fuck it. Those letters only rip off socially vulnerable people, and they get harassed and sucked dry by all sorts of schemes...tele sales, commercial presentation, txt message scams, spam emails...so I don't see what the big deal is really. I've been ranting in the thread on RPS too.

No DRM, for me, outweighs this.

It does outweigh this, I think, but legal threat letters against your customers (or may-some-day-be-a-customer) is BS. I guarantee that 95% of the people that pirate the game would never have bought the game, even if it weren't readily available via piracy. The 5% that would buy it, probably do after they 'demo' it via piracy. Suing potential customers is just douchey and doesn't accomplish anything, in my opinion. Well, other than piss off a lot of people and get a few lawyers rich.

Mm, perhaps. I also learned (through the discussion on RPS) that in the US and UK it's not impossible to be sued over nothing more than an IP linked to your name. So that's a bummer, given the wild uncertainty surrounding IP user/ownership and on how torrents work exactly. Apparently even civil court cases are decided on by a jury in the US? I didn't know that. That makes things a little more volatile than just having an impartial judge decide over the case I can imagine.

Over here you only get people's juries in the highest courts, usually pertaining to murder cases. I hate people's juries. Recently, a woman was convicted to 30 years in prison here for murder without any solid evidence whatsoever (her friend, who was having an affair with a man she was in love with as well, was killed when someone sabotaged her parachute). I mean, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence - jealous lover, had access, had the knowledge required, psychological issues, 'accidentally' found the failing backup chute in a tree afterwards - and she probably did it, but it's not enough to send someone 30 years to prison for. Imho. The jury was swayed by the prosecutor who used an aggressive technique to plead his case. Imagine you're in a similar situation and you really didn't do it, and all the circumstantial evidence is just coincidence. 30 years!

Anyway, slight side-rant there. I wanted to say that I have a feeling this is more of a "look we're doing something" for their publishers and shareholders than anything else, to justify the no DRM. God knows shareholders and bosses are scared shitless by anything that might lose them a dollar, so this might just be intended to shut them up.

Yea, it's possible this is just to mollify stock holders or whatever, but it's really bad publicity.

You're right about the jury trial and all that. Also, even if you win, you're going to be paying thousands of dollars in lawyer's fees. I don't know about you, but I don't have thousands of dollars just laying around that I can throw at something I didn't do. The alternative is just to roll over and pay hundreds of dollars in 'fine'. Also known as settlement money. also known as extortion (give us $300 now, or we'll take you to court and you'll pay $5,000 in lawyer's fees... and we'll probably win and you'll owe us $300,000). I hate our court system.

Yeah, I learned all that on in the RPS thread. My conclusion was that the US (and UK) justice systems seem to have some fucked up deficiencies if they allow for such loopholes that make it possible to bully people who aren't rich or willing to spend their life savings to clear their name.

I initially didn't get why everyone was in such an uproar over the whole 'omg they gonna fine people based on (vague) IP logs!' thing. I was like...if you get a letter like that and you haven't done shit, you just ignore it. If they take it to court (which I thought was unlikely, since you can't win based on 0 evidence - one would have tought), you smack their asses around.

Turns out it was already going on over there, operating like you said: if you don't pay they'll sue you, based on nothing but an unreliable torrent/IP ID (wtf). With civilian juries presiding over it, you may even end up paying a huge reparations fee. And even if you win, you'll pay many more times the lawyer costs compared to the initial fee. Wtf?!

Over here, the losing party pays a (large) part of the winning party's lawyer costs, as well as the costs of the court case which can become massive over longer periods. This is done to a) make people think twice about sueing and b) to give poor/socially weaker persons the chance to take on large and wealthy organisations, persons or corporations instead of being extorted into paying imaginery fines. I actually thought this was the case in most of the democratic west, but it turns out that it isn't, at all. :O

Now I know where the whole trope of 'huge evil corporation with army of 15 lawyers' comes from (think mr Burns in the Simpsons). It's more intimidation than anything else then, in many ways. Either way...a JUSTICE system that gives an inherent advantage to the richer party is FUBAR. I mean, jesus.

Hands-on on RPS

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02 ... /#comments

Looking good!

cool, sounds like it's better, not dumbed down (like I'm afraid Dragon Age will be).

I'm actually considering getting a new graphics card for the witcher II - that's how much a cheapskate like me wants it.

Witcher 2 hands-on on RPS

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04 ... witcher-2/

Overall very positive, with some things that are less appealing (some QTE events, the lack of extended graphical options - altho that may be because of the beta).

Apparently the minimalistic graphics slider has been confirmed as being part of the beta build and will be 'normal' in the full game. Bit of a relief.

yay for lack of choice! Having too many choices makes me scared and torroristish.

Heh, there was actually a guy on RPS whining about how there wouldn't be any Angry Internet Men complaining about "oh noes no quicksave in combat" or about the "simple and intuitive options" when he heard the initial news (about only a slider), because TW2 is a PC only (at first) release and therefore would get away with it. With that he was obviously hating on people who have a massive gripe with many games suffering from consolitis (crossplatform, no or bad optimalization for PC), which according to him does not exist. That opinion alone should tell you he's a retard, because consolitis is real and fucking epidemic among big titles.

Anyone, I reminded him that there has been no big RPG in the entire DECADE with quicksave during combat, and that I don't see how having more choices for tweaking your graphics could possibly be worse than his 'intuitive and simple system'. I was tempted to throw in a 'honestly, are you even a PC gamer if you're saying stuff like that?' Seeing as it's a PC gaming blog. But I took the high road and am hating on him here instead.

If you pre-ordered (there is no actual sale involved yet, just say 'yes I want to preorder' and you can still back out later) the game over GoG, you can start preloading it on the 10th of May. Their download version is completely DRM free (the only one, if you count Steam as DRM - the store copies have securom), packs a lot of digital goodies and offers you 1 free gog game (from 5 that you can choose). The developers also get a bigger share of the income so that's nice too. You can pre-order it here

http://www.gog.com/en/page/tw2v3

Like I said, there's no actual buying or obligation to buy if you 'pre-order' yet. So it doesn't hurt.