Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt received high praise from PC gamers for having very little in the way of DRM restrictions on their game, allowing paying customers to enjoy their product hassle-free. But for game crackers and pirates alike who may have thought this just meant an easy way in, CD Projekt has unleashed a nasty surprise.

The software developer is pursuing illegal downloaders, sending them letters from a German law firm demanding $1230 (about R10800) in compensation. CD Projekt issued a statement to Eurogamer explaining their course of action and saying that no one innocent will get caught in the crossfire.

“As you know, we aren’t huge fans of any sort of DRM here at CD Projekt RED. DRM itself is a pain for legal gamers – the same group of honest people who decided that our game was worth its price, and went and bought it. We don’t want to make their lives more difficult by introducing annoying copy protection systems. Moreover, we always try to offer high value with our product – for example, enhancing the game with additional collectors’ items such as soundtracks, making-of DVDs, books, walkthroughs, etc. We could introduce advanced copy protection systems which, unfortunately, punish legal customers as well. Instead, we decided to give gamers some additional content with each game release, to make their experience complete.”

“However, that shouldn’t be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn’t only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry. We’ve seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 per cent sure have downloaded our game illegally.”

Source: Industrygamers