A few days after announcing that a British woman has to pay £16,000 in restitution to TopWare Interactive for illegally uploading a copy of a 3D pinball game, Atari, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters will also help bring the fight against game sharers.
The five companies have recruited commercial law firm Davenport Lyons to help them get file sharers to pay a £300 fine to settle out of court. People who refuse to pay out of court risk the chance of going to court where the end result could be a fine much higher than the out of court settlement the game publishers are requesting.
"Our clients were incensed by the level of illegal downloading. In the first 14 days since Topware Interactive released Dream Pinball 3D it sold 800 legitimate copies but was illegally downloaded 12,000 times. Hopefully people will think twice if they risk being taken to court," Davenport Lyons partner Roget Billens told the Times Online.
The law firm has already successfully acquired the home addresses of 5,000 suspected file sharers, and wants to acquire at least 25,000 more addresses.
The music and movie trade groups are both engaged in a long-term war against file sharers, but this marks one of the first times video game publishers have shown interest in bringing down people who illegally share video games.
But some within the video game industry have not supported such a move to stop online file sharing of video games. For example, EA Sports president Peter Moore said that suing file sharers has not worked for the music industry, and could further alienate gamers. Moore and executives with the same mindset believe the companies have a right to protect themselves, but need to internally create anti-piracy measures that are not intrusive to gamers and don't involve filing lawsuits in an attempt to get gamers to pay out of court settlements.
These game companies are stupid. If the numbers are true (doubtful, since if they really knew how many downloads were taking place they'd also know who was doing it and we all know that they don't have that kind of access, so the claim is questionable) then they aught to ask themselves why only 800 people paid but 15 times as many were willing to download it. Hmmm, maybe the price was right for downloading? Instead of wasting effort attempting to stop the downloaders, they should try making a game worth buying, at a price that makes it less appealing to download. If the game were available for $50 and only 800 people thought it was worth it, but at $10 even if only half of the downloaders thought it was worth it, then they'd make 50% more money at the $10 price. Then they could stop wasting money on lawyers and useless copy protection schemes. That would probably help the bottom line a lot more than a few fines.
Umm how are they getting the home addresses? Is there an ISP out there that's handing over the info without a warrant? WTF?
"The law firm has already successfully acquired the home addresses of 5,000 suspected file sharers"
Hmm .. I wonder what proportion of these "suspected" file sharers are grandmas, dead people and users with open wifi connections ? If they can't actually be 100% certain who is sharing what content then how can these bastards be trusted ? Smells of a witchhunt to me.
Gee ... only 13000 people wanted the game. It must have really sucked 
"The law firm has already successfully acquired the home addresses of 5,000 suspected file sharers"
So if there's a knock at the door, I shouldn't answer it?
At any rate, Crysis Warhead should be available on the torrent sites soon. Can't wait.
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