It was announced last week that CD Projekt (developers of The Witcher franchise) had ended their crusade of sending out settlement letters (demanding payment) to Internet users who allegedly downloaded their games (with very weak proof I might add); however, TorrentFreak decided to dig deeper into this trend to find out if CD Projekt had been unfairly singled out. Sure enough, they discovered that many developers were doing the same thing.
Here’s the lo-down of the pirate hunting in Europe.
Distributor Koch Media has been demanding money from alleged sharers of the Techland’s game, Dead Island. Tales of Monkey Island distributor DAEDALIC Entertainment followed suit for publisher Lucas Arts.
Alleged Deus Ex: Human Revolution pirates are being told to pay-up to the sum of 800 euros by local distributor Koch Media, in addition to those who are accused of downloading Dungeon Siege III (800 euros demand as well) and Final Fantasy games for free.
Codemasters had originally pursued alleged sharers over Colin McRae Dirt. Now, they are sending letters demanding 800 euros over DiRT 3; add RaceOn (BitComposer) and Nail’d (Techland) to the racing games list as well.
Eidos/Square Enix/Warner’s Batman: Arkham Asylum joins the European fray as it has been “the subject of an unknown number of cash settlement letters sent out in Germany.”
Continuing on with Eidos/Square, they have been asking for “several hundred euros” from ISP account holders for those connected to Just Cause 2 and Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days downloads.
On the tactical-shooter side, Codemasters is looking for 800 euros from file-sharers in connection with Operation Flashpoint Red River. Likewise for Ubisoft, who are sending out letters to alleged Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas downloaders.
As far as simulators go, Airline Tycoon 2, Tropico 3 and 4 (Kalypso Media), Cities XL 2012 (dtp entertainment), City Bus (hahahhahah!) Simulator/Simulator Gold (Aerosoft), Airbus X (Aerosoft), and Agrar Simulator 2011 (Koch Media), are all in the midst of multi-hundred euro settlement demands.
And that’s not all; TorrentFreak indicated that the above sample is “just the tip of the iceberg – dozens of devs and distributors of lesser known games are sending out these letters demanding anything from 300 to more than 1000 euros to make cases go away.”
For more games on the list and for the full article, click here.
