Johnny

I didn't suddenly decide to pirate it because of this. I can't change what's been done months before. I initially intended to buy it, as I've stated. My intent to buy it has then changed because I think what CD Projekt is doing is comparable to blackmail. I think it is INSANELY wrong. And I can not with good conscience pay for a game where the money goes to developers who do that. I find it funny that what CD Projekt is doing seems to be fine with people because they made a good game, but I'm figuratively speaking on trial for not wanting to give them money for it.

I initially tried The Witcher 2 because I was unsure if I'd like it or not. After a while I decided I did in fact not like it; there were too many issues with bugs and finicky controls and the difficulty curve for me to enjoy it. I decided not to buy it and just stopped playing. Then the 2.0 patch came out and I tried that as well and decided that "ah, this is good stuff, they fixed my major problems, I'll put it on my to buy list" and was planning to pick it up in the christmas sale. Why wait for the christmas sale? Because I don't have money to shell out on games that aren't highly discounted. I don't know why you're acting like I'm attacking you. I'm not. I was posing a complete hypothetical to illustrate that anyone who doesn't know me irl would have problems extrapolating how likely it is that my friends would pick up the game after I pirated it.

Quite true, Kenshi. It is also worth noting that the gamers I know are generally people who also care about these things and would in turn not pay for a game where the developers are pulling pay up or else schemes. Maybe if Dean or Cyber Rat was pirating it, they'd tell all their friends about how amazing it is and convince friends to buy it. That's not what is likely to happen in my case at all.

So... Are we now arguing that piracy DOES support the developer in a significant manner? Well, I'll keep that in mind next time someone gets angry at me for not buying a game. Oh, wait, that already happened in regards to this very game on the previous page.

It's incredibly farfetched that me pirating the game will have any significant positive effect.

I can not name a single thing within gaming that is more disgusting to me than these "pay up or else" schemes and I will not personally give them any money. I will not, however, try to manipulate other people to do the same. If someone asks me about the game in question, I will say what I have to say, including discussing the quality of the game itself, and warning people that paying for the game equates to giving money to a company that partakes in these pay up or else schemes. I do not see this as "supporting the developers", I see this as not being a manipulative douchewaffle towards my friends. Other people's money is their business and if they want to spend it on The Witcher 2, or whatever else, that is not really my business.

This line of thought is, I feel, slightly silly. Just because I am not willing to give a company my money, does not mean I will go to every possible measure in order to ensure that nobody else does. When speaking of such a game to my friends, I would point out the reason why I did not buy it, and even recommend they do the same. But, I would not attempt any further manipulation. If other people want to buy the game, that's entirely on them, and I would not wish to try to obscure anything I know about the game from them in order to prevent it. If the game is good, I would say so despite the other misgivings I have about it. That does not, however, mean I would ever feel right about personally giving money to them.

Explain to me the logic where simply the act of playing a game will support a developer.

We Swedes just eat too damn much of them, I got tired of it.

You need to stop going to Kotaku. We don't do that shit around here.

Excuse? No. Not an excuse. I wasn't just sitting here looking for the smallest bit of excuse not to pay for their game. I liked Witcher 2 and seeing as how I have a small bit of spare cash, I was planning to pick it up in the christmas sale. I won't do that now. I feel that if any dev is doing shit you feel is wrong, then it's perfectly fine not to support them, and if you don't already support them, I don't care wether you pirate their game or not. I don't feel the least bit bad for not supporting companies that are involved in what is essentially blackmail. In fact, I'd feel bad supporting them. Personally, I think these pay up or else schemes are far more wrong than the traditional DRM measures they are replacing. Also, I think there's more important things to support than good games. I love gaming, but I feel that "we made a good game!" doesn't excuse shit like this.

Well seeing as how there are ways to get the games without supporting the developers, it's not really a huge pain to avoid supporting this shit =)

"CD Projekt hired a law firm and torrent monitoring company to track those who illegally downloaded and shared the game, and has been sending them hefty cash settlement proposals." I don't see how this is something which is not happening?

Wow! I wasn't even speaking about pirating things. How is the legality of piracy relevant to me no longer wishing to do business with CD Project / GOG.com? I feel less inclined to do business with people who are in the business of threatening to sue people who may or may not have downloaded their game. Christ, with how many cases there's been of people who haven't downloaded stuff getting these letters, even the most ardent anti-piracy guy should be angry about this stuff

r/atheism has good and bad parts. They used to have a lot of stuff that was just more easily digestable science. I unsubbed when they had a large flamewar with r/religion. Funnily enough, I'm more often annoyed by bitching about r/atheism than I am by r/atheism itself.

I suddenly feel less inclined to buy games from GOG.

@Gerbil: As a Swede, I've had them. I don't like 'em. Then again, I usually don't like potatoes at all.

This is stupid. I went and locked at the guy's formspring where he was talking about the engine. He was talking about Fallout: New Vegas and never mentioned Skyrim. The connection to Skyrim was invented out of the air by this writer on vg247

The real issue is that they seem to have near-infinite mana pools. If you ever play a mage, you'll see that the wards aren't very OP by themselves. Any ward powerful enough to do anything (and if your wards breaks you're automatically staggered, so you can't just use lower-ranked wards) will drain your mana in seconds.

There's zero armour versions of all slots, Dean. However, I was mistaken. I forgot I have Morokei on, which is Light and has 8 armor. Also, @Dean, you should check out the tesv save game manager.

Oh, I forgot to add: my character doesn't do this "Run around with NPCs following me" stuff. They just get in the way or get killed (Lydia turned out useless, walking straight into a trap, killing herself and dealing damage to me...) What are you throwing everything into? Magic? You're going to get shot in the knee one of these days! Yeah, magic. Destruction magic, mostly. Which turns out to be a terrible idea because even with full +mana regen and -spell cost gear, high-level Destruction has such terrible damage per magicka, I can't kill anything stronger than a mudcrab before running out of magicka. HAH! No, I've actually not ran into too many. I guess I don't quest in the right areas.

And my character has 0 armor and 100 hp, at level 30-something. I die from a single touch from most things.