Illegitimate versions of two major upcoming first-person shooters hit piracy sites over the past week, with one arriving on torrent outlets over a month before its official release.
Electronic Arts' and Crytek's Crysis 2 appeared on piracy sites as early as February 11, when the publisher and developer issued a joint statement that said an "early incomplete, unfinished build of Crysis 2 has appeared on torrent sites." The game officially launches on consoles and PC on March 22 in North America.
"Crytek and EA are deeply disappointed by the news. We encourage fans to support the game and the development team by waiting and purchasing the final, polished game," the companies added.
"...Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community," the statement said.
Crytek was outspoken against piracy following the release of 2007's original Crysis, a PC exclusive. The company was previously mainly focused on PC games, but after reported high piracy rates of Crysis, the studio said it would soon abandon PC exclusives.
"We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable," said Crytek president Cevat Yerli in 2008. "I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming, piracy."
Also hitting torrent sites recently was Sony and Guerrilla's PlayStation 3 exclusive Killzone 3, due to release on February 22 in North America. File names on torrent sites suggest the download is the European version, weighing in at 41.4GB.
Sony Computer Entertainment has been embroiled in a piracy-related lawsuit with PS3 hacker George "Geohot" Hotz, who earlier this year released code that enables PS3 owners to run unofficial software on the console.
Hotz has maintained that the PS3 jailbreak was never intended for piracy, and has said that his hack doesn't enable piracy.
I do not support piracy. I did not and will not pirate this game.
That said, I'm interested in the communities input on this question:
If a gamer is crazy rabid excited about the game, and he's already got it pre-ordered, and he pirates it so he can play it X weeks early, and he then follows through with his pre-order on the release date and plays his legitimate copy from then on out...is it wrong?
Wrong in the eyes of the publisher, who often or not really has no interest in games other than the revenue they garner.
Right in the eyes of the fan, the gamer who loves games enough to the point where the product is more than just a product, but a part of their identity and life style. These are the people who build communities which support the game after its put on shelves, the same that are quick to help keep the product alive years after its been released.
Morally wrong, I think not. It shouldnt have found its way on the internet to begin with, but its not the fault of the game fan for going after something they want to get their hands on. These people are not the enemy of this industry.
I would think it's ok. You've paid (or committed to pay) for a product, you download it earlier and have fun with it earlier, but nobody gets harmed in the process: the publisher won't get a sale less, playing the single player earlier doesn't affect negatively anybody, etc.
I think you could argue it's legal. You've paid for the product and thus you're accessing a copy of a product that you own. I'm pretty sure that's legal in Spain, I can't say in the US or the UK. What's illegal here is downloading copies of copyrighted material that you don't own.
Regarding the fact that you're getting it earlier than you should, I can't see no moral reason why getting it earlier would be wrong, and I can't imagine this kind of laws are there to protect games (films, music, etc.) from being played before they should, but rather to avoid content creators getting paid for their work, which is something that in the case Trevor is describing isn't happening.
It is wrong in the sense that it spreads piracy. It's ok for the guy who pre-ordered, but it's not ok for this guy's friend who will be given a copy of this pirated version.
I don't get it. Kill Zone 3 is a PS3 exclusive. As far as I know the PS3 has NOT been hacked. At least not easily. So what's the big deal you can't play that KZ3 pirate DVD anyways. 41.4 GB????? No thanks, who wants to download all that? I just think this is a non issue for KZ3. Someone enlighten me if I am wrong.
Yep, PS3 has been hacked, games can now be downloaded and put on the PS3 hard drive (or an external I believe), and their disc images can be found under the games menu.
According to the latest torrent trackers, Killzone 3 is only 22 gigs. Other games such as Red Dead Redemption, 9 gigs.
One of the brilliant aspects of the PS3 with Bluray was how much each disc can hold. I had originally thought that if Sony were smart, they would push developers to use as much disc space as possible, since even if the PS3 were to be hacked, a huge file would discourage it from being downloaded. What we are seeing however is that the PS3 games themselves are often smaller than the average PC game, which is odd and not altogether smart.
It's of interest to me where these are actually coming from. Pirates aren't parachuting into game development offices to snag copies of the discs, so who's giving the builds away? Disgruntled employees? First party certification groups?
I'm wondering too... but appearantly no one really cares, since Crytek put out the videogame industrys "9/11".... just shout "piracy" and everybody knows who to blame. Its just sickening.
Agree, the industry is not very good at taking care of its employees. Given the commonality and nature of the "disgruntled employee", I am surprised there are not more incidents of early releases happening.
I can't speak for all the leaks, but I'm guessing most pre-launch leaks come from cert groups and 3rd parties that have access to the code.
Even if it didn't hurt sales, these pre-launch leaks are a real kick in the nuts to the people who have invested blood and gold into making the game. I feel bad for the people at Crytek and Guerrilla.
That was my assumption as well. That being the case, would it not make sense to start looking at cert security issues as a way of combating piracy - especially if this kind of pre-release piracy is particularly damaging?
That said, I'm interested in the communities input on this question:
If a gamer is crazy rabid excited about the game, and he's already got it pre-ordered, and he pirates it so he can play it X weeks early, and he then follows through with his pre-order on the release date and plays his legitimate copy from then on out...is it wrong?
Right in the eyes of the fan, the gamer who loves games enough to the point where the product is more than just a product, but a part of their identity and life style. These are the people who build communities which support the game after its put on shelves, the same that are quick to help keep the product alive years after its been released.
Morally wrong, I think not. It shouldnt have found its way on the internet to begin with, but its not the fault of the game fan for going after something they want to get their hands on. These people are not the enemy of this industry.
I think you could argue it's legal. You've paid for the product and thus you're accessing a copy of a product that you own. I'm pretty sure that's legal in Spain, I can't say in the US or the UK. What's illegal here is downloading copies of copyrighted material that you don't own.
Regarding the fact that you're getting it earlier than you should, I can't see no moral reason why getting it earlier would be wrong, and I can't imagine this kind of laws are there to protect games (films, music, etc.) from being played before they should, but rather to avoid content creators getting paid for their work, which is something that in the case Trevor is describing isn't happening.
As far as I know, there are no such thing as blueray game rips floating around which people burn to play on hacked PS3s.
According to the latest torrent trackers, Killzone 3 is only 22 gigs. Other games such as Red Dead Redemption, 9 gigs.
One of the brilliant aspects of the PS3 with Bluray was how much each disc can hold. I had originally thought that if Sony were smart, they would push developers to use as much disc space as possible, since even if the PS3 were to be hacked, a huge file would discourage it from being downloaded. What we are seeing however is that the PS3 games themselves are often smaller than the average PC game, which is odd and not altogether smart.
It seems like an obvious question to me.
Even if it didn't hurt sales, these pre-launch leaks are a real kick in the nuts to the people who have invested blood and gold into making the game. I feel bad for the people at Crytek and Guerrilla.