The Witcher 2 Pirating Consequences and Console Plans

There are two bits of news concerning The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings to report about today, starting with this report on Eurogamer that outlines CD Projekt RED’s plans to issue fines to people who are caught using torrents to pirate their RPG sequel:

If gamers refuse to pay the fine, which will be more than the cost of the game, they could end up in court, developer CD Projekt told Eurogamer.

“Of course we’re not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,” CD Projekt co-founder Marcin IwiÅ„ski said.

“In quite a few big countries, when people are downloading it illegally they can expect a letter from a legal firm saying, ‘Hey, you downloaded it illegally and right now you have to pay a fine.’

“We are totally fair, but if you decide you will not buy it legally there is a chance you’ll get a letter.

“We are talking about it right now.”

And then this report on Gamezilla features a couple of quotes from senior producer Tomasz Gop about their plans for a console edition of TW2:

We want to make Witcher 2 on current generation consoles, but there is no point in saying “yes” or “no”, if you don’t have something concrete [to show]. Simultaneous release [of PC and console wersion] is impossible. We will do out best, but you will have to wait for specifics.

…

We designed the game in that way, that eventual console wersion of Witcher 2 won’t force us to change the interface, redesign the gameplay, controls and so on. We attempted to [project the game in that way] that making a console version would be really easy for us.

Hasn’t history shown that slapping pirates with threatening letters does more harm than good? All it ever seems to do is generate a bunch of negative press and drive the thieves farther underground, all while givnig the black market distributors more “ammunition” against the company in question.