CD Projekt Red has announced it will no longer contact pirates with legal action. Reports came last month that the company was contacting pirates to claim 911.80 euros (approximately $1,187), but the company ultimately decided that the loss of trust among some fans wasn't worth the risk.
"While we are confident that no one who legally owns one of our games has been required to compensate us for copyright infringement, we value our fans, our supporters, and our community too highly to take the chance that we might ever falsely accuse even one individual," a statement from co-founder Marcin Iwinski reads.
"So we've decided that we will immediately cease identifying and contacting pirates," the statement concludes (via Rock Paper Shotgun).
The statement goes on to reaffirm that the company doesn't support piracy, "It hurts us, the developers. It hurts the industry as a whole," says Iwinski. "We've heard your concerns, listened to your voices, and we're responding to them. But you need to help us and do your part: don't be indifferent to piracy." Not only encouraging players not to pirate, the statement tells users to step in and call foul on friends who pirate. "Unless you support the developers who make the games you play, unless you pay for those games, we won't be able to produce new excellent titles for you."
This should come as welcome news to those who feared the accusations would hit innocent victims, and it seems like the best way to handle the public relations spectacle. Nevertheless, the developer behind the previously PC-exclusive Witcher 2 is trusting fans by straying from DRM models, and piracy is a poor reward for their faith in users.