In April, I covered the contention of Good Old Games and its developer arm, CD Projekt that DRM drives gamers to piracy. At the time, I mentioned that CD Projekt would be releasing its next game The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings completely DRM-free.
Now Paul just pointed me to a story on Afterdawn noting that CD Projekt has announced that the version 1.1 update for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will strip all DRM and computer-count restrictions that came with the game originally. I’m a little confused by this given that I’d heard it was supposed to be releasing the game DRM-free from the outset, but perhaps the developer changed its mind. In its announcement, CD Projekt states:
We felt DRM was necessary to prevent the game being pirated and leaked before release. This purpose has been served, so we are pleased to let our users enjoy the full freedom of game usage they deserve.
This is a little at odds with the quote from Good Old Games’s PR and marketing manager from my original story:
In addition to driving gamers to cracked versions of games, Kukawski also asks how anyone can believe that DRM acts as a deterrent to piracy. ‘If you see the news on gaming portals that a highly anticipated title has leaked before the release date, and you can download it from torrents without any copy protection because it has been already cracked, how can you possible (sic) believe that DRM works in any way to reduce piracy?’
Perhaps not everyone in the company is entirely in agreement about DRM’s uselessness?
Regardless, it’s still good news that it’s going DRM-free even this soon after release. Now if only more DRMed media would.
It was released DRM-free from the outset on Good Old Games, however the boxed version and other online retailers had a version with SecuROM DRM.