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Spotted at an Indonesia game shop by Japanese site Game Watch Impress. All these Wii games are priced at Rp.20,000 or around US$2.30. More »
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Pirating new video games is a crime. But there's long been a rather grey area around the piracy of old games. And when I say old, I don't mean 2008 old. I mean 1988 old. More »
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Well, that didn't take long. The foaming outrage over the arrest of Kim Dotcom and the shutdown of his MegaUpload empire needed all of five days to result in this, MegaUP: Upload If You Can, a protest title released Wednesday on Xbox Live's Indie Games service. Proceeds from the sale of the game (after Microsoft takes its cut) benefit its maker. Kim would be so proud. More »
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This has long been a bit of an elephant in the room when it comes to "giant publishers talking about piracy", so naturally it's taken a representative from a small publisher to bring it up. More »
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Kim Dotcom is the Internet playboy who made his zillions by founding the now-defunct (and Anonymous cause celebre du jour) Megaupload, and also from the blatant hosting of pirated content there. But he also led a secret life, did you know? He is the deadliest shooter in all of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Really. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5878245&view=rss&microfeed=true House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has issued a statement that due to Republican and Democratic "retreats," hearings regarding the controversial Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) will resume in February. SOPA's Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, is scheduled for a vote on January 24th. More »
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You know how Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt were using German courts to go after alleged pirates of the game? And how they gave up when everyone told them how shitty the practice they were using was? Turns out CD Projekt are just the tip of the iceberg. More »
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Today, the folks at CD Projekt RED have ceased their ongoing practice of tracking down people they believe have pirated The Witcher 2 and threatening them with legal action. This aggressive approach came under fire from fans and the media, specifically from Rock Paper Shotgun, whose John Walker published an open exchange with CD Projekt representatives that we were happy to republish here. More »
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"Game Laywer" Jas Purewal has written an open letter to Edge, addressed to "those who defend game pirates". You'd hope it's a considered, practical approach to one of the muddiest topics this industry faces today. It is not. More »
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This week, TorrentFreak reported on the 50 most searched terms on torrent sites, giving indications as to what may have been the most pirated things of 2011. Not a single video game title was among them. More »
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Torrent site Kat.ph has opened its databases to the download specialists at TorrentFreak, sharing with them the 50 most commonly searched terms for torrent downloads in 2011. More »
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Republished from Rock, Paper Shotgun. More »
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CD Projekt, the developers of the Witcher series, have been sending letters to alleged German pirates demanding over US$1,000 for having illegally copied the game. More »
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I've played quite a bit of the latest entry in Croteam's twitchtastic first-person shooter series, but I never encountered the super-speedy giant unkillable pink spider creature in the first level. Know why? Because my copy isn't pirated. More »
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A study commissioned by the Swiss government has found that the country's current piracy laws, which allow downloading of stuff for "personal use", should stay. Because they actually encourage people to buy more stuff. More »
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Dutch copyright watchdog BREIN is being sued by a musician for more than $1 million after allegedly using his song in copyright warnings on DVDs without explicit permission. Oh my. More »
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Ubisoft has no idea on the topic of piracy and the PC market. None. It must be embarrassing for lower-downs at the company who do have an idea to have to listen to people like Stanislas Mettra open their mouths. More »
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Yesterday, Stanislas Mettra was quoted by IncGamers as saying some, well, very inflammatory things about why I Am Alive, the upcoming downloadable title for Xbox 360 and PS3, didn't have a PC port. Mettra's now written us—not to give the usual "I was misquoted," or "taken out-of-context" dodge—but to say that if his words sound a little extreme, it's because he is not a native English speaker. More »
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Here's a heartwarming tale full of good holiday cheer. In an interview with IncGamers, Stanislas Mettra, the creative director behind Ubisoft's thought-provoking survival tale I Am Alive said chances of a PC port are about zero because a) um, piracy and b) lol, nobody buys PC games anymore. More »
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Sweden's Pirate Party had a booth all paid for at this weekend's Gamex, the nation's largest video games expo, until someone from Gamex came to their senses, phoned the pirates and said GTFO. The real head-scratcher is why, as Piratpartiet says, they were invited in the first place. More »
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Look, video games turning up on torrent sites around the days of their release is a given. Happens with almost every game published these days. But no game is bigger in 2011 (at least in terms of sales) than Modern Warfare 3, and the tale of how it's been lifted and pirated is an interesting one. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5854116&view=rss&microfeed=true The Paris' Court of Appeals last week issued €4.8 million in fines against a half-dozen companies importing and selling devices that can be used on Nintendo platforms to play homebrew and pirated games, Electronic Theatre reports. More »
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Shortly after its release in Japan, hackers demonstrated that, yes, the 3DS could run an R4 cartridge, the notorious piracy medium that has given Nintendo fits throughout the lifespan of the DS. That was to be expected, as the R4 is a DS medium, and the 3DS is backward compatible. The 3DS cartridge is a different format. More »
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In today's bootleg edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Mellowguy wants to know if downloading an illegal copy of a PC game is okay if you already own the console version. What's your take? More »
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In recent years publishers like Ubisoft, 2K and EA have done a great job pissing off paying customers with systems aimed at preventing piracy. Which, uh, is counter-productive! Especially when PC pirates are able to easily circumvent said measures. More »
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In what is believed to be the world's first-ever arrest in connection with circumventing a video game console's security, South African authorities raided a jailbreaking operation in Johannesburg, sending one man to jail and confiscating all kinds of hardware and software the outfit used. More »
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U.S. video game industry anti-piracy efforts last year led to more than 40 criminal cases and at least two convictions, the Entertainment Software Association reported today. More »
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With experience on both the PC and Xbox 360, Fable studio Lionhead is well aware of the pitfalls of both platforms. And feels one pitfall is deeper than the other. More »
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Earlier this week, Nintendo pushed live an updated piece of firmware for the DSi. It was aimed at stopping piracy. Less than a day later, however, flash cart manufacturers had already found a way around it. More »
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It seems like it should go without saying, but commenter CornflakeJustice felt like saying it anyway, and since this is Speak Up on Kotaku and not sit quietly and say nothing on Kotaku, here we are. More »
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Why is the PlayStation Network still offline? Sony Computer Entertainment America will only cop to an unnervingly vague "external intrusion on our system," leading those affected by and those taking delight in PSN's problems to generate their own theories about the disruption that's now six days old. More »
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It takes an (admittedly self-serving) quote from an online retailer to say what every other industry executive must surely be thinking, but can never dare to say out loud. More »
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Garry Newman, the creator of the Garry's Mod mod/machinima toolkit for the PC, just sprung one of the best pirate traps in recent memory, tricking those who did not pay for his product into essentially giving themselves up. More »
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Brazilian commenter KaiserSpiegel tells the story of the sad decline of his local street market following an anti-piracy police raid in today's Speak-Up on Kotaku. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5785297&view=rss&microfeed=true Ubisoft, the company that once used a pirate hack to fix one of its PC games, seems to be taking questionable shortcuts once more, as a Reddit user explores their downloadable special edition Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood soundtrack's shady origins. More »
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Koushik Dutta, a noted hacker (and mobile developer), has posted what he claims is an email exchange between himself and an employee of Sony Computer Entertainment America. In which Sony offers the man a job. More »
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A daytime television legal precedent was set earlier this year in a landmark case involving Wii mod chip shenanigans. More interesting than plaintiff Joseff Ben David suing defendant Eyal Levinshtein for gouging him on mod chip installation fees are the blatant displays of piracy and ignorance broadcast on syndicated TV. More »
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The 3DS was apparently already cracked within 24 hours of release, and it's now supposedly running piracy devices. Isn't Nintendo going to do anything? You betcha. More »
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Generally, those who create monster indie game hits don't follow up by spouting, well, corporate attitudes about their games when in public. So the fact Markus "Notch" Persson has a more liberal view of the piracy issue isn't that surprising. But he does have strong words for it. More »
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The Humble Indie Bundle is a project aimed at not only selling a ton of quality indie PC games, but raising money for charity as well. And it's doing a very good job. More »
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