The Witcher II developer CD Projekt RED has hired a German law firm to approach known pirates of the game, asking for approximately NZ$1573 or warning them that they’ll be pursued to the fullest extent of the law.

The move has caused some controversy, as the asking price is significantly more than the retail cost of the game, and some of those contacted claim never to have heard of The Witcher II.

In response to the controversy, CD Projekt RED issued a statement to Eurogamer, saying, “As you know, we aren’t huge fans of any sort of DRM here at CD Projekt RED. DRM itself is a pain for legal gamers – the same group of honest people who decided that our game was worth its price, and went and bought it. We don’t want to make their lives more difficult by introducing annoying copy protection systems.

“Moreover, we always try to offer high value with our product – for example, enhancing the game with additional collectors’ items such as soundtracks, making-of DVDs, books, walkthroughs, etc. We could introduce advanced copy protection systems which, unfortunately, punish legal customers as well. Instead, we decided to give gamers some additional content with each game release, to make their experience complete.

“However, that shouldn’t be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn’t only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry.

“We’ve seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 per cent sure have downloaded our game illegally.”