So... they're targeting 25000 people, yet are only planning on pushing prosecution on 500 of them that don't respond. Solution? NO ONE SETTLE! How is this not a case of over prosecution without the means to follow through? I highly doubt these few companies have the funds (or would be willing to provide the funds) for lawyer fees for 25 THOUSAND lawsuits. This is like the handicapped lawyers who go around threatening lawsuits to people who aren't 100% up to code on disability laws.

Why must they take my Micro Machines away from me!

Wake me up when they decide to take on Pirate Bay.

Atari are cunts.

You know how many games you have to pirate to save 300 quid after paying that? :)

@naturon "While i don't agree with piracy i find it funny how the majority of the time its the company's that make shitty games the ones who complain about piracy affecting their sales."
that is because those that make good games tend to sell them regardless if people pirate them as well. Don't get me wrong, I like a game from one of those producers- I pirated overlord (codemasters), and then bought it later.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. Peer gaurdian 2. (First time I;ve said it on destructoid, but you're a ninny).

I wonder how many of those 300,000 are like me and downloaded it, didn't even bother to install it and play it, then got rid of it.

@ Mr B Natural
Just because someone downloaded the game does not make it a lost of sale. I would give you potential lost of sale. Not everybody that downloads the game plays it and beats it. Hell most people dont even get around to installing it. I did the same thing for Overload I downloaded it and tried it then went and bought it because I liked it. Crysis I downloaded played it maybe 15 mins then uninstalled it and deleted it never picked it up again. So you might say why didnt I get the demo? Well most bandwith for downloading demos cap out at 100k and take a 3-6 hours to download. When I can pirate a game in less than 2 hours. Sometimes it take more than one level to figure out if I like the game (it didnt in this case). Should I be counted as a lost of sales? NO wouldnt have bought the game either way even if I couldnt pirate it I would not get it EVER. I would only buy valve, id and blizzard games which I know are good. If this was a perfect world. The numbers for piracy is soo skewed that you can never really tell how much was lost because there are poeple who will pirate the game play and beat it and never buy it but I will tell you that number is not 25% or every person that downloads it. But the fact is if you design a good game people will buy it regaurdless. Look at valve, id, blizzard, epic etc. Also piracy will never be stop EVER so you might as well focus on making a better game or do multiplayer with auth servers (for people who are going to want to buy the game to play it online).

Congratulations Atari, Codemasters (and those other two unknown idiots)! You've just alienated a large portion of your demographic.

It must be a good feeling that you can sue people £16,000 for a game (using the term loosely).

Pro-Tip: If your game only sells 800 copies, piracy really isn't the problem.

Atari and Codemasters have done dick-all that's worth buying in a long while, since UT2k4 and Operation: Flashpoint (both developers have since changed publishers). So really this may be their only potential source of income.

It just startles me that the game (s)industry can see what happened to the music industry, and think "Hey, that's a good idea... after all, record companies haven't had any repercussions, have they?"

I wonder how many of these 25k people recieving a letter, will ever buy another game from these publishers?