A while ago, we posted a story about a massive war on videogame piracy being waged in the UK by Atari, Codemasters and a bunch of smaller publishers that nobody cares about. The crackdown uses methods of questionable integrity to track down software pirates who then receive threatening letters demanding money.
Well, one of these letters got sent to an elderly couple in Scotland. According to Atari’s friendly ransom demand of £500, Gill and Ken Murdoch, aged 54 and 66 respectively, had downloaded an illegal copy of Race07.
“We do not have, and have never had, any computer game or sharing software,” dispute the Murdochs. “We did not even know what ‘peer to peer’ was until we received the letter.”
Unsurprisingly, Atari has since dropped its threatening demand for money. Maybe they should be a bit more careful before embarking on legal proceesdings that are about as robust and flawless as one of their games.
