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Editorial Entertainment Games

Net Journalist Prosecuted For Warez Crimes 41

Posted by Zonk from the pwned dept.
Andrew Burnes writes "A fellow Internet games journalist will shortly plead guilty in a Connecticut court room for being involved in the warez scene, following his apprehension in April as part of Operation Fastlink. Here is a slice of his email to various press and editorial professionals: 'I am very sorry for what I have done, and after I serve my sentence, I hope I will be able to continue my career in the game industry, and move on with my life. This last year has been incredibly hard for me emotionally, facing the consequences of my bad choices, and I am hopeful for your support, but I'll understand if you want nothing to do with me.'
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Net Journalist Prosecuted For Warez Crimes More

Net Journalist Prosecuted For Warez Crimes

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  • That depends (Score:5, Funny)

    by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:39PM (#11881605) Journal
    and I am hopeful for your support, but I'll understand if you want nothing to do with me.

    That depends. What kinda warez can you hook me up with? :)
  • The software leaks, cracks, and such have to come from somewhere. While I'm sure there are some very intelegent individuals out there. It makes sense that there are several internal problems.
  • cue the crickets, i mean come on, a review site guy doing this? Cmon dude just stick it in the lightsocket and be done with it, your through with any trust in this industry.
  • And this is news because...?

    • Re:Big deal... (Score:5, Funny)

      by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @05:18PM (#11882078)
      Prison Transcript Leak....

      Gamer: What are you in jail for?

      Prisoner: I killed 20 people with a plastic fork. About you?

      Gamer: I was passing out warez

      Prisoner: What the fuck is that.

      Gamer: It's aaa.... Computer Games

      Prisoner: Why are you in the same prison with me?

      Gamer: My lawyer and judge didn't like my warez collection.

  • I feel safer already... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShamusYoung ( 528944 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:44PM (#11881674) Homepage

    Another dangerous criminal apprehended!

  • well.. how badly was he in it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:47PM (#11881712) Homepage Journal
    because hell, even most game _programmers_ were 'involved' with warez at some point of their lives. because being super nerd gamelover and warez actually DO(did) go hand in hand unless your parents were super rich(and willing to get them to you).

    hell, whole demoscene spur up from c64 warez scene, and from that scene spur up many of the star programmers for todays games.

    (professional for profit pirating on the other hand.. if he was into that in hardcore: fuck you)

    not that this should affect his game reviewer career though.. hell.. most game reviewers SHOULD be into warezed games so that they could write the reviews both early and WITHOUT ass licking of the publisher being necessary to get the review game.

    • Warez0rxing games is one thing. Being the one who leaks an early version is another, IMHO. That goes straight to the heart of trust and inherently makes him unfit for further work in the industry.
      • Being the one who leaks an early version is another, IMHO. That goes straight to the heart of trust and inherently makes him unfit for further work in the industry.

        Not only that, but there's little point to it. Review versions are often tweaked and polished before the final retail game comes out, so anyone who downloaded the review version ends up having to download the final version. This is why warez groups tend to stay away from them.

        Rob

    • Re:well.. how badly was he in it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @07:14PM (#11883253)

      not that this should affect his game reviewer career though.. hell.. most game reviewers SHOULD be into warezed games so that they could write the reviews both early and WITHOUT ass licking of the publisher being necessary to get the review game.

      Uh huh. I once worked on a game where we accidentally put a game killing bug into our first beta candidate. We rolled it back, and fixed it properly, and told the people concerned to chuck the disks we'd just sent them, and to have this BC2 disk. Guess which version got warezed onto the net. Guess which version 4 different reviewers reviewed. Guess which reviewers got an 'early' review where they spent several paragraphs bagging the crash bug and saying this game is a load of shit. Guess which reviewers had to spend a bit of quality time with a lawyer where they tried to insist that 'it was like that when I bought it, but I don't have the original disk anymore'.

      If you go with the warezed version, you don't know what you're getting. But we might. We do keep track of identifiable features in each version that goes out of the studio. The last game I was on, the 'zero day warez' version wasn't a zero day crack. It was from a month before release. Anyone who reviewed that, wasn't reviewing that same thing that gamers were going to play. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not reviewing the game that I'm buying, then what does your review have to do with anything, and why should I pay money for it?

  • Whatever happened to the movie producer who was putting screeners out to the pirates for a cut of the takes?

    Did he not get the public perp walk like this guy did?

  • Does it go the other way as well? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pnice ( 753704 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:48PM (#11881731)
    I would like to know how much this works in the other direction. Sometimes a illegal copy of a game will show up on some warez release list and then about the same time a review of the game will show up on an video game review site. Like maybe some of the net game journalists don't have access to pre-release review copies like the big boys so they get a pirate version of the game from the net so they can be up to date on review, information, screenshots, etc. They may not be the ones distributing but it's still illegal I would think.
    • Yeah, that would be profiting from (as you're an employee and get paid to write the reviews) the use of stolen copyrighted works. MUCH harsher enforcement of the law there. Just distributing, well, you're not getting any money from it, but if you were to take those illegally obtained games and then wrote reviews from playing them, then you'd be up a creek without a paddle. (IANACL, Copyright Lawyer)

  • What a dumbass. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nutcase ( 86887 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:50PM (#11881749) Homepage Journal
    I hope I will be able to continue my career in the game industry

    Dude. Your career to this point depended on them trusting you enough to give you free, early access to games you could write about. You spent your time undermining that trust and the industry by distributing those games to the world as warez. It pissed the gaming industry off so bad they are prosecuting you and sending you to JAIL.

    You have no career in the game industry. You probably have no career in journalism. Considering how many job applications ask if you've ever committed a felony, you may have no career at a fast food restaurant.

    Let me put it another way: Game Over.

    • Re:What a dumbass. (Score:5, Funny)

      by pnice ( 753704 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:57PM (#11881830)
      ...cue dead Pac-Man sound.

    • Re:What a dumbass. (Score:4, Informative)

      by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @05:54PM (#11882447) Homepage
      Your career to this point depended on them trusting you enough to give you free, early access to games you could write about. You spent your time undermining that trust and the industry by distributing those games to the world as warez.

      Your assumption that he used his position at Game Over to acquire software and warez it appears to be incorrect. If you read the discussion under the brief blurb at IGN (TFA), you'll see a post (which purports to be) from the Game Over President/Editor in Chief. It says:

      As President and Editor in Chief of Game Over Online, Incorporated, I can't emphasize enough that what Seth did, he did on his own. We do not condone Seth's actions nor do we participate in them. Furthermore, there is no connection between our site and Seth's actions. Seth has never acquired product on behalf of Game Over and then gone and pirated it. To hear people say otherwise is simply untrue and a slap in the face to the hard working individuals who contribute to our site. I'll say it again, what Seth did has absolutely nothing to do with Game Over Online, it's an isolated incident.

      Stephen Riach Game Over Online, Inc.

      Your words, however, are pretty harsh. Perhaps you know more about this than you're letting on.

      • Seems to me like the guy's link to Game Over wouldn't have been mentioned if it wasn't relevant. Of course, facts being irrelevant hasn't stopped the media from reporting on them before.

        Rob

  • this sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)

    by EddieBurkett ( 614927 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @04:56PM (#11881812)
    This last year has been incredibly hard for me emotionally, facing the consequences of my bad choices, and I am hopeful for your support, but I'll understand if you want nothing to do with me.'
    Apparently my ex got her break-up speech off the same warez site he did...

  • Good...and bad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @05:05PM (#11881939) Homepage Journal
    I have to say that I have positive and negative feelings about this, and about game piracy as a whole.
    Overall, I've always thought that games are one of the things that there is very little justification to just strait out pirate. I mean, there is no real requirement that you have game X (as opposed to say, certain Operating Systems or Office applications that such a large portion of the world uses that if you don't have it, in some cases, you are basically screwed), and I've always thought that games as a whole were fairly reasonably priced.
    On the other hand, in some cases, piracy probably helps the game companies sell more games than they might otherwise, and in the end I think rewards companies who make good games (there are a number of games that I've purchased because I downloaded a pirate copy of a game that I wasn't really interested in, and then realized that the game was in fact quite good, or ran better under wine than I expected, and I ended up going out and paying for the game).
    In the end though, regardless of whether or not this guy was doing the game industry a service or a disservice, it seems to me that if you are in a position like this guy was in, warezing games is a pretty boneheaded move just because it seems like an "insider" is a lot more likely to get caught than John Q. Cracker.
  • Anyone know what kind of sentence this guy is potentially facing?
  • If you read the comments in the linked article, He seems to be known for reviewing primarily pirated games and even posting download links on the site.
  • I remember when Trespasser first came out. They posted the first review. Even made it to the developer page.
    http://web.archive.org/web/20010420123331/www.tres passer.com/reviews-frame.html [archive.org]

    10/19/98: First out the gate. Don't know how they got it.. but hey. Here it is..Game Over.net

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