This trend of early leaked Xbox 360 games making their way to the public through not so legal channels is starting to become interesting. Another AAA title has been leaked, this time it's Gears of War 2 from Epic. I felt bad for Bethesda and their X360 leak, however I feel very VERY happy for this one. Reason? Epic talked so much smack a few months back to us PC gamers and turned their backs on the market that took them to where they are today, and now they swear by the legitimacy of the 360. Even though they did announce that there'll be no PC version of GOW2, I can definitely see them running to port one now in a desperate attempt to make more money out of it. Well if it does happen I say screw them!

Source:

http://n4g.com/xbox360/News-213582.aspx

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Now if Tom's Games was so kind as to interview for comments any Epic representative, I'd be thrilled to hear what they have to say about it... Not often do I get pleasure in saying "Viva la Piracy!" But this is definitely one of those moments

I see. So because Epic didn't make a PC version of Gears 2 for launch, you're happy to see the 360 version pirated. And you want me to ask Epic to please comment on the situation for the sadistic enjoyment of my pro-piracy, Epic-hating readers. I'll get right on it....

Listen, EMP, I understand your feelings about Epic. You feel jilted because they've increased their focus on the consoles while citing piracy on the PC as one of the reasons. And now you find delicious irony in this scenario. I understand that. However, piracy, be it PC or console, will not "teach them a lesson." All piracy will do is help convince developers that they can no longer get gamers to pay for their games, and that will either lead to heavy-handed DRM or the developer getting out of the business.

gears 1 on the PC sucked anyway didn't it?

Rob I would tend to agree with emp on this one, and I totally see his point - having piracy on the 360 is NOT a good thing for gaming overall, but if it does get them to start focusing back on the PC because they realize they were wrong to assume piracy is a PC-only problem, isn't that then a good thing?

If 90% of games sold was for consoles where do you think pirates efforts would be used, i'd be guessing on pirating console games.
Few years down the line " All our console games are being pirated, were only going to make PC games from now on"

I guess I did get a little carried away, but you don't know how devilishly fun it was for me to read that GOW2 got leaked I was one of the idiots who actually bought Unreal Tournament 3 PC Version... Even though I would have liked to play GOW2, the reason I am happy to see their game pimped on the web pre-release has more to do with the comments they made on the PC as a platform a few months back.

Regaining some composure from my previous post, it may not 'teach them' a lesson, but it will definitely have them drop the whole "PC is being pirated! Consoles are the way to go" charade and open their eyes.

Unless they do something new and revolutionary, I am not really interested in Epic coming back to the PC, not because they left in the first place or anything, but because their last two efforts were mediocre, in fact I had more fun with their GOW port than with Unreal Tournament 3 (And IMO it shouldn't have been like that). I just hope that this wave of title leaks opens some eyes and keeps the developers from jumping ship.

I mean, do you not savor the delicious irony of this? I do, especially after Epic saying that their Unreal Engine 4 was being built from the ground up for Console development, with the Wii or Whatever nintendo console having more priority over the PC as far as support goes.

EDIT:

Ehhh, well it wasn't what it was cracked up to be, but it kept me interested long enough to finish it and actually care about the sequel. Gameplay wasn't great, but using a Post-apocalyptic or medieval story is kind of a cheap shot to me, because it instantly earns them points in my book.

And in case some of you don't remember about what I'm talking about:

Unreal Engine 4 Targeting Consoles, Not PCs

http://kotaku.com/367219/unreal-en [...] es-not-pcs

Ok i giggled a little in a slightly sadistic manner when i read this news.

Hopefully at least this will stop games companies saying such things as they will not develop pc games since the pc is "pirated to hell and back" before at least thinking. Piracy is bad, and does hurt the gaming industry, however, in my opinion, restrictive and horrible DRM hurts it just as much.

Fixed for you!

Pirates will always pirate, and DRM will only put off the people who actually buy games.

On topic though, I (like many people) am pleased that this has happened. It's not because I get some sadistic pleasure out of it, but because games as high profile as GOW2 and Fallout 3 have been pirated on the consoles, and before they've even been released! This sort of thing has to make the games companies think twice about making PCs the scapegoat or abandoning the platform all together. They can't turn a blind eye anymore. Consoles have just as much of a problem with piracy (if not more) as the PC, but the difference is, the PC already has measures in place to combat it (Steam, MMO subscriptions, etc).

Do they put any form of DRM on console disks?

Agreed, I saw a mate mod two Wii and start playing pirated games in less than an hour. Was shocked, I always thought console piracy was hard. And then he showed me his DS, that's got to be even easier than pc to pirate imho.

Currently the PS3 is the only system games can't be pirated for, although there are people working towards making this possible in the future. Even if they do end up cracking the system, there will be other hoops to jump through like file size, blu-ray discs, etc.

while a smaller percentage of the console gamers may pirate, in terms of the number of people pirating, console has more pirates than PC

the only reason why console has a smaller percentage of piracy is because when you buy a console game and pop in the disk, the game just works, there no drm hoops to jump through. it just works, the drm is completely invisible to the user, so the legit customer feels no need to pirate or feel like there being forced into piracy by oppressive drm

pirates also follow the crowd. if you move from pc to console, then the pirates will follow you to the console and pirate your game before the release date (never anger the internet or you will feel it's wrath, well guess what talking down on pc gaming will do to the internet's mood )

This is not the same type of leak that we reported on with Fallout 3. This looks like a copy was sold early or a press disc was received and is being flaunted. The Fallout 3 version was an actual leak to the masses via a downloadable image aka pirate copy. It can be downloaded and burned on a dual layer disc without a label or anything.

The disc in the picture looks like a "silver" which came from a printing press, and none of the release sites have reported on a GoW2 leak. If GoW2 had leaked into pirate hands, it'd be on the "scene release" sites. Golden Axe did leak on Saturday however.