British PC Gamer Gets Threat Letter for File Sharing Game He Can't Even Find on His PC

While The Pirate Bay scoffs at the MPAA from the relative safety of Sweden, a PC gamer in London has been slammed with a £600 threat by lawyers representing German games distributor Zuxxez. The threat came in the form of a letter claiming to have "forensic" evidence that the gamer used BitTorrent to download Two Worlds and demanded the nearly $1200 fee as "compensation" or face legal action. To complete the impression of a random shakedown, the letter also demanded that the gamer in question (who requested anonymity from PC Pro) reimburse the law firm an additional $20 to cover the cost of nabbing his user information from their ISP.

For his part, the gamer claims he still can't find the Two Worlds game on his computer, though he acknowledges the possibility one of his children downloaded the game without his permission.

As if that weren't enough:

To add insult to injury it [Davenport Lyons, the law firm] didn't pay enough postage on the letter and I had to collect it from the sorting office at a cost of £1.30," he says. "This also used up most of the two weeks that it allowed for a response.

Davenport Lyons has sent out hundreds of letters to gamers on behalf of Zuxxez, as well as Codemasters. Like the PC Pro reader, many of the recipients deny that they downloaded the game and have challenged Davenport to prove their "forensic" evidence.

Whatever the truth of the case, using intimidation to browbeat users into submission has proven time and again to be a losing tactic. Gamers as a community are going to tolerate that sort of treatment even less than music lovers. We certainly hope that the game industry knows better than to look to the MPAA and RIAA for anti-piracy strategy.

[via PC Pro UK]