"The issue, Glenn, is that SE explicitly told them to destroy ALL copies, and inform those who had it to do the same. If a Beta tester leaked it, they wouldn't get in trouble, it be these guys. And you cannot say "I'd do it anyways" if it was you having 150k lawsuit staring down at you. Its easy to talk smack when the ball ain't in your hands, but if you're the one with it, and the defense is all around you, well then what?
SE has the edge in every way. Financially, the court costs would be covered by the sale of their worst-selling game alone. Time? They got a whole section just for this, so oodles and ooooodles of it. And, the creators did say if asked, they'd stop work on the game.
Plain and simple Glenn, you are all talk. You wouldn't do it. You can talk all you want, but until you have the beast staring down at you, with flames licking around your boots, and jaws ready to snap shut around you, it means zip, zero, nada, nothing."
I would do it- I would still find a way.
Again, SE is just threatening as much as possible to scare people into submission- it doesn't mean that they can legally steal 150 g's from the creators and lock them up for 5 years if a beta tester anonymously released the game somehow. Sure, SE's lawyers CLAIM that, but lawyers lie and speak weasel-talk a lot.
Why? Well, look at the fear and paranoia running rampant here. Obviously, such tactics are quite effective. They can't say something like, "we will kill you with our ninja army and their pet tigers if you don't submit", cause they know people would accept that as bullshit. Their high-priced, fancy lawyers doing legalese weasel talk to trick people into thinking they have more power and rights and authority then they actually possess is believable enough that a lot of you here are slurping up their bullshit milkshake and asking for seconds without even realizing what's really inside of it.
Also, opening a topic briefly with a torrent would be a terrible idea. There are more intelligent ways of releasing something anonymously.
And SE's NOT going to send a couple of people off to jail for years and give them 150 K fines automatically if it did automatically get released.
Sure, SE are douchebags, but there's a limit to how much negative press they'd be willing to generate in the gaming community. Tossing someone in jail or trying to for a free product would be very extreme- assuming they actually could which they probably can't. (see other legal arguments made on the board about this) Some of you are so frightened by SE's lawyer weasel-talk that you can't see the forest for the trees.
"Gasp, if a lawyer says something it must be true," isn't the way to look at what lawyers say.
"If a lawyer says something then it's what they want people to believe," is what people SHOULD think instead.
Look at all this infighting and talk of concentration camp-like suffering that will befall all the creators and beta testers automatically if there's a single release being made by people here.
SE may be assholes, and their lawyers are especially fucking assholes, but they are very clever to word stuff the way they have. The reactions here are exactly what they desire- creating civil war and fear and strife here and calls for submission.
People here are already calling on everybody to just bow down and submit while SE just rapes the dead corpse of this game and refuses to even acknowledge what it's doing. That's how terrified and gullible everybody is.
