Gaming giants ‘demanding $1,000 from pirates’

European publishers are hunting down pirates and demanding they pay more than $1,000 for each game illegaly downloaded, according to reports.

TorrentFreak claims that companies such as Square Enix, Eidos, Atari and Ubisoft are tracking pirates based on IP addresses and demanding pirates pay the large sum or face court action.

The website states however that tracking illicit torrent downloads through IP address may end up getting innocent users in trouble, as many clients don’t use a user’s own IP.

Polish studio CD Projekt recently abandoned a similar anti-piracy scheme after an Internet backlash, having previously asked legal firms to snuff out those pirating its Witcher titles.

The news of more studios and publishers tracking down pirates comes after data released earlier this month revealed the extent of illegal downloads.

It claimed that four million copies of Crysis 2 had been pirated, whilst Modern Warfare, Battlefield 3, Fifa 12 and Portal 2 had been downloaded over three million times each.

Together, the five games constituted to more than 18 million illicit downloads.

The information however has not been corroborated by publishers or developers of the games in question.