CD Projekt Red have always been pretty comfortable in their stance as the good guys of PC Gaming, making sure to go to lengths to make The Witcher 2 as DRM free as they can, and even offering huge content patches free to anyone who buys the game. And in an upcoming interview with Examiner, they’ve made it clear that they don’t believe in milking their player base with small nuggets of game after release.
“We could sell extra content to gamers ‘down the road’, but we don’t believe in that.” said The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s game director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. He makes no bones about the current state of the games industry, where incremental blobs of content, like map packs and character skins, are often shipped out in the months following a big release. “We believe patches, fixes and additional content should be provided to gamers free of charge. Only something REALLY big, and something that will not make you feel ripped off, justifies the price tag.”
This does set things up for the studio’s next release, and reinforces that CD Projekt Red aren’t about to start changing how they do business; the Witcher 2 received a massive patch not long after release completely reworking the difficulty curve of the game, and recently the developers themselves released a huge unofficial patch overhauling the combat to be more in keeping with how the upcoming Witcher 3 handles fighting.
That said, that doesn’t mean they’ll never charge for DLC. “If we ever decide to charge you for something, we think you will appreciate what you get in return.”
Which sets things up nicely for The Witcher 3. I’m more than happy to lay down a few quid for an extra storyline or two. Anything to lose myself in that world for a few more hours, with all it’s ridiculously gorgeous foliage and abundance of fantasy grimaces.