CD Projekt Red on treating gamers with respect – Video Games Update
CD Projekt Red (CDPR), the developer behind the popular role playing game (RPG) The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, discusses downloadable content (DLC), Digital Distribution and respecting the gamer in an interview with VG247.
Konrad Tomaszkiewicz of CDPR stated that the reason why the Witcher games were so successful is because the development team sticks to its beliefs and tries to create a game that the team itself would want to play. CDPR is of the opinion that gamers should
be treated in such a way which the developers themselves would want to be treated.
Tomaszkiewicz has stated that the reason that there is no digital rights management (DRM) lock on CDPR games is because the developer doesn’t want to cause problems for gamers who actually supported them by buying their games. It’s a common fact that DRM
doesn’t affect pirates at all as every DRM locked game eventually gets cracked and pirates get to play the game anyway. The only ones who suffer because of DRM are the legitimate consumers.
CDPR believes that the decision to offer DRM free games from digital distribution sites like GOG is one of the reasons why PC gamers love the studio so much. Tomaszkiewicz believes that digital distribution is the future and retail will likely be phased
out within a decade.
Another thing that Tomaszkiewicz talked about was DLC that many game developers are abusing these days. He stated that CDPR has always believed in free DLC and “back when retail games were dominant, we had expansion packs. These were really large chunks
of content, which were worth their price. If today’s DLCs offered the same amount of content, they would be worth paying for, but in most cases players think they are overcharged for what they receive. That’s why we offer expansions to our game for free. This
is also a way of saying ‘thank you’ to the people who decided to buy our game instead of copying it from an unauthorised source.”
Many gamers have complained that both games can be quite challenging at times. The second game was also criticised for lack of tutorials in the beginning which left many players in the dark when it came to game controls for quite a long portion of the game.
The reason behind this is that CDPR games are targeting a mature audience and unlike every other developer, CDPR doesn’t believe in ‘dumbing-down’ the game just to reach a wider audience.
CDPR is currently working on a sci-fi Cyberpunk RPG but has not revealed any other details about the project.
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