CD Projekt Red wants DLCs to be free – Video Games Update
The developer behind the famous The Witcher role playing games, CD Projekt Red, believes that developers should not charge for downloadable content (DLC) as opposed to the current standard set by other developers and publishers.
CD Projekt Red (CDPR) is a Polish developer and was founded in 2002. Their first game, The Witcher, came out for PC in 2007. The Witcher was a medieval action adventure RPG and boasted different endings depending on what choices the gamers made while playing
the game. The game became a fan favourite and was hailed by critics as the best RPG of the year.
CDPR re-released the game as The Witcher: Enhanced Edition in 2008 again only for the PC. The Enhanced edition expansion was also released for the original game as DLC which was free of cost. CDPR is also against Digital Rights Management (DRM) lock and
removed all DRM from the game with a patch for the Enhanced Edition.
The eagerly awaited sequel, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, was released last year in 2011 and just like the previous game, all DLC which was released for the game was completely free. CDPR brought the game to the Xbox 360 with the release of the Enhanced
Edition of Witcher 2 in April 2012. The additional features of the Xbox 360 version were also available for PC gamers with free DLC.
CDPR believes that they will move more copies of the game if they add more value to the product, even though most of their publishers don’t agree with them.
"When we put it out for free, we saw a boost in the sales with the Enhanced Edition because it just created good will, and it refreshes the product. I see the industry trending toward over-exploiting the gamer, and I think this will come back to the publishers
that are doing that, and eventually, people will stop buying their stuff,” said Marcin Iwinski, who is the co-founder of CDPR, in an interview with Gamasutra.
Unfortunately the rest of the Games Industry does not share CDPR’s point of view as other publishers not only continue to charge for the DLC but also cut out parts that should’ve been in the game so that they can be sold again as DLC.
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