The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Message Board

SIX.

MILLION.

WITCHERS.

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This may look like a blog post but it’s actually a combination of confessional booth and news stand. Gather round and confess the mistakes of your past as I do the same, then pick up the evening papers on the way out. As the headline suggests, my sin relates to The Witcher 2. I’ve never finished it. Or started it for that matter. The reason I haven’t started it is because I haven’t finished the first Witcher game, so I should probably do that. But what’s this? A small leaflet on the news stand informs us that Andrzej ‘Flash’ Kwiatkowski, an ex-modder and now ‘Gameplay Designer’ at CD Projekt, has returned to modding in an effort to rebalance the combat in Witcher 2. The file size is currently 8 gigabytes, which is too many floppy disks to consider, but should be smaller by release. Which should be very soon. Details below.

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You know a developer’s really made it when they arrange an exclusive cover feature with GameStop’s loyalty card-flogging magazine Game Informer. CD Projekt RED are the latest to do the whole de facto scoop thing, revealing the already-teased The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Aka, 2014′s most exciting RPG, it rather sounds like.

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This “Macintosh Personal Computer” thing is never going to catch on, but folks like Valve and now GOG insist on humoring owners of these unnaturally pristine elf machines, so here we are. During its much-ballyhooed news-a-thon, GOG drew back the curtain on a new version of its service tailored to Macs, which brings with it 50 games (eight of which you receive free just for signing up) and some rather tempting deals. Speaking of, there’s this insane 32-game pay-what-you-want Interplay special leading the charge in celebration of GOG’s fourth anniversary. The tearful sort-of-family reunion would not, however, be complete without Geralt’s permafrost tundra of a glare brightening up the room, so CD Projekt Red took the stage to demonstrate its Witcher 2 mod toolset. I’d say “imagine the possibilities,” but imaginations are for people who don’t have extremely impressive time-lapse videos. Check it out after the break.

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I’m probably falling into a marketing trap. The GOG people are watching the Internet for a mention of GOG, and now I’ve just pinged RPS on their global map of suckers. I don’t care. Fill me in on your spreadsheet, if you must. You have my attention. On Thursday, 18:00 GMT they’ll be hosting a live press conference on their website to talk about “an exciting new direction that the digital distributor formerly known as ‘Good Old Games’ will be taking.” How many more directions can one company take?(more…)

I’m calling it now: It’s only a matter of time until someone designs a Game of Thrones mod for The Witcher 2. And that matter (note: I’m pretty sure “matter” isn’t a real unit of time measurement) just got a lot shorter, because CD Projekt’s tossing yet another hefty offering into The Witcher’s overflowing cauldron with official mod tools. Unfortunately, CD Projekt has also informed RPS that Steam Workshop support’s not on the table – at least, for now.

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This may come as something of a surprise to you, but Cyberpunk looks to be decidedly less witchy than The Witcher. I’m not complaining, either. Geralt’s tale marches in line behind the player’s decisions, but it still definitely belongs to, well, Geralt. CD Projekt’s take on Cyberpunk, then, sounds like a refreshing (and extremely intriguing) change of pace. This time around, you’re shaping your own destiny. With hologram glasses.

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Don’t worry, members of Witcher‘s (thankfully not immortalized in card form) lover legion: Geralt’s not gone for good. He is, however, enjoying a bit of a vacation, and – for the foreseeable future – CD Projekt’s giving its frequently sexed up brand of swords and sorcery a break. But, on the upside, we’re now in for a change of pace. Announced late last month, Cyberpunk‘s promising a non-linear world with “advanced RPG mechanics” and “mature content.” So then, is it Witcher meets Blade Runner? Or does the on-paper description of this pen-and-paper adaption barely even begin to, well, describe it? I spoke with CD Projekt CEO Marcin Iwinski to find out. And then we also talked about DRM for some reason. 

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The developers of The Witcher II are making a game based on pen-and-paper-RPG Cyperpunk.

Please, please let it actually be called Cyperpunk!

CD Projekt Red said the game will be “richly detailed, non-linear, and with a complex and gripping story,” which sounds like something you’d hear from the guys responsible for The Witcher series.

Actual details on the game are slim, but we’re to expect “twists” in the design techniques the studio has employed in its previous games. Given the tonal shift and new universe, that makes sense. It’s likely Cyperpunk will involve a bunch more shooting than you were ever doing with magic in The Witcher.

This is not, however, the same team who worked on The Witcher and The Witcher 2, though several “veterans” of the franchise will be part of this new team.

It’s unclear if Cyperpunk will end up anywhere besides the PC, but with CD Projekt Red expanding onto Mac and console platforms lately, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Cyperpunk elsewhere.

The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition patch is now making the game even witcherier than before, although my game remains in a pre-enhancement state because the patch preload appears to have vanished up its own witcheroo. I’m not entirely sure how to decipher my own sentence but there appears to be a problem with a borked file in the preload so I have been forced to reinstall the entire game. CDP have discovered a possible way to avoid my tribulations, details of whicher here. Go forth and witch.

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I think I’m going to buy CD Projekt a cookie basket. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. What other language, after all, can express misty eyed gratitude in a more nuanced way? One cookie, I think, will be a witch, and another will be an emergency room. Spelling out “Enhanced Edition” in sight gags will be slightly more difficult, but I’m up to the challenge. So, why all the affectionate confections? Because CDP took the stage during a streaming conference to announce – among other things – an extra DRM-free copy of Witcher 2 for all previous owners regardless of which platform they originally nabbed it on and pre-load details for the Enhanced Edition. More info can be found in this post’s briny depths.

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I never really got to explore The Witcher 2, mostly because my wheezing computer took one look at the first level and had a little single-framerate cry in the corner. I’ve since upgraded it with a graphics card larger than my first flat and finally feel in a position to take on Geralt and co. in all their luminescent glory. In good timing, because the forthcoming Enhanced Edition will soon be on us, adding all kinds of fancy new content to the adventures. Here, have a trailer for it showcasing the new features, and bear in mind it’s all going to be free for anyone who bought the game before the update hits on April 17th.

Viewer beware, it’s Not Safe For Work due to scenes of brief nudity. It’s also a bit spoilerish due to the nature of its content, though I was happy in my ignorance in this and all things.

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CD Projekt will never use DRM again, said joint CEO Marcin Iwinski at a talk at GDC. Speaking to a rather thinned crowd, presumably dented by the post awards celebrations of the night before, Iwinski was explaining CDP’s philosophy for success with a PC exclusive game. And one element of that was to completely abandon DRM, since “It doesn’t work at all.” The talk also revealed how The Witcher 2 had sold over a million units, mostly in retail, but only 75,000 of them in the UK.

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The loud, angered voice of players has pushed CD Projekt Red to change its perspective. It will no longer be sending letters threatning legal action against users it believes pirated The Witcher 2.

The developer drew the ire of players the past few months when it decided to adopt a position on piracy much like the music industry over the past decade. CD Projekt Red started using vague techniques to track pirates, and sent letters threatening legal action, unless the individual in question settled with the developer.

“Being part of a community is a give-and-take process,” said studio co-founder Marcin Iwinski in an open letter to fans. “We only succeed because you have faith in us, and we have worked hard over the years to build up that trust. We were sorry to see that many gamers felt that our actions didn't respect the faith that they have put into CD Projekt RED.”

For every Ubisoft, there is a CD Projekt Red, a developer that understands the difficulties of the PC market but works within them. The Witcher developer ships its games without DRM, and deals with the consequences.

“We don't support piracy,” continued Iwinski. “It hurts us, the developers. It hurts the industry as a whole. Though we are staunch opponents of DRM because we don't believe it has any effect on reducing piracy, we still do not condone copying games illegally. We're doing our part to keep our relationship with you, our gaming audience, a positive one. We've heard your concerns, listened to your voices, and we're responding to them.”

Iwinski did ask players to be vigilant on behalf of CD Projekt regarding piracy. I think we can all get behind that.

You’ll likely remember that last week it was revealed that CD Projekt had hired a firm to send out letters to those they believed had pirated copies of The Witcher 2, demanding large sums of money. It’s a practice that is widely despised, due not only to its propensity for threatening the innocent, but more significantly, because it’s based on threats in the first place. A person receives a letter demanding an excessive amount of money (evidence for this story suggests in the region of €750, although CDP claim it is less), or the recipient will be taken to court where they may end up paying a great deal more. These apparently necessary court cases will be dropped if the fee is paid. And that’s why I consider it such a serious issue. Never mind the severity of the act of piracy, this process subverts the legal process, avoids actually providing evidence and proving guilt, and depends upon scaring people into paying money they likely can’t afford. This is something I wanted to discuss with CDP themselves, who I thought had given unsatisfactory responses to other outlets who suddenly picked up on the story after RPS reported TorrentFreak’s week-old article. My discussion is below.

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Remember how we all cheered when CD Projekt removed the DRM from The Witcher 2? Although the GoG version was always free of the legitimate-customers-only punishing code, all other sources came with the straight jacket. Post launch, however, they patched it out, letting customers enjoy the game without concern. It seemed an all-round sensible way to behave, and despite piracy they sold over a million copies of the game. A happy story. Except, well, now the publisher is threatening alleged (but unproven) pirates with ludicrous legal letters demanding obscene amounts of money.

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