Witcher 3 Studio Promises "Absolutely No DRM" At Launch

[Tien Shen]

Not a huge fan of the Witcher games but I feel like buying 3 just out of principle alone to support one of the most sanest developers out there.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Good on you CD
pirates gonna pirate regardless of DRM, why make those paying for the game suffer

here here

 

[Roofstone]

Sometimes doing the right thing means not doing the Rights thing

That was horrible, go to the shame corner. >_< No dinner tonight.

OT: Hooray for CD! Always being awesome and so on. <3 Though I am still worried about the open world aspect, it can often be hard to change your game considerably.

 

[yundex]

Fantastic! I'll still pick it up on Steam though. I'm sure people who do will still get GoG keys.

Honestly you're better off buying from GoG. If your internet goes down, gets cancelled, or you just don't have any available connection for a while you'll still be able to easily play the game just by launching it.

The same is true for Steam. I play many games on my laptop when I'm not at home, and I let Steam go to offline mode, and everything works fine.

I'm not just saying that because I think CDPR deserve 100% of the revenue for their game, but it's a safer option for you, objectively. Everybody wins (except the monolithic Valve).

The same amount of money that would go towards Steam, would go to towards GOG, so you're still funding a distributor as well as a developer - only in this case, the developer and distributor are one and the same.

I wish the same were true for steam regarding myself, I just recently I took my gaming setup to my other house to stay for a week without internet and let's just say thank god most of my collection does not require steam. To pour salt in the would, uplay worked fine -_-

It seems like I come across every problem steam has to offer every time I use it. I have no luck.

Edit and on topic: With ubisoft recently pulling a huge dick move, I hope CDP keeps blowing their "NO DRM" horn as loud as possible. Blow it till my ears bleed please.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I'll buy two copies. One for me obviously, and one for someone's inevitable birthday.

 

[Furism]

These guys are the best. Their games are great, they are efficient, they make a gorgeous yet super fluid engine and the price is reasonable given the duration of the games.

Can't you buy the game from CoG and then enable it on Steam? I like SteamCloud for sync'ing/backing up saves.

 

[Strazdas]

And it is times like these that i wished that CDProject were anything more than a small indie

 

[babinro]

Great news for pirates

I recall an article stating that The Witcher 2 was pirated something like 5 million times yet sold less than 2 million copies (at the time of the article). You know those figures were low since they only took instances of piracy from some of the major sources as well.

CD Projekt is doing the right thing but unfortunately the consumers don't respect it. They'll take advantage of The Witcher 3 and cost the developer more in lost revenue than if DRM was shipped with the game. This is like leaving candy out on Halloween with a sign asking that people to please just take one.

Maybe The Witcher 3 will prove me wrong though. I'd love to see our gaming community respect these actions and have the piracy numbers at an all time low. At least TRY to give AAA companies the data they need to have a reason to follow suit.

 

[Pyramid Head]

CD Projekt is such a lovely company. The Witcher is a fascinating project with a lot of effort going into it, even if some of the sex scenes make you roll your eyes, and CD Projekt has very interesting work ethics. The refuse to charge for DLC packages unless the package is very large and warrants a small bill, they refuse to use DRM, and even when special Director's Cut editions are made available CD Projekt simultaneously releases patches for free that can convert already purchased items into this Directors Cut.

It probably won't surprise anyone to hear CD Projekt is a central European nation and not American. Still, wouldn't it be nice if the anti-consumer pissing matches were packed in and companies like EA learned from CD Projekt?

 

[Strazdas]

And it is times like these that i wished that CDProject were anything more than a small indie

Indie??

CDProjekt are a developer, publisher and digital distributor (GOG.com's owner and parent company is... CDProjekt). From what I could gather with a quick search, the company is worth $1.44 billion PLN, or about $468 million USD.

They are basically Valve without Steam's massive success.

Hah, i knew ill get quoted for this.
CD Projekt as a developer.... has been developing what, 1 series that people even know about? Infact i checked and indeed they have developed nothing else, not even some obscure thins noone knows about. What they develop is Witcher (and cyberpunk game thats not released yet). Witcher is a low (first) to average (2nd/3rd) budget titles, self-funded (so independant, at least as far as 2nd and 3rd goes), that did kinda okay. No big sucess. Average game developer that stays in profit but created nothing special. Sure witcher was a talk when it was released, but its nowhere near the big boys like gta, AC, BF, COD, ect. So as a developer, they did okay being small to average developer.
Altrough i guess you cant call them indea just for the fact that their are publicly traded company i guess. Still they own the major share themselves.
CDP.pl (thats their official name since 2012, yeah.... ) As a publisher it... published localized translated versions in Poland. While surely it published such titles as Baldur's Gate and Planetscape:torment, it also published such horrible things as HOMM V. Granted, back then in Polish scene they were big. Now however they are just local branch of bi boys publishing, doing their dirtywork. Nothing spectaular or outstanding there. Thats like saying that people who import hard drives and sell the locally has "created harddrives for all poland". All thy did was redistribute.
CD Projekt as a digita distributor (gog.com) did ok. They have thier niche (old games made to work with modern computers) and i use them myself. but that does not say very much. as far asdigital sales goes, they are but a few percent if that even and cant compare to any of the other digital platforms, even the terrible microsoft and ubisoft ones. they are ninche market, catering to niche audience and i LOVE that, however they are not a big player. if anything, they are something the big companies ignore them and their no-DRM policies (which is great, i can now play alpha centauri without silly DRMs ).

To sum this up, they have done a fe things, they have remained profitable, but they are very small. so small that we have larger indies (minecraft) around. at best they are low to medium company.

As for thier companys worth, i dont know where you got that pice but im guessing based on stock prices. thats bull price for anyone buy hedges and splitters, who earn money based on its stock prices. everyone else look at actual asset price instead, as thats the one that shows actual companys worth. the stock price would nto hold if you would try to sell or buy the company, it only holds true while the amount of sellers and buyers are at equal levels.
That being said, 468 million USD, or less money than Microsoft makes PROFIT in a quarter.

 

[Strazdas]

snip

The problem I have with this is sort of my point as well: Why is there no middle ground between "Indie" and "Fortune-500 behemoth"? I mean, you compare them to Microsoft, of all companies!

Same with the comparison to Assassin's Creed, Battlefield and Call of Duty. Products of 3 companies with a combined annual revenue of $10 billion USD...

My point, then, is that they are in that middle-ground no one seems to want to acknowledge. The fact that they are too small to compare to the "Big Players" doesn't make them "indie". Actually, they probably seems so hard to categorize precisely because there are barely any developers left in the middle-ground. The most recent example to my mind would be Bioware. They'd be a good, medium-sized company that's not "indie" nor a "big company", except they were swallowed by EA. There was also Eidos, except they were swallowed by Square Enix. I guess there's still Obsidian... Actually, that's a good example; Obsidian has had better production values than indie games, and CDP have better production values than Obsidian, and they are both small to medium companies.

and you compared them to valve.
Sure, there can be a middle ground. For example Atlas was one. Bioware was one. see the pattern? I guess we coul say B ethesda is one, they have couple very good franchises, but they never turned into the big behemoths. My comparison to microsoft was to make a point that CDP is no big player and its not worth all that much.
I do mention that CDP is a low-to-middle range company so it sort of falls in there, but its not somethin that could throw its weight around, which is what is needed to put "NO DRM" across the industry.
You want good middle sized companies look at the strategy sector. Paradox, The Creative Assembly, i guess firaxis wont fit becuase its owned by take-two, which in itself isnt.... that big anyway.
Middle guys exist, altrough in this americanized way of min-maxing they are soon to be exctinct (which is why i like japanese business models more).

I think the term Indie needs to be restated - it means the company works independent, not owned by somone else. so CDP is very much an indie. Now, its a midsized indie and larger than most surely, but how much of that is due to thier games and how much due to their publishing deals i cannot say.

but im going off the topic now. and my head feels empty, kinda bad post this was. its 7 am in the morning