Few major developers could be as publicly anti-DRM as CD Projekt Red, makers of the Witcher series. Yet there they were with The Witcher 3, getting a good five minutes of stage time with the Xbox One, the face of console DRM going forward. The studio is committed to releasing on Xbox One but none too happy about being in such a bind.
To Eurogamer, CD Projekt Red said it doesn’t know yet how it will handle a publisher who doesn’t allow The Witcher 3 to be re-sold — probably because the game does not yet have a publisher.
But CD Projekt Red runs Good Old Games, which makes a big selling point out of having no DRM, and there are few studios publishing titles of this size that have such a visible anti-DRM stance. Eurogamer says they’re bristling at the guilt-by-association from appearing at Microsoft’s event.
“We couldn’t simply not release The Witcher 3 on Xbox One,” CEO Marcin Iwiński told Eurogamer. “We want to make sure that every single player will have access to our game and thus decided to deliver for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. There are people who don’t mind the DRM protection and will pick Xbox One as their platform of choice. We can’t punish them.”
Earlier, he said that “if you want the 100 per cent DRM-free experience you will have it on the PC, the platform where we set the rules for our games. The Witcher 3 will be available 100 per cent DRM-free on our digital distribution platform GOG.com, and that’s one thing I can confirm.”
Staunchly anti-DRM Witcher 3 dev CD Projekt responds to Xbox One policy concerns [Eurogamer]
Comments
19 responses to “The Witcher’s Anti-DRM Studio Finds Itself In A Bind With Xbox One”
To add to this, Poland isnt one of the 21 countries that the Xbone will launch in.
Yep this, game is being made in a country that the XBone won’t initially be supported in…
Most console launches don’t include eastern europe. It took Sony almost a year to launch the PS3 in that region.
Ah, but PS3 AND PS4 can be imported and still played. Xbox1 will not be usable at all without support. That’s the difference, absolute, draconian region locking.
There’s no region-locking, Microsoft have reversed that policy.
Just points out the downfalls even more of DRM truly.
It’ll have DRM if you buy it on Playstation and Xbox if you buy it digitally.
Yeah – a lot of people seem to think that PS4 has no DRM… I’m sure the Disc-Crackers will tell us all about it after launch.
Technically it’ll have DRM on all those platforms if you buy it retail too. All the console games have copy protection DRM.
Want to get it to all people but no Wii U? Also you are putting it on a console that won’t even work everywhere?
Interesting.
Stupid comparison, the Wii U is the equivalent of a brick phone from the 90’s compared to today’s smart phones the ps4/Xbone in terms of technological power.
I assume they are going to release it either way purely because they would have been working on the Xbox One copy well before all this DRM nonsense was even confirmed and don’t want to waste development money.
You underestimate the Wii U greatly.
Wii U is equivalent to last gen consoles.
PS4/X1 is equivelant to last gen PC.
If they really wanted to, they could very easily put it on the Wii U.
And you are probably right about that.
I’d be the last person to defend Wii U but calling it a 90s brick phone is harsh it actually is pretty decent hardware I would never buy it for the CoD Fifa market but Jesus Christ it has Mario kart and smash brothers if you can appreciate that you ain’t a gamer son
What are you on about Daniel? i made a comparison about its technological prowess not its 1st party titles. The next gen consoles the PS4 and Xbone are over 10x as powerful as the 360/wii u/ps3. So it was an apt comparison with a brick phone to a smart one.
And @ pokefreak no they couldn’t. The withcer 2 barely ran adequately on the 360 and was toned down drastically, if they even attempted to down grade the 3rd one (which is only playable on HIGH END PCS and next gen console), it would NOT work at all, the game would have to be butchered to such a degree it wouldn’t be playable.
This isn’t an opinion or an underestimation of the Wii U, this is pure technological fact, Its doesn’t have the grunt.
And next gen consoles capabilities are the equivalent of a current High end PC (Though its components, if put in an actual PC, would not be nearly as powerful), so you are in fact wrong again.
The fact that the console is universal and doesn’t run a complicated OS amongst other things that a real PC does means it gets a significantly higher output for the same hardware. They probably have more grunt than 90% of household pc’s around the world, more so if they properly utilise cloud services to off load significant processing.
Did you actually play the 360 version of The Witcher 2? Saying it ‘barely ran adequately’ is a load of crap. I played the 360 version first, and was absolutely impressed. Second play through was on PC, and while yeah, it’s prettier on PC, my gaming experience was by and large the same.
It’s common knowledge that the next gen systems will be more powerful. I don’t think anyone is disputing that fact.
Also, I wouldn’t put it past CD Project Red to make The Witcher 3 work on the Wii U. They’re a talented bunch. The fact that they aren’t porting it over I think speaks more about their views on the Wii U’s lukewarm performance in the market than anything else.
For the same reason it’s not going to be on the Commodore 64.
Damn, I guess it’s about time to throw that out then. No way I’m keeping it if Witcher 3 can’t be played!
Any chance they will port it to the Nokia ngage or ps vita basically any handheld that has flopped that would be nice too???
I guess my punch cards are out too then…: ( where the legacy support!?