Forbes has a new article/interview about The Witcher 3. The article discusses why the game is single-player only, and why DRM is the worst thing in the video game industry.
More information.Single-Player Only
To many fans of the series, the Witcher games are some of the last great single-player role-playing games being made. Recently there have been murmurings of a possible multiplayer mode in CD Projekt RED’s upcoming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This speculation has led to some understandable worry.
With companies like EA abandoning single-player games altogether, and many beloved franchises like Dragon Age and Mass Effect seeing tacked-on multiplayer elements, it would be pretty painful to see the same thing happen to the next Witcher.
Good news, then, for fans of Geralt of Rivia and the Witcher universe.
CD Projekt RED has told me in no uncertain terms that this is not in the works, noting that “the game will be an epic, story driven, single player, open world RPG experience” and that they “strongly feel that this final saga of Geralt has no place for meaningful multiplayer.”
Truth and Piracy
“In my opinion,” Tomaszkiewicz tells me, “DRM is the worst thing in the gaming industry. It’s limiting our rights to play games owned by us. Let’s imagine that you have a game that requires internet connection to prove that you actually bought it. What if you lose your connection because of your internet provider? You can’t play anymore. It is worth mentioning that many people in Poland or even in the US and other countries still don’t have an internet connection or have a very slow one. I was in such a situation once and I really didn’t understand why I couldn’t play games that I had bought. I believe that as long as people feel that companies are cheating them by selling games they cannot play freely, limiting their rights, and making unfair DRM, then they will fight against that.”
Piracy, he adds, “is often an example of trying to fight the system. Do you know that there are people on pirate forums raging on guys that downloaded Witcher 2 from torrents and didn’t pay for it? In fact, they try to convince everybody to simply buy the game. Our fans out there really appreciate that we trust them and that we treat them with honesty and respect. For us, they are friends and we treat them so. We believe that DRM is not stopping piracy but can be a real pain for legal users. And if this is the case, why would you want to punish your customers instead of supporting them? We are receiving a huge number of letters from people who think alike and support us. I believe that we are slowly changing the way the game industry thinks. There will always be people who don’t have money and will download our games from torrents. But I believe that if they will have more cash in the future, then they will buy our next titles to help us fight for gamers’ rights.”