Witcher 3 - Single-Player Only And DRM

Couchpotato

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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.
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.”
More information.
 
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*tap tap* Is this thing on? He mentioned piracy, shouldn't we have 30 posts by now?
 
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I sometimes contemplate buying Heroes VI only to be turned aside in my thoughts by Uplay. Only to subsequently contemplate simply pirating it to bypass that annoyance. I'll likely have a similar hangup with the upcoming M&M X.
 
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I sometimes contemplate buying Heroes VI only to be turned aside in my thoughts by Uplay. Only to subsequently contemplate simply pirating it to bypass that annoyance. I'll likely have a similar hangup with the upcoming M&M X.

I had the exact same thoughts. Fortunately there are so many other fun and interesting games out there I can ignore ubisoft's crap DRMed products. Thank goodness for the current indi revolution.
 
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Oh it's good news that they aren't saying goodbye to the Witcher Universe! I grew to love it and a switch to a cyberpunk setting upset me a lot.

I still wish they considered at least giving a choice of gender to your player in the future games. That much could be figured out how to weave into the story, me thinks. And it would make girl and woman players so damn happy, while there are no dwarves and elves to make happy by including the choice of race.

The talk on piracy is surprising. Maybe it's because of the country, I mean, people in some first-world country probably would never consider piracy so calmly and wouldn't openly express hope that those who can't buy games will buy them in the future. I'm sure this non-hostile attitude would actually make people consider buying, even if they actually steal.

The person in the interview comes off sincerely nice on all accounts, as if untouched by all kinds of cynicism (like anti-EA or something).
 
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I have no problem with piracy - but it's a bit naive to think that people are "fighting the system" when they pirate games.

I've pirated many games - and I've had many reasons, none of which I feel like trying to justify to anyone.

But stealing things you enjoy when you have the opportunity to support those who spent time working on it is not something I think should be encouraged.

DRM is a necessary evil from the point of view of publishers and most developers. I honestly have no problem with it - as long as there are no other obvious ways around piracy.

My problem with publishers and developers has nothing to do with them wanting to get paid for their work - but them not wanting to create something from the heart. So, I'll pirate games as a means to determine when something is actually from the heart or not - and that's justification enough for me.

I'm interested in games from the heart - and I'll pay pretty much whatever price for that within reason. But in this marketing and PR saturated bullshit industry - I feel piracy is one of the few ways to actually get the truth of what a game really is.

So, if they want someone like me to stop testing their shit games through piracy - they should start caring about the games they make. Then I'll spend my money gladly, with a big smile on my face.

This is what I do when developers like CDPR release games. The Witcher 2 was a masterpiece - and definitely from the heart. That's all you need to do, really.

But I'm not "fighting the system" - because my vote has absolutely no influence. Nothing I buy or not buy will make a difference. So, I'd be bullshitting myself and everyone else by pretending I'm fighting the good fight. It's not a fight - it's me doing what I think is right for myself, nothing more.
 
I don't get the purpose of DRM.

From what I have seen, you can get DRM-free pirated version of the game usually a couple of days after the official release.

People who pirate the game, never have to suffer because of DRM. Only people who purchase the game have to suffer because of it.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what should happen?
 
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I don't get the purpose of DRM.

From what I have seen, you can get DRM-free pirated version of the game usually a couple of days after the official release.

People who pirate the game, never have to suffer because of DRM. Only people who purchase the game have to suffer because of it.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what should happen?

Except that isn't quite true. Lots of games are delayed for days and weeks because of DRM - and lots of people are so impatient that they'll buy the game because they're not going to wait.

Games with online-only gameplay like Diablo 3 can't really be pirated properly - so that's an even more effective measure.

Beyond that - DRM releases tend to get cracked patches much later, if at all. Meaning the pirates will have to suffer more bugs and so on.

I don't care what any analysis says. A strong DRM protection WILL reduce piracy of any popular title. That's just common sense.

However, I do believe that less popular games can be hurt by poor DRM - because people will use it to justify piracy and won't bother buying a game early to get access if they're not really too interested in it.

Some publishers are morons, though - or just straight-up liars. They seem to think that because they pour millions and millions of dollars into a game - it MUST be popular and as such, their rigid DRM implementation SHOULD help against piracy.

But gamers aren't that gullible - and they don't really care about how many millions went into making yet another clone shooter or whatever. It has to stand out in a big way or be online-only to make people spend their cash.
 
It's nice to see a reasonable analysis of the piracy situation. Several small indies have gone the way of releasing their own torrents soon after publishing. What are the benefits of this?

1. You ensure that a full, non-buggy game is available on release, so no false reports of a broken game start circulating. (this happened to Titan Quest, and according to the developers basically ruined them)
2. You appeal to the pirate to purchase your game directly in the torrent.
3. Save yourself the cost of making a demo.
4. You are still not obligated to torrent the patches and updates.
5. Satisfaction that the jackass out there waiting to crack your DRM now has no motivation to do so.

The only reason DRM "worked" for Diablo 3 is that Blizzard is a powerhouse with a 20 year reputation, which they all but flushed in their handling of that game. If an indie company tried that kind of crap, I'm guessing they would go under.

It's worth repeating that no study (including many studies funded by media industry orgs like the RIAA and MPAA) has ever found a correlation between piracy and lower profit.
 
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The only reason DRM "worked" for Diablo 3 is that Blizzard is a powerhouse with a 20 year reputation, which they all but flushed in their handling of that game. If an indie company tried that kind of crap, I'm guessing they would go under.

I guess that's why Path of Exile is having such success with its online-only model - despite the fact that it's exactly like Diablo and would have worked fine in a LAN environment.

No, it has to do with people paying for games they want to play if there's no other option available.

Yes, PoE is F2P - but thousands of people paid for early access and supported developers through various contributions.

Not bad for a small indie title.

It's worth repeating that no study (including many studies funded by media industry orgs like the RIAA and MPAA) has ever found a correlation between piracy and lower profit.

Countless studies have been made showing countless things, depending on your agenda.

For people with brains: Piracy = lower profit in many cases. Not in all cases, though - and definitely not often the cause of outright failure of any game.
 
For people with brains: Piracy = lower profit in many cases. Not in all cases, though - and definitely not often the cause of outright failure of any game.
I'll continue to rely on actual studies using actual numbers, thanks. But I'll repeat that even the RIAA and MPAA, the people whose sole purpose now is to fight piracy, do not even claim to have solid numbers connecting piracy to lost revenue.
 
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I won't even get into the thievery, as I think people like that should just be shot on site, cleanse the dna pool a little. It is really refreshing to see companies drop the multiplayer crap and focus on the single player, now THAT will make me bust out my cash for a product.



-Carn
 
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If the game is good, in an affordable price and made by a company the community likes then piracy goes down.

If the game is "average" just to kick 10 hours out of it, in an ridiculously $60 price tag by a company everyone knows its filthy rich, then piracy goes up.

Don't believe me? go see kickstarter. Even today Larian Studios got nearly $1.000.000 dollars by fans to a game thats not even released yet, upfront.

Do you see piracy an equation here? players wanted a great game, have faith in the company and don't mind paying a million dollars just for it to be made. Do you think they would do the same to fund the next COD ? yeah right.

Make a good game, respect your gammers, put it at a reasonable price and stop being cheese moneygrabbers to apease your stock-holders and people will make less piracy.
 
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Two new stills from TW3 in the magazine EDGE:

witcher.jpg


296061_526446747411142_1552340717_n.jpg



And Geralt in some comic, hell, I want to play with this "skin" definetly:

1370499850111.jpg
 
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The comic look reminds me of the look of a lot of characters in the Asterix series.
 
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Not gonna pay to play Geralt again. If there is another option, I might buy.
 
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