Yesterday's Witcher 3: Wild Hunt reveal gave us some important details: it will be open world, it's said to be bigger than Skyrim, Geralt has a new beard. Today, CD Projekt RED's official announcement provides us with more news, including the fact that this will be their last game in the Witcher series. There's also a completely pointless "title reveal" trailer.



Yeah. Wolf head logo confirmed, I guess.

Anyway, the announcement's meaty details sound promising. "Imagine playing a dark fantasy game with the same great non-linear story as in the previous Witcher titles, but now told in a world you can explore freely with no artificial boundaries," says CD Projekt RED head Adam Badowski. "The war-ravaged world is so huge that to reach farther places you will need to ride a horse or sail a boat to get there. A world where your choices have truly epic consequences."

As to this being Geralt's swan song, Badowski adds, "People may ask if this is really going to be the last Witcher game. Yes, it is. Why? Because we believe that we should end the series on a high note. Technology has progressed to where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined."

"This will be the ultimate fantasy RPG experience, and while we're hardly out of stories to tell, we believe it's time for us to look to new worlds and new horizons to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can create."

CD Projekt's distribution arm GOG.com are celebrating the announcement with a sale on the previous Witchers. If you've yet to experience Geralt's last two outings into the world of political intrigue and monster biffing, they're both 50% off until Friday.

Technically, The Witcher 3 hasn't been announced yet - though thanks to a secret message in the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer and the appearance of a familiar looking sword, everyone's expecting that to change as of February 5th with a big announcement from developers CD Projekt Red.

Of course, until we hear the announcement, we won't know for sure. It might be a spin-off game rather than a sequel, possibly as a base for the long-awaited REDKit editing tools. It could even be a massive troll leading up to, say, Fluffy McMathBunny's Sunny Day Out, the happy edutainment RPG where long division is the key to victory. Still, since the most we can say about those options is "Could be interesting", we know we want to see a Witcher 3 at some point. How can this inevitable sequel play its nudie cards right and build on its predecessors? Here are a few of our hopes...

You may have muscles, but I have the power of QTE!

Keeping Perspective. Sorry to start on a slightly boring one, but by far the biggest problem with The Witcher 2 was that its development felt like it had been very insular, with not enough fresh eyes during the process, or those eyes being too guided. The big tell for this is that the initial version had quests with misplaced map markers - the kind of thing that's easily fixed, but only missed if everyone involved simply knows where they're going. Likewise, elements like the lack of a tutorial and the first big fight in the game expecting players to instantly 'get' the combat system were serious mistakes, no matter how much some of the hardcore players appreciated being dropped in at the deep end.

(Incidentally, my favourite example of this insularity came when the game originally arrived for preview, with stern, genuine instructions not to give away what happened to King Foltest during the prologue. The prologue of a game called 'The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings'. Ahem...)

Many of these issues were subsequently patched on the system side, and hurrah for that. Others though were baked much too deeply into the narrative to be changed post-release - the real crash coming with Act 3, which all the branching and untaken paths made very easy to reach without really knowing what was going on and why it actually mattered. Especially coupled with...

Remembering All The Fans. Both The Witcher games have made a bit of an assumption that people playing know this world already. They make a few concessions to newcomers, sure, but I've had fans tell me that expecting the game to pause to explain, say, what Nilfgaard is, is like expecting Darth Vader in a Star Wars game to go "I will now crush you with The Force, which as you know is..." Which is nonsense. The series could absolutely do a better job when explaining the core elements, if not necessarily every little detail - especially factoring in how much you can miss by taking the wrong branches, and that the English speaking world at least only has a couple of Witcher books in print so far.

Some of which which are probably more canonically relevant than others.

"So, you think this cut-scene's getting a million hits on YouTube on Day 1, or will it take a weekend?"

Consequence Over Choice Nobody sane would say that The Witcher 2 lacked for choices to make. The end of Act 1, the entire of Act 2 and most of Act 3 didn't so much have a critical path as a critical spaghetti pile. Make no mistake, this was seriously impressive and deserves credit.

That said, while choices did have big consequences, the scale of the game and sheer number of paths did have a tendency to trip over its own feet - key characters simply disappearing or being shoved into the background, massive events being dismissed, and most painfully of all, much of the plot that Geralt should have been uncovering during the game having to be explained via the final boss actively holding an expositional Q&A. It was also unfortunate that your choices tended to be a step removed from what you were actually choosing - the lead-up to Act 2 being the decision to throw your hat in with Roche or Iorveth, not Henselt or Saskia - or simply swept under the table with the politics of Act 3.

For The Witcher 3, it would be good to see that willingness to take the tough road put to more focused use - the world itself changing as a direct result of decisions, for good and bad, rather than the focus being on altering the path through it. A central city like Vizima wouldn't hurt for this, with its development over the game altering based on who you kill, and what relationships you form. Kill too many crooked officials, and the entire thing becomes a fascist state out of fear, for instance, or have the monster population of the area directly tied to how much killing you bother to do. Direct responses, with unexpected twists, tend to be what make choices interesting. Especially with...

More Moral Ambiguity. The Witcher has never been short on this, but more! More! More! And not just in terms of people lying to you about their true intentions, but situations like the witch in the first game where both sides are at fault but Geralt still has to make fiendishly hard calls.

CD PROJEKT RED / / DIRECTORY NOT FOUND

Save Game Importing That Actually Does Something. Not necessarily anything important for the sweep of the game, but things like only starting Geralt in bed with Triss if he actually pursued that relationship in the previous game seem fairly obvious. In The Witcher 3, a great use for this would be to fill in the What Happened Next for Temeria that the previous game skipped via a chat with Dandelion, now that CD Projekt knows exactly where they plan to take the story and doesn't have to worry about boxing itself into a corner. Assuming of course that this game isn't going to be set there again, in which case just picking an ending and running with it makes more sense than confusing the issue.

"Hey, eyes - and deadly ball of blue plasma death - up here, Witcher."

A Not Too Open World. If CD Projekt's teased game actually is The Witcher 3, we know it's going to be 'fully open-world game'. I can imagine that being excellent, and have faith that it'll be cool. If it's going to follow in the steps of the previous games though, I hope it's not a particularly big open world game - a tighter focus not only allowing for more loving design, but reinforcing when decisions have impact, and conveying their effects in more interesting ways than most games bother with. Now, that said...

Modding, Early. The Witcher 2 came out mid-2011. The REDKit mod tools still aren't out. If this is going to be an open world game, let's see those as soon as possible, and give Skyrim's world some real competition. Fans are ready to mod this universe, but how many are going to devote themselves to starting on something for a two year old game? Especially one so razor-focused on a specific story.

Nilfgaard Or (Actually, Knowing The Witcher, More Likely And) Bust! Wherever the game takes place, it'll need a setting - and if the ending of The Witcher 2 is anything to go by, we'll at least be visiting Nilfgaard, City of the Baddies. That would seem the right choice too, at this point in Geralt's adventures, and with the amount of political messing around they were up to last time.

Speaking of which...

Yennefer, from the TV/film version, because the only in-game pic I have would need a censor bar.

Yennefer? We Barely Know 'Er! But it's time we did. For the third game, Geralt's former lady-love really needs to put in an appearance. According to the end of The Witcher 2, she's alive and in Nilfgaard. All the more reason to pay it a visit and either make something of that thread point or tie it off.

Witchering Hours. The Witcher 2 was somewhat odd, in that Geralt wasn't so much used as a Witcher as a general badass with handy skills. It'd be good to get back to the monster killing this time - not simply smacking wandering enemies over the head, and definitely not buying loads of reference books again, but sorting out more of the dark fairy tale type encounters from the original stories.

"Uh, Geralt?" "Sorry. Distracted. What plot branch are we in again?"

No More Crap Geralt. The Witcher 2 especially had one of the strangest difficulty curves ever - the first act of the game being by far the hardest due to Geralt apparently having given up working out between sequels. Not again, please. He needs to start out feeling like a badass, and fight challenges worthy of one, with a levelling curve built around making him becoming more skilled/powerful rather than spending hours fighting to stop him being bloody useless. Burn that Stamina bar with fire too.

The Execution Of Anyone Responsible For Branding It "The Witch3r". Just saying.

Keeping It Brave. Something that absolutely shouldn't change though is The Witcher's willingness to take risks. Yes, the sex cards in the original were damn stupid, and The Witcher 2 was better for not having them. Other elements did work though, from the sequel's more character-based sex scenes, to the darkness of having characters getting their eyes put out for ending up on the wrong side, and the nature of the storyline and subquests. Most RPGs out there are as sterile as Geralt's third sword. The Witcher can't lose its balls now that CD Projekt Red has made it to the top tier.

Oh, and definitely no more boss fights like this one. Grrr.

And that'll do for the moment, at least until CD Projekt Red makes its big reveal and we can see exactly what we're meant to be getting excited about. If you haven't played The Witcher 2, firstly, King Foltest dies in it. Spoiler! Also it's absolutely worth it. For various reasons, it scored 89% originally. We don't typically re-review games, but while it still has some issues (some mentioned above), that number would have been a couple of points higher had it shipped with the patches and tweaks released since.

The full game is now only £15/$20 from either Steam or GOG, and well worth it if for some reason you missed it on release - especially if you have a PC with the oomph to see it in all its system-melting, game-CDP-clearly-really-wanted-to-make-whatever-the-cost finery.

A message hidden in yesterday's Cyberpunk 2077 trailer hints at a big reveal for an unnanounced CD Projekt Red game on February 5. The text, screengrabbed and transcribed by Redditor, hotweels258, suggests that this "other project" is "much closer to being completed" than Cyberpunk, which is scheduled for a blurry date that looks like it could be 2015/2016. Like Cyberpunk 2077, this other project is a "fully open-world game with an intense story"

"You can probably guess the game we're talking about," they add. If it's not The Witcher 3 I'll eat my headset.

The text pops up at 2:14 into the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer if you want to sleuth it out yourself. The message also mentions that CD Projekt Red are still hiring developers for Cyberpunk through the careers@cdprojectred.com email address.

Like most expensive CGI trailers, the Cyberpunk trailer gave us a a good whiff of what the world will be like, but no indication of what it'll be like to play. The secret message says that it will be a "story-heavy, nonlinear, open world RPG." For more news on Cyberpunk, keep an eye on CD Projekt Red's development blog.

For those with eye augmentation, or for anyone who enjoys squinting really hard, here's that trailer message:

Oh lord, it's really happening. The Christmas sales are here. First out of the gate is GOG.com, purveyors of classic PC games and newer indie releases. And The Witcher 2, which doesn't quite fit either category.

For the next 22(-ish) hours, they're offering 75% off their Bullfrog Favourites collection. For $11.92, you get three Populouses, two Dungeon Keepers, Theme Hospital, Syndicate and Magic Carpet. While you have to get all the games to qualify for the full 75% off, any you already own will helpfully count to the total, with the price adjusting accordingly.

Also! For the next two days the site is giving away Duke Nukem 3D for free. Now you can use the cheeky 16 year old FPS to wash away the bad taste of any sequels that may or may not have happened.

Also! The whole site is holding a 50% sale off the majority of its catalogue until January 3rd. Looking through, it seems to include just about everything that isn't called Baldur's Gate. It does, however, include the other Infinity Engine RPGs, with both Icewind Dales and Planescape: Torment now costing $4.99. You can also pick up The Witcher 2 at a 60% discount of $11.99 (just under £7.50 in real money).

You can browse the full list of discounted games in their catalogue. There's some brilliant stuff in there. There's also Myst.

When facing the end of time as we know it through a cataclysmic prophecy, it's time for a sale to mark history's end with a bang. To wit, GameFly's End of the World event nixes 75 percent off select titles for the next 12 days, providing valuable buys such as a $15/£9 Witcher 2, a $25/£15.50 XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and $12.50/£8 for The Walking Dead, among others.

More games will appear throughout the sale's duration, but current offerings include Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.50/£1.60, Batman: Arkham Asylum for $10/£6, and Crysis for $7.50/£4.70.

If you haven't yet taken shelter in your fallout bunker cheered at the increasing arrival of awesome holiday sales, Origin's Green Monday sale are still around for just one more day with 40 percent off on tons of noteworthy titles such as Battlefield 3 ($24/£15), Crusader Kings II ($24/£15), and The Sims 3 ($18/£11). Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a couple of asteroid-repelling planks to board up.

Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski's large body of short stories and novels has provided the basis for CD Projekt RED's The Witcher and The Witcher 2, but Sapkowski isn't interested in playing either of them. Speaking to Eurogamer, Sapkowski praised the games, but said that he has "never played any computer games," only saw art from The Witcher, and doesn't "feel like a co-author of the game."

At risk of sounding ageist, it's not surprising that the 64-year-old author has other hobbies. More interesting is his take on the games' relationship to his work. "The game—with all due respect to it, but let's finally say it openly—is not an 'alternative version', nor a sequel," said Sapkowski. "The game is a free adaptation containing elements of my work; an adaptation created by different authors."

"Maybe it's time to set the matters straight," he continued later. "'The Witcher' is a well made video game, its success is well deserved and the creators deserve all the splendor and honor due. But in no way can it be considered to be an 'alternative version', nor a 'sequel' to the witcher Geralt stories. Because this can only be told by Geralt's creator. A certain Andrzej Sapkowski."

On the topic of possible cross-overs between the games and his writing, Sapkowski said that he finds it "terrible" that we're becoming accustomed to "the strange convergence of media and the freedom of mixing them," and that "the idea to write 'adjuvant content' and create something 'complementary' to a game or a comic is an absolute pinnacle of idiocy."

In response to Eurogamer's story, CD Projekt RED Studio Head Adam Badowski passed along a comment to clarify the studio's relationship with Sapkowski and his novels.

"Our cooperation has a strict and defined direction," wrote Badowski. "I can't imagine Andrzej Sapkowski playing a game to do research for the new novels. This is unlikely and would look like writing a book for a game or movie release, which ends badly in most cases; the novel winds up in a collector's edition and then covers with dust somewhere on the gamer's shelf.

"We want to develop The Witcher's universe in other media, not only video games. We have Mr. Sapkowsk's blessing and what we create is in line with his vision of the world, no matter how the saga will evolve."

You can read the entire interview with Sapkowski, as well as Badowski's response, over at Eurogamer.

Earlier this week I had a chat with CD Projekt RED PR Specialist Agnieszka Szóstak and GOG Head of PR & Marketing Trevor Longino. We briefly discussed several topics, including CDP RED's upcoming open-world RPG Cyberpunk 2077, GOG's take on Windows 8 and its new Mac library, as well as some of the piracy issues CDP has been so vocal about in the past. Here are the best responses on those topics:

On Cyberpunk 2077's open world and modding
 
PC Gamer: Since Cyberpunk will be using RED Engine, is there the possibility of introducing REDKit compatibility, making it moddable?

Agnieszka Szóstak: You know, we got lots of questions like that before we’ve actually said that REDKit will be available, and we are doing this toolset. So, it’s like, we did that with The Witcher 1, we’re doing this with The Witcher 2, so there’s a high, high, high possibility we are going to do this with Cyberpunk, but since it’s in a very early stage of development, it’s too early to talk about that.

That will be a logical step, and knowing our team—how ambitious they are, and how supportive we are in terms of our community—it’s something we’d like to do. Will that happen? It’s too early to say, but it’s a great idea to consider and I know we would love to. It’s all about things like timing, doing it right, because releasing the tool is one thing, and then making it as accessible and working well and all those stuff, it’s more difficult.

PCG: What do you mean by early development—is it all conceptual right now?

AS: There’s actually a lot of things going on simultaneously. Lots of ideas going on, lots of creative process going on, lots of design and ideas being brought up and then left because we say, “No, that won’t work.”

We do an enormous amount of work with Mike Pondsmith, simply because, you know, there’s a challenge pretty similar to the challenge we’ve had with The Witcher, because the whole franchise was already created in the mind of Andrzej Sapkowski, basically the creator of a whole universe. So we have the same challenge with Mike, because we have the universe creator, and now we have to kind of push it a step forward and bring it to a platform like the PC.

So there’s lots of conceptual work, and on the other side you already have people working on particular assets, early models, building the art. So it’s like, going two ways. At this point, it’s also always about what is working, what is not really working. Plus, for us, an open world is a new experience.



PCG: How different is it in the open world respect? There’s still a central narrative, right?

AS: Storytelling is really important to us, so that’s one of the key features for each and every of our games. On the other hand, Cyberpunk, from definition, should allow you to do different kind of stuff. It should allow you to have a real choice between the main plot and just exploring the world and doing different side quests. So, this is one of the greatest challenges we will have to face, because we do believe that we can actually create a great story within the whole world that people will enjoy and would like to follow, so we have to think how to create a world that will be consistent in terms of what you can do outside the main story, and how those side quests are connected to the main story itself. How to make it approachable and immersive enough so gamers don’t get lost in the whole thing.

So if they’re like, 100s of hours into the gameplay and they’ve left the main plot at some point and just started exploring the world—how to make sure that after several hours they won’t be lost and saying, “So where was I? What was I supposed to do? What’s the main story all about?” So it is totally challenging, though the plan for now is to create a really gripping and immersive story that will drive the whole world, and side quests around it will be very connected and kind of, the best thing we could possibly do is actually have those side quests connected one with another, all of them with the main plot.

So, let’s say if we reveal some things in the main plot, or if you reveal some side information regarding what’s going on in the main story. So that’s very, very hard to achieve, but we do believe we will with Mike’s help and the great team working on it.

PCG: A lot of games strive for that balance. You’ll probably be compared to The Elder Scrolls series in terms of open worlds with main storylines and side material.

AS: Yes. That’s all about making the world liveable with a good story, making it immersive. There’s lots of great ideas we have to do that, and obviously we can’t reveal any of them at this point. It’s a little bit too early—we have to save something for later on—but yes, we do have great ideas for how to achieve that goal and find this balance between the open world and great storytelling. If we’re going to succeed or not—that’s a future thing.

GOG on Windows 8, Mac gaming, and Linux support
 


PCG: You’ve just released a new catalog of Mac games on GOG. You and Valve are sort of moving into that space together, and Valve with Linux, too. Is any of that a response to the reception of Windows 8?

Trevor Longino: Well, there are things I can’t say about Windows 8 or else someone will drag me out back behind the Microsoft building and shoot me. But I will say, based on what I know, I know what people’s concerns are about Windows 8. And there are some very serious ones as far as releasing new games.

But from GOG’s point of view, Windows 8 gaming isn’t quite as scary as it is for other game outlets. But we mentioned at our conference that we’re working on Windows 8 support. The majority of games that work on Windows 7—I’m saying like 90% here—work on Windows 8. But we’re based on the release candidate build that was publicly available. And one, we don’t know what’s going to change in the final build—hopefully not much—and two, we don’t know what they might change in say, Service Pack 1. It may be they get really big pushback from the community. Not just developers that are concerned, but users who are saying, “I’m not gonna upgrade, this looks like rubbish.” So they may walk back some changes, in which case what we’ve been testing on might not be what ends up being the OS that you have available.

So, we have a plan in place for Windows 8. We will support it with the majority of our titles, I don’t doubt. But I will say that moving over to Mac gaming isn’t because we anticipate seeing more gamers thinking, “Hey, you know, this Windows 8 isn’t worth it, let me go see about Mac gaming.”

PCG: And Linux?

TL: Linux gaming is also something we’d love to do, but we haven’t made any announcements about it yet. We’ve been looking at it.

I’ve been making public statements for a while that there are technical hurdles. Steam’s approach is to say, “Here’s our distro, we support this distro. Have another distro? Sorry.” That’s not how GOG does things, we’re more free-range gaming. So we’re looking at how to deliver the GOG experience on— we can’t say every computer, because you can of course hook up an E Ink display with 2-color CGA as your monitor, use Lynx as your web browser, and run some weird Debian distro that you’ve custom modded to do just what you want and then say, “How come I can’t play your games?”

PCG: I’d love to play Fallout 2 on an E Ink display.

TL: Yeah, something like that? No, we won’t support it, obviously. But we want to try to get it where the majority of gamers, if they’re on Linux, will be able to get a game and expect it works. We haven’t found a solution, yet. We know there’s a big demand for it, just like we know everyone wants System Shock with 25 thousand votes. It’s tough, because the rights with System Shock are just a mess. Likewise, we know people want Linux games. And people are saying “You could just distribute the TAR and we’ll figure it out.” Sure, we could just distribute the DOS executables and just let the Windows users figure it out, but that’s not how we do business. So making that experience on Linux is a challenge and one that we’re trying to address.

PCG: Speaking of things we want, I wish Microsoft would give you Freelancer. I’ve been looking for a copy.

TL: Oh, yes, I love it. I have a copy. I have a CD.

PCG: I can’t find mine. It might be in a box.

TL: Well, we announced two years ago what our top five targets are. We’ve signed two of them, and what we have left now are Microsoft, Take-Two, and LucasArts. We’ve gotten really far in talks with one of those guys, and we believe probably right around the time of the next big press conference we’ll be able to say, “Here, we have these games.”

They’re really exciting, and our test team is starting to look at them, because we pretty much have it worked out with these guys. So now we’re just talking about what games we can have, what games have advice for. It should be awesome news for classic gamers. These games are such great games, even new gamers should be able to say, “This is an awesome game.” There are tons of really good releases we’re working on signing on the classic games front.

And of course, new games like Deponia 2, and other new games I can’t talk about, because we haven’t signed the deal yet.

On piracy of The Witcher 2
 


PCG: So, off topic, there was a story recently from a torrent news site which said The Witcher 2 is the most pirated game at a US university.

Agnieszka Szóstak: Obviously, we are aware of news like that. We have this e-mail thread going on within the studio that says, “Hey guys, did you see this thing that says our game is the most pirated?” And it’s like—it's—

PCG: Flattering, in a way?

AS: Absolutely, because you can look at it from two different point of views. From one point of views, it’s obviously sad, right? There’s a bunch of people working on it for years, and then you get other people taking it free, pirating it, and that’s it. On the other hand, well, the game must be good, right? If there’s such a demand to do that. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s something that we’re aware of, but that will never change our attitude towards what we do and the approach we have.

I mean, we really do believe that it’s better to deliver high quality content and support gamers on several different levels. So, either releasing modding tools, or giving DLC for free, or doing huge updates which are like 10 gigs and give them out free. Instead of doing DRM, because that’s, frankly speaking, a pain in the ass for the users.

PCG: There was that period in Germany when you were able to track those who pirated the game and send legal letters to them.

AS: Yeah. It was going on. It was all about sending letters to people who we knew pirated the game, and say “Hey, we know you have the pirated version of the game, and it would be nice if you could actually pay for it if you find the game good enough.”

Although, once we started doing that, we got lots of feedback from the community—from gamers, and not even pirates, but actually legal gamers with a legal version of the game, saying “You know what, guys? That’s not entirely right to do that.” And they were like, “You’re saying that DRM is not such a great thing, and you try to give your games without it, but on the other hand, you’re doing something like that?”

So, we’re not afraid to say that wasn’t the best choice and best solution we could have done. And that’s why we kind of resigned and we don’t do it anymore.

PCG: Do you think it was unfair? To ask for money when they've pirated your game?

AS: I mean, well, the funniest question we got was, “Don’t you guys like money? That you’re actually releasing games without DRM.” Yes, it is fair. It is fair to ask for money for a job that we do. And for content we do believe it’s actually worth paying for. So, it is fair to ask for money, although one thing doesn’t collide with another. Since we’re talking about the news or things going on, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the quite funny thing that happened to us on 4chan website.

There was a guy there saying, “Hey, there is this game called The Witcher 2, and I just downloaded it from torrents or whatever, and I’m kinda stuck on this quest and I don’t know what to do so I need support from you guys.” And the whole 4chan community, they just went totally mad, and they were like, “Are you crazy? Downloading and pirating the game from those guys? If there’s anybody in the industry worth supporting and actually paying for the games, that’s CD Projekt RED. So just go… blah blah,” I will not be using bad words here!

Trevor Longino: Go do creative, anatomically impossible things.

AS: So, "We will not support you, just go and buy the damn game." That was actually the comment we get. And you know, 4chan community is—let’s call it a unique one. So if you’re getting this kind of feedback from those guys, that’s probably proof that you’re doing things right.

PCG: So it criticized the legal stuff, but the community also comes to your defense.

AS: Yes. So that’s something we don’t want to change, simply because, on a daily basis we see it works. This kind of approach works. And if you take care of the community, if you take care of your fans, if you have the kind of approach of not just releasing the game and then you’re done. Right? You’ve sold the game, so don’t care about anything else. That’s totally not us, because our approach is to support constantly our customers whether for PC gaming or Xbox gaming or any other thing.

CD Projekt RED's DRM-free policy has made The Witcher 2 a popular target for piracy, and the studio is well-aware. Though it maintains its anti-DRM stance, in 2011 it briefly tracked down holders of pirated Witcher 2 copies and sent legal notices requesting compensation. CDP has since stopped the practice and apologized, something I spoke to PR Specialist Agnieszka Szóstak about yesterday.

"Yeah, it was going on," said Szóstak. "It was all about sending letters to people who we knew pirated , and say, 'Hey, we know you have the pirated version of the game, and it would be nice if you could actually pay for it if you find the game good enough.'

"Although, once we started doing that, we got lots of feedback from the community—from gamers, and not even pirates, but actually legal gamers with a legal version of the game, saying, 'You know what, guys? That’s not entirely right to do that.' And they were like, 'You’re saying that DRM is not such a great thing, and you try to give your games without it, but on the other hand, you’re doing something like that?'

"So, we’re not afraid to say that wasn’t the best choice and best solution we could have done. And that’s why we kind of resigned and we don’t do it anymore."

When I asked if she thought asking for money from pirates was fair, Szóstak said, "Yes, it is fair. It is fair to ask for money for a job that we do. And for content we do believe it’s actually worth paying for. So, it is fair to ask for money, although one thing doesn't collide with another."

The "another" Szóstak refers to is CD Projekt's current customer policies, not only in regards to DRM, but also ongoing service. "There’s nothing we can do about ," she said. "It’s something that we’re aware of, but that will never change our attitude towards what we do and the approach we have.

"I mean, we really do believe that it’s better to deliver high quality content and support gamers on several different levels. So, either releasing modding tools, or giving DLC for free, or doing huge updates which are like 10 gigs and give them out free. Instead of doing DRM, because that’s, frankly speaking, a pain in the ass for the users."

Check back tomorrow for transcripts of my chats with Szóstak and GOG Head of PR & Marketing Trevor Longino.

CD Projekt RED has released a new timelapse video to show off its upcoming modding tool, REDkit, which will be available free to owners of The Witcher 2 sometime in the first half of 2013. The software opens up The Witcher 2's REDengine, allowing users to create their own RPG worlds or modify The Witcher 2. Exciting, isn't it?

REDkit is currently in closed beta, with 100-plus modding teams providing feedback.