CD Projekt is clearly on a mission to win the hearts of gamers worldwide, as they’ve just announced that all 16 pieces of DLC for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be absolutely free to owners of the game.
The developer’s co-founder Marcin Iwiński made the announcement in an open letter to fans today, citing a wish to avoid the excessive monetization so prevalent in modern gaming.
“We love games,” Iwiński writes. “We love collecting them, playing them, and everything connected to that experience. Every time we reach out for a new release, we expect to be taken care of. We expect support if we encounter any problems, we love updates constantly improving the experience, and we feel really special when we receive free content that gives us more than we initially paid for. It doesn’t have to be huge, it can be an awesome skin for a character, or an extra sword, or armor.”
“Unfortunately this treatment is quite rare these days. As gamers, we nowadays have to hold on tight to our wallets, as surprisingly right after release, lots of tiny pieces of tempting content materialize with a steep price tag attached. Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game?”
“At CD PROJEKT RED, we strongly believe this is not the way it should work and, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we have decided to do it differently. Cutting to the chase, everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform. You don’t have to pre-order, you don’t have to buy any special edition to get them - if you own a copy of Wild Hunt, they’re yours. This is our way of saying thank you for buying our game.”
If that message doesn’t make you feel a great surge of affection for CD Projekt, there’s a chance that you might be completely jaded. Sure they’re offering The Witcher 3 for pre-order, but it’s comforting to know that once you get your hands on the game, there’s not going to be any sly attempts to eke some more money out of you.
I wonder if there’s a playful sense of humour at work here as well, considering the first batch of DLC packs contains horse armour. That drops on February 2, along with some new hair customisation options for hero Geralt.
After that fresh content will drop on a weekly basis, following the The Witcher 3’s launch on February 24, 2015.
