A Beast Defends Helpless Cattle in The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3, otherwise known as “Game of the Year Contender, Already, and The Year’s Just Half Over by Now," has got a lot of neat little secrets hidden in its many folds. However, not all these secrets are welcome, either by the player or the developer. One such secret (more of an exploit, really) was that Cow Hides, an easily farmable resource that’s worth a lot of coin, was destroying the fragile economy in the game—where a persistent player could feasibly farm a fortune in an hour or two, and thus “break” the game, or at least the parts of the game involving money. Love it or hate it, it’s not how CD Projekt Red intended anyone to stuff their wallets, so a “fix” has been implemented in the latest patch.

But it’s not a conventional fix. What kind of gaming company would CD Projekt Red be if they weren’t merchants of fun?

Rather than do the sensible thing, such as lowering the value of cow hides or making them harder to farm, CD Projekt Red instead implemented a "cow defense force." What does that mean? I’ll let the video speak for me.



As you can see, that’s no trifle of a monster. That’s a heavy hitter, the kind of beast that could kill even veteran players without much hassle. This monolith, defender of Bovine-kind, will spawn when the game senses you abusing the cow population, and by the time your character is at a high enough level to defeat the thing—you won’t be needing to exploit the cows anymore!

I have to admit, I’m charmed by this. It shows a sense of humor we often miss in the triple-A world, and frankly, I applaud any ‘whacky’ kind of player control, like some of the more humorous DRM that’s been produced. I doubt it will stop people from trying to farm ol’ Bessie, though.