CD Projekt Red Weighs in on Loot Boxes

Earlier this week, we spoke at length about Loot Boxes: specifically, how Hawaii had introduced some new bills that tackled the loot box epidemic (in some pretty questionable ways) and how Sea of Thieves promised they would never include such a system in their own game (a cool, if fairly hollow promise: remember when Payday 2 said the same thing?).

Well, the Loot Box controversy just keeps chugging along, but now, we have an opinion I know you care about. Witcher developer and everyone’s favorite industry entity, CD Projekt Red, has decided to weigh in on the current blight in the world of video games.

Specifically, co-founder Marcin Iwinski had this to say when confronted on the issue by PC Gamer:

"'Conversation' sounds way too nice to describe what was happening last year. I would rather call it community backlash. And this time around, it wasn’t just the hardcore community, there were a lot of really pissed off gamers out there and they decided to speak up. Where we stand is quite simple and you could see it with all of our past releases—most recently The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and GWENT. If you buy a full priced game, you should get a big, polished piece of content, which gives you many, many hours of fun gameplay.”

He went on to say that while it differed from title to title, for his own company, they prefer making full games that last a solid 50, 60 hours, and expand upon it with good old fashioned-style expansions: none of that DLC stuff will do. At least, as far as their main offerings go. He acknowledged that the system could work sometimes, specifically for free-to-play games, like their own GWENT.

But in the end, he stressed, what mattered most was transparency.

"The moment they feel you are reaching out for their wallet in any unfair way, they will be vocal about it. And—frankly speaking—I think it's good for the industry,"

Well said, sir. Well said.