Witcher Developer Talks About Loot Boxes

Loot boxes are a major source of vexation among the gaming community, with many wondering if these virtual items are the future of premium games now that publishers are accustomed to putting them into titles. While the debate continues to rage some games are taking a stance against these items such as Capcom's Monster Hunter: World and CD Projekt RED.

The developers behind The Witcher series and working on the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 were recently asked about loot boxes and microtransactions by PC Gamer. Co-founder Marcin Iwinski stated:

“The definition of ‘many’ may vary on a title-by-title basis, but in our case it was always 50-60+ hours of the main story-line, with up to a couple of hundred of hours of side activities—if you really wanted to max out the title. To me, this is a fair deal. You get what you paid for, plus we are always trying our best to overdeliver. There is no better PR than a happy gamer recommending your title to their friends.”

Iwinski also talked about loot boxes and how his company views DLC and expansions.

“Then there’s additional paid content. What we call Expansions . . . Things like add-ons way back in the Baldur’s Gate era. We released two Expansions like that, and each of them was a meaningful piece of content delivering many hours of new story and gameplay. Finally, there are the DLCs. For us, they’re small pieces of content which should be available for free,” which was the case with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In order to paint the fairest picture possible, Iwinski also put CD Projekt Red’s own title Gwent under a microscope to explain how it deals with free-to-play titles. The development company’s co-founder stated, “You can buy card kegs and some vanity items. Again, the deal is simple—you can play the game for free and craft your desired card collection this way, or decide to spend money and get card kegs. The choice is yours, and the only thing you pay for is time and convenience.”

Iwinski ended the interview stated that the second gamers feel like you're reaching for their wallet in any way that is unfair they will be vocal about it. As we've seen with the backlash with Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Destiny 2 Iwinski isn't wrong.

For Witcher fans, Iwinski was asked about the future of the series. While he did state that they're devoted to the series and not abandoning the universe the company's main focus now is Cyberpunk 2077. Iwinski ended with a promise that they are aware of the pressure and popularity of Cypberpunk 2077 and plan to deliver.

Cyberpunk 2077 is now in development for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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