'The Witcher' Developer Weighs In on Video Game Loot Box Controversy
"The Witcher" development team has made their stance about loot boxes clear, as CD Projekt Red weighed in on the controversial issue. To sum it up, studio co-founder Marcin Iwiński believes it's about time for teams to take a stand on the issue.
Starting out with the loot box controversy last year that plagued big-budget games like "Destiny 2," "Star Wars Battlefront II" and the latest "Call of Duty," the CD Projeckt Red CEO did not sidestep the issue by downplaying it, as PC Gamer reported back on their interview with the studio executive.
"'Conversation' sounds way too nice to describe what was happening last year. I would rather call it community backlash," Iwiński noted, reflecting the all too common state of the gaming communities on Reddit and elsewhere since last year.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"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 emphasized.
The ideal length of what makes for a "fun gameplay" differs from player to player, of course, and Iwiński gave an inside look at how CD Projekt Red plans around player expectations. In the case of the studio, they have always built their projects around an expected 50 to more than 60 hours for the main storyline alone.
The studio then adds "up to a couple of hundred of hours of side activities-if you really wanted to max out the title," Iwiński added, as quoted by US Gamer.
Having full expansions, ones which add tens to hundreds of hours of gameplay, should be the paid offers that are enhanced with a few free DLCs. With things the other way around for the big-title games, "Gamers are striking back, and I really hope this will change our industry for the better," Iwiński concluded.
