CD Projekt Red has announced two paid DLC expansions for the Witcher 3, before it's even been released, what treachery is this? They said that they don't like paid DLC and that they would be releasing 16 free DLCs for the game. But have they really betrayed us? Not particularly. At the time, Marcin Iwinski said:
"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?"
- Marcin Iwinski, CD Projekt Red
As a result of taking an open stand against paid DLC, the internet bowed before the developer as if a Knight had appeared from darkness to rid the world of evil once and for all; a shred of hope in a dark, greedy world.
In January, Iwinski also said:
"Yeah, we are making a statement. We, as gamers, would like to be treated this way, 'Hey, give me free DLC'. It doesn't have to be something huge."
- Marcin Iwinski, CD Projekt Red
Queue further praise to the mighty developer. However, straight after that quote came:
"We aren't giving out huge stuff, we aren't giving tens of hours of storyline here, we are giving small bits of pieces that don't cost a lot."
- Marcin Iwinski, CD Projekt Red
It's nice to see that the developer is sticking to past trends in the form of giving small pieces of content to the player base, whilst at the same time investing time to make much larger pieces of DLC that expand the game world and add more hours of game-play. In this case, the first of the two DLCs won't be coming out until a month after the game's initial release; Hearts of Stone.
Considering that this DLC will contain at-least 10 hours of additional gameplay, and it is being released a month after, it makes sense that this DLC will come at a cost; provided it was finished after the game's release.
The second DLC, called "Blood and Wine", will be released early 2016 and will add an additional 20 hours of game-play and feature a new region to explore. Heart of Stone will be available for $10 (or £6.82) and Blood and Wine will be available for $20 (or £13.64) which I think are very reasonable prices considering the amount of game-time they are adding. You can also get them both for $24.99 (or £17.05) in the form of a season pass.
You may have also read my Pound per Hour Scheme blog post, where I talk about how for each pound (£), I should get 1 hour of game-time, and it seems CD Projekt Red has gone above and beyond my expectations (unless you are using dollars ($).)
Iwinski also said:
"We remember the time when add-on disks truly expanded games by delivering meaningful content. As gamers, we'd like to bring that back. We've said in the past that if we ever decide to release paid content, it will be vast in size and represent real value for the money."
- Marcin Iwinskia, CD Projekt Red
DLC can be great, as some DLCs even surpass the original game in quality such as The Elder Scrolls: Dawnguard; was a great addition to the game's content. I hope that more developers follow this path and reasonable pricing points, just look at CD Projekt Red, they are practically worshiped by gamers now, and they deserve to be really.
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