CD Projekt have been the creative heads behind The Witcher series, which has been praised for it's continued support for PC platforms and it's innovative design, but it seems working with PC has taken it's toll on the developers. It's made them jaded and cynical towards the industry, especially when their game has been downloaded 4.5 million times.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Marcin Iwinski went on to discuss the finer details of their war with piracy saying in the past that the games industry would be better if it were DRM-Free. This lead to them releasing The Witcher 2, sans-DRM back in May of this year. Despite the game being downloaded 4.5 million times, Iwinski has said the studio will remain DRM-free and anti-pirate.

Iwinski says there is a trade off between legal downloads and "guessed" illegal download figures. He says that they have sold "over 1 million legal copies" and that having 4.5-5 illegal copies for each legal one isn't a bad ratio, but he did follow it up saying that his number was merely an estimate; like all "illegal download" statistics. "The reality is probably way worse, Iwinski added.

Iwinski was also candid about the studio's experiments into DRM and how the solution his team had was to tackle the piracy problem with proper pricing. They came up with a new strategy and started "offering high value with the product", such as adding more stuff to the collector's edition, like the soundtrack, making-of, etc. They say their strategy was a long process, as they also invested time and money into educating local gamers about "why it makes sense to actually buy games legally" and it all paid off for them.

My favourite quote is plain and simple from Iwinksi as he says "DRM does not work and however you would protect it, it will be cracked in no time", this has been said for almost an entire generation of gaming.  But finally someone says it in the exact words, every other gamer on the internet says or explains to someone or in the comments section of almost every forum, ever.

Iwinski goes on to say that voting with your wallets and using social media is the only way for developers to really take note of what the inudstry is doign because it hits them where it hurts.

Via [PCGamer]

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