Polish developer CD Projekt Red apparently never considered charging players for the recently revealed Remastered edition of The Witcher 3, and it has explained more about how the expansion Songs of the Past came to be, citing a couple of “happy accidents”.
The Remastered edition of The Witcher 3, revealed at Gamescom last week, significantly overhauls the now 11-year-old role-playing game, not only visually, but also from a gameplay point of view, addressing its much-maligned combat but also enemy behaviour, horse riding, skill trees, and more. Yet despite all of the apparent work that’s gone into it, it’s going to be a free upgrade for everyone who owns the game.
Charging for it? “I don’t think it was ever a thought we even had,” CD Projekt Red joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski told The Game Business. “It was never a question we asked ourselves.” Instead, CD Projekt Red thought about it as an improvement and a way to introduce the expansion Songs of the Past.
“I remember we were going deeper and deeper into the development of Songs of the Past with Fool’s Theory and we started chatting, like, ‘Why don’t we make the game more modern? Everything feels like it was developed 10 years ago.’ And that was really the beginning of the conversation. And we started chatting, like, ‘What could we do to improve it?’
“It started with small things, like okay maybe let’s fix this, maybe let’s fix that, and then it turned into this larger project and we suddenly realised we actually have a remaster on our hands.”
The Songs of the Past being a paid expansion represents the “commercial bit”, Nowakowski said. But not charging for the remaster: “We really felt this is the CDPR way, to gift it to the players who already own it.” CD Projekt Red also announced it would be including the game’s two expansions – Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine – with purchases of the game from now on. Perhaps this is why it also bumped The Witcher 3 price tag.
Dom already heard at Gamescom that the idea for the Songs of the Past expansion was one CD Projekt had “years ago”. Nowakowski expanded on this during The Game Business interview, revealing the company never intended to go back to the game. “Seriously, for a long time, no,” Nowakowski said. “We felt that The Witcher 3 is a closed book and we’re never ever coming back to it. But a couple of happy accidents happened.”
One of those was the company collaborating with Fool’s Theory, a Polish developer made up of many former CD Projekt Red employees. “They were supposed to work on The Witcher 1,” he said, referring to The Witcher 1 remake that was announced in 2022. However, this remake has since disappeared from view. “We realised that needed a little bit more time because of certain technology dependencies with Witcher 4,” Nowakowski clarified. The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 4 both run on Unreal Engine 5, and are the company’s first games to do so.
“We actually had the idea for the third expansion a long time ago, but it was in the drawer, and that led us to the answer, which was, ‘Yes, let’s give it a shot.’ It sounds maybe crazy, but let’s try and give Geralt one more ride. That’s where we are right now.”
The Witcher 3 Remastered edition releases 29th September and includes a long-awaited Switch 2 release as well. Songs of the Past, meanwhile, releases at some point next year, followed by The Witcher 4 in 2028. It’s a busy few years ahead.
