CD Projekt RED: Industry trending towards over-exploiting gamers
Marcin Iwinski says giving away Witcher content actually boosted sales
CD Projekt RED's Marcin Iwinski has warned publishers that overexploiting consumers with DLC could lead to a drop in sales.
The company co-founder and joint CEO told Gamasutra that they had actually seen a rise in sales after giving away content for the original Witcher title.
"When we put it out for free, we saw a boost in the sales with the Enhanced Edition because it just created good will, and it refreshes the product."
"You can always do it from two angles, and sadly I see the industry trending toward over-exploiting the gamer, and I think this will come back to the publishers that are doing that, and eventually, people will stop buying their stuff. That's just not the way things work."
Iwinski admitted the publishers had been a little confused by the idea at first.
"When we had that publishing deal, we went to the publisher, and said, 'So we have this idea where we make all this stuff, all this new content, and you don't pay anything for it, we give it away for free. How about that?' The publisher went all big-eyed and said, 'Whoa! Let's charge 10 dollars! 10 Euro!' But we believed that we would sell more units if we put it out for free."
Just last week the Polish developer announced that over 4 million copies of The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings had been sold worldwide.