Polish developer CD Projekt has come out on the flip side of earlier comments made by Volition developers, defending the right of gamers to play used titles on the next-generation platforms. The team behind The Witcher 2 says that barring people from touching a used game will not only stop the spread of sharing, but others will simply not buy a game until they try it first.
“It can be a bad thing," said CD Projekt’s Adam Badowski to Eurogamer. "I assume you know we decided not to continue our beautiful journey with lawyers seeking pirates.
"We are losing money not because of pirates; we are losing money because people decided not to buy our game.
"We should invest more power to upgrade and polish our products and convince players to keep our products, to be with us, to understand our needs - because we are an independent developer, we have to prevent lay-offs, we need to grow up and have the power to create new games.
Of course, the team does believe that the idea has merit to a degree. “Most hardcore and hardware solutions will be OK for short periods," Badowski offered, "but a strong relationship with players, with customers, can change the situation. And for us, this is a better way.”
Adding to the discussion was marketing director Michal Platkow-Gilewski, saying that “Our players - gamers - they make their choices. they want to keep with us because they believe our product is worth it, is worth keeping on their shelves, even if they ended the game two or three times already. And they are doing this because they have free will, and if we cancel that, maybe that will be good for business, but if someone forced me to keep the game even if I didn't want it, it's against my will.
"We want to do as much as possible for our players, our gamers. We don't want to force anyone. It's like we did with DRM-free: we give them freedom and we believe they will stay with us."
