Despite Piracy, The Witcher 2 Developers Still Trust Gamers to Pay for Content

The imminent Xbox 360 launch of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has prompted some fans of developer CD Projekt RED to contemplate a future where the company will mainly develop for home consoles and leave PC gamers behind in their piracy infested world.

But developers working on the action role-playing game say that they are still interested in the PC and trust their fans to actually pay for the game they play.

Marek Ziemak, one of the level artists working on the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2, told GameFront that, “We provide a lot of great content in the box, also in the digital version. You know, piracy is going to be there, always, in all the platforms, but it’s not our main concern. There are a lot of players who buy the game, who enjoy it really, and who try and be fair.”

He added, “We try and deliver all the extra content for everyone who bought the game. That’s also another reason to have an original copy–to have all the patches, and all the DLC that are free if you bought the game. We try to be fair; we try to work on our products. And we actually trust people. We believe that the great majority will just buy the game.”

Maciej Szczesnik, the lead combat designer working on The Witcher 2, also says that there are people who first pirated the game, played it for a while and then bought it in order to show their support for the developers.

CD Projekt RED believes that The Witcher 2 was pirated more than 4.5 million times on the PC, although the game has still managed to be a commercial success for the company.

The Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 will arrive on April 17 and includes all the downloadable content that was launched on the PC.