14 DAY TRIAL // A law court in France has decided that publisher Namco Bandai should get the distribution rights for the CD Projekt RED made role playing game The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings on European markets and it seems that the developers will not appeal the decision.
The Lyon based court says that a distribution deal between the two companies linked to the Xbox 360 version of the game must be perfected in no more than 15 days and that CD Projekt RED will have to pay a fine of 15,000 Euro (just over 20,000 dollars) for each day after that time limit.
Namco Bandai brought the suit against the Polish developer after it announced that it would work with publisher THQ to distribute The Witcher 2 in Europe and after it removed the Digital Right Management protection from the game.
Initially CD Projekt said that the initial deal with Namco Bandai only applied to the PC version of the role playing game and that it was free to work with another company for the Xbox 360 version, which had significant differences.
Marcin Iwinski, who is an executive at CD Projekt RED, stated, “We are not satisfied with the end of the verdict. The most important thing for us is, however, ending the dispute.”
It seems that the THQ deal will not be hard to cancel and the developer also says that the North American deal with Warner Bros is not affected by the decision of the French court.
The Xbox 360 port of The Witcher 2, which will include all the content released since launch on the PC and updated games systems, is expected to launch in the first few months of 2012 and Warner Bros. plans a big marketing push for the game.
The Witcher 2 is one of the most interesting role playing games of this year, offering gamers a complex story, a lot of meaningful choices and a solid combat engine.