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The Witcher 3 DLC Will Have 16 Free Updates

• Steven Santana
• November 21st, 2014

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt will receive 16 free content packs, announced developer CD Projekt Red earlier this month. The announcemnt came directly from Marcin Iwiński, who is the co-founder and Joint CEO of CD Projekt Red. He was very pro-consumer in the post, talking about how as gamers themselves, they look forward to new, free content for the games they love. Marcin Iwiński also made it clear that the Witcher 3 DLC updates do not require a pre-order or season pass or special edition.

This is very against the flow of most other major video games. Destiny, Far Cry 4 and even LEGO Batman 3 all offered season passes, letting players pay for content they knew almost nothing about and wouldn’t have until months later. Nearly every game has a pre-order bonus, and some even split them between various retailers. Ubisoft, EA, Activision all employ this strategy, get money now and release content later. It has been criticized, but unlike the Online Pass system, does not appear to be going away anytime soon.

Online Passes, for those who don’t know about them, were primarily used by EA and Sony that only allowed you to access the online multiplayer if you redeemed a code that was only sold with new copies of games. As Iwinski states, “As gamers, we nowadays have to hold on tight to our wallets, as surprisingly right after release, lots of tiny pieces of tempting content materialize with a steep price tag attached. Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game?”

Thankfully, The Witcher 3 DLC will not be like any of those games, instead giving you an entire game and updating it with free content as time goes on. It is reminiscent of Valve, who generally add things to their games for free and as a surprise for their dedicated players. The Witcher 3 was announced via GameInformer in February of 2013, and currently has a release date of February 2015. The game was delayed from this holiday season in order to more refine it, something that is also reassuring in a time when games such as Assassins’ Creed Unity and Halo Master Chief Collection that launch with major problems. The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt will release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in February of 2015 and I personally am really looking forward to it.