Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales isn’t doing so hot, admitted CD Projekt in a recent financial call. Apparently, the company bet big on the game meeting sales goals on GOG, making it exclusive for the platform. Thronebreaker, while reportedly selling well, just didn’t perform well enough.
“The game appeared on GOG first for fairly straightforward reasons,” said joint-CEO Adam Kiciński in the report. “GOG is our priority platform and we wanted to release the game there first to gamers who support us there; however, the reach of GOG is incomparably smaller than that of Steam. We know that there’s a large Witcher fan community on Steam and that’s why we also released the game there.”
Care For A Round Of Gwent?
It makes sense now why Thronebreaker suddenly landed on Steam. The game hopped ship only a few weeks after going on sale at GOG. CD Projekt even sweetened the deal by adding some free digital extras to the purchase, including a full copy of the original Witcher game. Too bad about that unfortunate pricing tumble it had straight out of the gate.
Ultimately, Thronebreaker was a bit of a gamble for CD Projekt. Yes, the game existed in the popular and storied Witcher universe, so sales were a given. However, even though the game is a full-fledged RPG in the Witcher universe, it was hardly a guaranteed success. The Witcher trilogy was a beloved series, but not every fan played Gwent, the card game which Thronebreaker‘s combat was built upon. And not every Witcher fan would play a top-down point-and-click game where Geralt isn’t the lead. It was a gamble, one that clearly hasn’t panned out.
Cyberpunk’d
But what about future CD Projekt games? Will they follow the same release strategy and head to GOG with a shaky definition of the word “exclusive?” Not so, Kiciński said, saying Thronebreaker is an “unusual” case.
“You should not draw unwarranted conclusions concerning the future,” he said. “Thronebreaker is a very unusual project from our perspective and it should not be viewed as a mold for our other releases.”
Hopefully, this means that those of us waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to hit Steam won’t need to wait long. If anything, this shows that CD Projekt can’t hit goals on GOG alone. Indeed, it may have overestimated its fanbase when it comes to GOG. And that means it will have to deal with Valve’s gaming behemoth for a little while longer, at least.
