“We leave greed to others” has quickly become a mantra for Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED. The Polish game studio has quickly established itself as one of the most pro-consumer companies in a business that has increasingly seen microtransactions and season passes of DLC shoehorned into major releases. During their behind closed doors E3 demo, the studio reiterated to Screen Rant that they’re leaving greed to other companies and will not be pursuing any monetization schemes.
This attitude was showcased with CD Projekt RED’s post-launch support of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The already huge fantasy role-playing game received 16 different free pieces of DLC after it released, with them ranging from smaller cosmetic items to entirely new game modes (such as new game plus). They followed it up with two paid expansions, but both add-ons were priced appropriately and offered dozens of hours of additional gameplay.
This isn’t the first time that the studio publicly said that they’ll be leaving greed to others, as they famously tweeted the phrase in November of last year in response to a fan that was worried about potential monetization systems. They also hid the phrase in their E3 2018 trailer for Cyberpunk 2077. Written among computer code, they put the phrase “w3 l35V3 9R33d 2 0TH3rZ” as a special Easter egg for fans.
That’s not the only hidden message that they included in the short video. The studio also threw some shots at some industry trends as they wrote, “In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” in response to if they would include microtransactions. They also confirmed in the video that the game will have free downloadable content, and they’re planning multiple expansions after release like they did with The Witcher 3.
CD Projekt RED is doing a great job of painting themselves in a positive light in an industry where many companies are (fairly or unfairly) treated as villains. With highly successful publishers like Electronic Arts being among one of the most hated companies in the world, the Polish studio has kept their image sparkling thanks to transparent statements like these and by pushing back against some industry trends. It will remain to be seen if the company’s actions will make a dent on the overall industry (major releases such as Call of Duty are continuing to have season passes of DLC content), but they’re certainly trying their best to lead by example.
