CDPR Never Considered Charging for The Witcher 3 Remaster, Co-CEO Says
Nowakowski's comments frame the free remaster as CDPR's established approach, with commercial returns coming from expansions rather than the base game, while The Witcher 4 is built quality-first.
Reporting from 2 sources: GameBusiness.jp, Game Spark.
CD PROJEKT RED co-CEO Michał Nowakowski told The Game Business the studio never considered charging for The Witcher 3 remaster, treating it as a gift to players who already own the game. The remaster grew out of work with Fool's Theory on the new DLC Tsuioku no Shirabe, due in 2027. The Witcher 4 is being made with quality prioritized over cost. The remaster launches September 29.
The remaster began as a smaller idea. While working with Fool's Theory on the new DLC, the team asked what the game would look like if it felt modern, since The Witcher 3 shipped in 2015. The third expansion idea had existed for a while but stayed shelved, and Fool's Theory was originally set to work on The Witcher 1 remake before technical dependencies with The Witcher 4 pushed that back. The project started with letting Geralt have another adventure and grew into the remaster. In Japan, PS4 and Switch owners pay 100 yen to upgrade, a fee tied to the country's rules on premiums and misleading offers. The Witcher 4, Nowakowski said, cannot be made on a cost-driven model; quality comes first.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 2 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.