Before The Witcher 3 launched, CD Projekt was terrified that Batman: Arkham Knight would flatten it with its Batmobile: ‘They’re just gonna roll over us’

When The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released in 2015, its success was so overwhelming that it’s hard to imagine it would have gone any other way. But from CD Projekt’s perspective, success seemed far from certain in the runup to launch. In particular, the Polish studio was deeply concerned about competition from another game released that summer, Rocksteady Studios’ Batman: Arkham Knight.

The concern didn’t derive purely from the fact that Arkham Knight was a hotly anticipated game. CD Projekt was more specifically worried that Rocksteady’s open-world superhero game would shunt The Witcher 3 off the shelves at retailers.

Speaking to PC Gamer’s Joshua Wolens, CD Projekt’s joint CEO Michał Nowakowski explained the situation as it stood in early 2015: “There was a big question about the execution of the marketing, are we going to be, you know, on par with, with the biggest out there?” he said. “We had huge, huge discussions, especially with the retail in the US, but also UK, you know, the main markets, Germany and so on, because it was about convincing them that we can actually be allowed to spend money in those channels.”

Nowakowski explains that retailers have different windows during which they’ll lead their marketing efforts on specific games, giving it priority shelf-space. “Let’s say Gamestop has, like, a window, the main window, which [they] are going to sell you for. Two weeks to someone [then] two weeks to someone else. And it’s their decision. It’s their call,” he elaborated. “Whether they’re going to give it to this game or that game, it’s kind of their bet, and it could kill or elevate your game depending on the decision. And of course, they wanted to make the right one to make sure that they sold as many units as possible.”

In the US and Europe, distribution of The Witcher 3 was being handled by Warner Bros. CD Projekt had already put significant effort into courting retailers around this time, touring through both the UK and Europe to present the game to places like Walmart and GameStop, often to responses like ‘You guys are not Bethesda’.

To make matters worse, CD Projekt then discovered Arkham Knight was due to launch within the same window as The Witcher 3, putting the pair in direct competition. If that wasn’t bad enough, Warner Bros was both distributor and publisher for Arkham Knight, meaning it had additional incentive to ensure Rocksteady’s game was as successful as it could be.

“I still remember how bombed we were when we learned that Rocksteady is gonna launch [Batman]: Arkham Knight—I think it was the one with the car,” Nowakowski says. “Because they were with us on one of the tours. They showed up [for] our demo. They showed us theirs. Like, oh god, these guys [are] really at the top. I mean, they’re gonna just roll over us. It’s gonna be tough.”

In the end, fate intervened, and Arkham Knight was delayed from its initial launch window of May to June 23. “But we were afraid about those placements in the stores, especially since Warner was taking care of both, you know, their game and ours,” Nowakowski recalls.

We all know what happened from there. A decade on, The Witcher 3 is still regarded as one of the best RPGs ever made. Indeed, to celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary, PC Gamer has delved deep into the game’s creation, revealing stories like how CD Projekt “hacked time and space” to cast Charles Dance in its RPG, and how joint CEO Adam Badowski made everyone’s life miserable by demanding the team add swimming and underwater locations to the game.

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