CD Projekt RED’s co-founder Marcin Iwinski has said that the recent loot box/microtransactions controversy has been good for the video games industry and that he hopes the backlash will help change things for the better.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Iwinski was of the view that a full priced video game should mean a “big, polished piece of content, which gives you many, many hours of fun gameplay.”
‘Conversation’ sounds way too nice to describe what was happening last year. I would rather call it community backlash. And this time around, it wasn’t just the hardcore community, there were a lot of really pissed off gamers out there and they decided to speak up. Where we stand is quite simple and you could see it with all of our past releases – most recently The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and GWENT. If you buy a full priced game, you should get a big, polished piece of content, which gives you many, many hours of fun gameplay.
Iwinski says that he considers 50-60+ hours of campaign with side activities to be a fair deal. He further said that expansions, like The Witcher 3‘s, should be “meaningful” additional content whereas small pieces of DLC should be free of cost. He further said:
The moment they [gamers] feel you are reaching out for their wallet in any unfair way, they will be vocal about it. And, frankly speaking, I think it’s good for the industry. Things often look great from a spreadsheet perspective, but decision makers often aren’t asking themselves the question of ‘How would gamers feel, or is this offer a fair one?’ Gamers are striking back, and I really hope this will change our industry for the better.
What do our readers think of Iwinski’s remarks?
[Source: PC Gamer]
