No internet link needed for Witcher 2

By Fred Dutton Published 14 April, 2011

No DRM or censorship for RPG sequel.

A permanent internet connection will not be necessary to play forthcoming PC RPG The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, developer CD Projekt has revealed.

The announcement came during the CDP Conference in Warsaw, as Tweeted on the official game feed.

You will need a one-time net connection when you get started to confirm you have "a legit copy of the game" but after that you can play internet-free.

The developer also confirmed that the game will be available without any other digital rights management measures through the GOG.com portal, and there'll be no censorship either – there's one version of the game available worldwide.

CD Projekt has long since been an outspoken critic of DRM in PC games, earlier this year claiming it treated gamers like "criminals" and "didn't work".

"With a lot of protections you have to be online," explained CEO Marcin Iwiński. "You have to be connected constantly or you cannot play.

"I know the internet is everywhere, but if you go on holiday and you have a laptop and you don't have an internet connection, it means you cannot play your games. I think it's not fair."

The follow-up to its solid 2007 effort arrives on PC from 17th May.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (30) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • StooMonster #1 1 year ago

    Pre-ordered this on Steam the first day it was available. Never had an issue with any DRM on Steam, except HL2 unlocking on launch day years ago. Never have no internet, that's like saying no electricity. So their announcement doesn't bother me, but if it makes them feel better, and it makes them think they'll sell more copies, then bulky for them.

  • bad09 #2 1 year ago

    GOG version for me. Since coming back to PC the biggest problem I've seen is DRM is WAY out of control and we need to send a message to this customer (yes customer, pirates get a better deal!) control obssessed industry. As was said in the conference "users like it cheap and unprotected"

    I urge you all to buy from gog to send this message, yes even you boxed game people. Yes you Steam users (I know the little picture of 2 missing next to The Witcher 1 in the library will bug you but you will get over it). Even you bloody pirates, you get products better than us so at least help us try and get the same by buying one game!

  • NimbusTLD #3 1 year ago

    I thought it was 100% DRM free? So they've changed their stance to allow need an one time activation? Or was it only the GOG version which was to be DRM free?

  • bad09 #4 1 year ago

    @NimbusTLD

    Yeah only the GOG version is DRM free they always said the boxed game would have some DRM, one time only isn't so bad, sure your disk is a coaster in times of no internet but it's the norm sadly.

  • Paul_cz #5 1 year ago

    Only GOG version was announced to be DRM free. It was known that retail would have some DRM. But at least it is the mildest form possible, one time activation and that's it. I do hope it will stop the pre-zero day piracy at least.

  • Kazzahdrane #6 1 year ago

    Pirates will make any excuse they can think of to justify their theft (argue about semantics all you want, but it's taking something with value without paying for it). If DRM restrictions disappeared they would argue that opening a DVD case and inserting the disc is "a draconian measure which places unnecessary obstacles in the way of enjoying the product I've legally purchased."

    Pirates do this because they are cheap bastards who have entitlement issues. Good on CD Projekt for not pissing off legitimate customers (99% of the people who complain about this one-time activation will be people looking for an excuse to pirate, imo).

  • uknortherner2000 #7 1 year ago

    Preordered the GOG version ages ago. None of that DRM bollocks for me.

  • JayG #8 1 year ago

    I ended up ordering the collector's edition, figured it would be worth paying the extra to support these lads.

  • bad09 #9 1 year ago

    "99% of the people who complain about this one-time activation will be people looking for an excuse to pirate, imo"

    LOL I love the old "if you complain you're a pirate" line, so bloody idiotic it's untrue.

    When my internet was down for 3 weeks and found my install of Shift messed up I was powerless to play my legally bought game, christ I couldn't intsall anything I legally owned other than old games. People who complain about internet activation do so because it's bloody stupid. Besides, how many times must it be said, pirates don't complain about DRM as it's not on the games they play.....
    Edited by bad09 at 14/04/11 @ 18:27

  • ro-kurorai #10 1 year ago

    No censorship worldwide? Does that mean the NA version will be rated "AO" for the game's evil sexual content, or did CDPR deliberately censor erotic content to appease the ESRB.

    I hope the first case is true, otherwise I'll be genuinely disappointed.

  • Kazzahdrane #11 1 year ago

    @bad09:

    I was including people with internet outages etc int hat 1%, but I was exaggerating a bit yes. My point was that while internet activation isn't ideal and does for a small number of people cause problems, pirates will grasp at anything for an excuse to justify their piracy so even a perfect solution would still have some people poking holes in it because they just plain don't want to pay for something.

    Sorry if I was a bit OTT, I do understand it's not a perfect system :)

  • bad09 #12 1 year ago

    @Kazzahdrane

    TBH, in my experience, the pirates who just don't want to pay for anything (and not every downloader is that type remember) never try to justify themselves to anyone anyway as they just don't care. Most people I've met that are that type of pirate tend to just openly come out and say "why pay when I can download for free".

  • Rack #13 1 year ago

    I'd buy this if they had managed to get the requirements down to Crysis levels, or at least something in the ballpark, but as they're six times that I'm not sure what message I'd be sending, and really it's an awfully expensive way to say very little.

  • hiddenranbir #14 1 year ago

    Pre-ordered on GoG first day. If I have a choice between GoG and Steam, GoG will win outright. Always. They're just that little bit better when it comes to giving ME control over what content I play.

    too many times has Steam been too busy for me to even launch a game! Imagine that!

  • Lunastra78 #15 1 year ago

    "No internet link needed for Witcher 2"

    Armenia, Rejoice!

  • StooMonster #16 1 year ago

    bad09: When my internet was down for 3 weeks

    Holy pants, three weeks with no interwebs!

  • hiddenranbir #17 1 year ago

    That is bad service to be out for 3 weeks.

    Most I've had is what...3 days? I call up and if need it will get looked at the day after and fixed.

  • bad09 #18 1 year ago

    Yep 3 weeks wasn't an outage though, with Sky those never tend to go over a day or 2 (unlike when I was on BT. Yuck!). I moved and first Sky messed up the Broadband order and then BT openreach had a huge backlog.

    Mostly I was alright as I knew I would at least have some time without. Installed/activated what I thought I would need and checked Steam was up to date and in offline mode and I had EG on my mobile :)

    I didn't check Shift though because it was on PC for ages so thought it was OK. Sods law that was one of the games I wanted to play over that time and it needed re-installing which, seeing as I'm a legal gamer, I was utterly powerless to do.

  • cjb_bjc #19 1 year ago

    Fuxck If you can't live without the
    Net for 3 days or even 3 weeks we are getting really screwed over by stuff. In all means it's really not that important. If u can't log into psn one day il wait for the next. There are plenty of other things to do in life.

  • uknortherner2000 #20 1 year ago

    ^^ Yeah, like playing computer games. Oh wait.

  • Bumbuliuz #21 1 year ago

    My biggest issue with buying the game from Gog.com is the pricing. I can get the physical version cheaper than the digital one. That just rubs me the wrong way about digital pricing.

  • sega #22 1 year ago

    I still don't like needing a net connection to play any game - even once. I still play games on my PC from the 90's - imagine if you needed to activate those via the internet back then, I doubt it'd work any more. In a few years, tons of PC games are going to be useless as I doubt they'll keep the activation servers up forever.

  • 5h1nj1 #23 1 year ago

    Why do you have to lie in the title? I don't get it. You get one information from the title, then open the article and there's a contradicting information. Why the hell do you do that?
    Just to be clear - "no internet link needed for Witcher 2" is untrue and misleading - you definitely need it if you want to activate the game. I guess you'd want to activate, unless you wanna just spin the disc on your finger...

    Well, I'm gonna wait till the activation is patch-removed then. I won't buy before that.

  • Inmediasress #24 1 year ago

    I think this is a sensible approach, I can live with a one time activation.
    Anyway I'm looking forward to the game.

  • uknortherner2000 #25 1 year ago

    @5h1nj1

    From watching the announcement yesterday, the retail and non-GOG versions require activation (though presumably like the original game, this will eventually be patched out - they certainly hinted at that), but the GOG version will not. Eurogamer's headline should have been a lot clearer - it's the GOG version that doesn't require activation and carries no DRM. It also comes with a free game.
    Edited by uknortherner2000 at 15/04/11 @ 10:56

  • Darren #26 1 year ago

    Great news I think for PC owners. I've had my copy pre-ordered from GAME for months now; can't wait to play it. I hope this game does exceptionally well so that other publishers will take the same risk with their games.

  • Darren #27 1 year ago

    @redbarony - I think it's a real pity that ISPs don't do more to deter pirates. At the moment they act like they don't care. I'm quite sure they can diffentiate between legitimate buyers downloading a digital copy from Steam or GAME and an illegitimate user downloading the same from uTorrent/BitTorrent. Am I correct? They should issue several warnings then report people to the police if they persist in piracy, with a permanent ban if they repeatedly ignore them. If they did then maybe people would be less keen to pirate games, movies and music.

  • arcam #28 1 year ago

    If they did then maybe people would be less keen to pirate games, movies and music.

    Do you really want ISPs inspecting every bit of data that goes up or down your internet pipe? That is like mobile phone companies recording all your phone calls in case people are talking about buying weed.The possibility of copyright infringement just cannot justify that massive breach of privacy.

  • bad09 #29 1 year ago

    "illegitimate user downloading the same from uTorrent/BitTorrent"

    How do they know the person is "stealing" Darren? Unless you actually believe the bullcrap lines these companies spin you not everyone using such software are dirty baby eating pirates and many are actually the entertainment industries customers. While I haven't had Utorrent actually installed for yonks I've used it at times in the past for various reasons.

    In regard to gaming some indies have even used torrents to distribute the games!

    Besides, like arcam says, whether you've got nothing to hide or not do you seriously want ISPs inspecting every bit of data piping in to your home?

  • styles_dg #30 1 year ago

    Will be buying the GOG version because I want to support these guys ....I'm liking this dev more and more. They make good games that aren't dumbed down for the masses, and they recognise the inequity and inconvenience of DRM. Rock on, guys!