DRM removed, UGC in Witcher patch

By Oli Welsh Published 9 July, 2009

Five player-created adventures for the RPG.

Polish developer CD Projekt has patched its cult low-fantasy RPG The Witcher to version 1.5, removing the game's DRM security protection and adding five bonus adventures created by players.

As well as removing copy security measures, you'll now be able to play The Witcher without the disc in the drive of your machine.

The five community quests - Deceits, Blight of the Bogs, Wraiths of Quiet Hamlet, The Wedding, and Merry Witchmas - were created with the D'jinni adventure editor first released last year.

The Witcher was due to get a console version later this year, but Rise of the White Wolf was put on hold after CD Projekt felt it wouldn't be able to meet its quality standards on time.

It's still very much worth a look on PC though - read our review of the enhanced edition to find out why.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • kangarootoo #1 3 years ago

    Wow, no DRM and no disc in drive to play? Its as if a wave of common sense washed over the beach of trust, and errrr, did something positive to the people sunbathing... well, you get my point.


    Question. I recently bought a PC. Its old, but not as old as my laptop (which is shite for games). Now I'm not getting back into this whole PC gaming lark, as I have far too much common sense and far too little patience. However, the lack of a future 360 version of Witcher irks me. So, can my PC run Witcher?

    Athlon Barton XP 3000+
    Nvidia GF 6800GT 256mb AGP
    2GB of system memory

    Verdicts?

  • Darren #2 3 years ago

    I patched my game to v1.5 last night but upon loading the Djinni editor it showed as version v1.4.5... not v1.5.0... on the splash screen as expected. The file properties, however, do show v1.5.0... though as does the executable for the game itself. Odd.

    Seems like this patch is exactly the same as the previous v1.4.5 patch I already had installed, only the need for the disc in the drive has been removed.

  • 4thVariety #3 3 years ago

    I am assuming they had to renew the license. Witcher used some online activation thingy and if anything, the DRM company is running a business, so they will charge money for continued support of DRM activation "servers".

    On the other hand that has neither stopped the Witcher from being copied and since the UK version was missing a manual at some point people bought the game without receiving a code for online activation.

    @kangarootoo
    Try the demo, see yourself. Don't get your hopes up too high though.

  • kangarootoo #4 3 years ago

    Demo? Hehe, the thought never even occurred. Clearly I have been out of PC gaming too long :) I'll give it a whirl.

  • George-Roper #5 3 years ago

    kang, not likely mate.

    Unless i'm mistaken, Witcher is based on the Aurora engine used in NWN2 which chugged like a bastard on my Nvidia 7950 GTX. That you're a generation behind that card, which was a dual GPU setup means your performance would be shocking.

    As 4th suggests, try the demo but don't get your hopes up.

  • kangarootoo #6 3 years ago

    :(

    Good job I didn't buy the thing for new games. System Shock 2 co-op (plus a smattering of mods) is where its at people.

  • systems #7 3 years ago

    Arse. I only uninstalled this about a week ago.

  • outy #8 3 years ago

    Actually, Kang.. The Witcher will work on your PC, the engine aurora engine used is modifed allowing it to run on lower spec PCs, however, ensure that your OS is XP -

    Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 +2800
    1 GB RAM (WinXP) / 1536 MB (Vista)
    128 MB Video RAM with DX9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800 or better)
    8.5 GB hard drive space

    Apparently the enhanced version of the game uses a tweaked optimised engine which should run a little faster.

  • kangarootoo #9 3 years ago

    Wheeee. Happy again :)

    It is running XP.

    I'll bag the demo and give it a whirl, with a new found sense of optimism. I guess if I never know what it looks like with the settings turned up, I'll not know what I'm missing.

  • Rubarack #10 3 years ago

    Gotta love CD Projekt, they actually treat customers well.

  • George-Roper #11 3 years ago

    @outy

    Please don't tell me you just copy/pasted the minimum requirements for the game....

  • kangarootoo #12 3 years ago

    What is wrong with that? I am clearly bloody useless, so there is nothing wrong with an act of charity.

  • George-Roper #13 3 years ago

    Because minimum requirements mean nothing and shouldn't be used by anyone to judge whether a game will play.

    I worked in game development for a while and my remit for ensuring that games would install and run against minimal requirements were that the in-game menu would appear. Nothing more.

    Not worth anyones energy or effort to read.

    Had a go at the demo yet?

  • UncleLou #14 3 years ago

    Unless i'm mistaken, Witcher is based on the Aurora engine used in NWN2 which chugged like a bastard on my Nvidia 7950 GTX.

    That's not quite true, I am afraid - as astonishing as it might be, The Witcher is actually based on the AUrora 1 engine used for Neverwinter Nights 1. The Witcher runs far, far better than NWN2. There are a few sections where I had some slowdown on my old PC, but you should definitely give the demo a try, kangaroo.

  • George-Roper #15 3 years ago

    Unc, that's mental...

    NWN2 must have been an incredibly unoptimized game....

  • BigJonno #16 3 years ago

    I think that whenever you install NWN2 it rolls a die to see how well it'll run. It ran fine on my old machine, but was utter shite on friend's machines that were much, much better.

  • kangarootoo #17 3 years ago

    "Had a go at the demo yet?"

    Haha, I wish. I have a job dude (I know its hard to tell given how much I write on here sometimes... I write fast) :)

    Cheers for further info UncleLou. I'll try and get onto this tonight and report back, as a sort of useful technical reference point for all other owners of pension drawing PCs.

  • kangarootoo #18 3 years ago

    "I think that whenever you install NWN2 it rolls a die to see how well it'll run"

    That made me chuckle more than it should have. I guess if any game is going to roll a dice, an RPG seems appropriate.

  • Drakron #19 3 years ago

    The DRM was removed in the Enhanced Edition, at least on the Enhanced Edition "patch".

  • One_Vurfed_Gwrx #20 3 years ago

    Hmm, and just after I had to crack my new Enhanced edition due to it refusing to run on my DVD drive (no online activation on it though just disc-based). One of the things I hate about PC gaming, and it is putting me off buying many titles I fancy buying such as Empire: Total War, Mass Effect and Last Remnant with their online DRM activation crap... The fact that DRM refuses to run some protection systems on my DVD drive without cracks is also annoying (Plextor if anyone cares) but usually gets cracked more effectively than Steam activation etc... I will not install steam just to play a game offline, and dislike Valve for starting such a stupid trend... (luckily I'm not much of a Half Life fan though :) )

    Re: Witcher: EE, did it come in more than one variant in the UK as I recall it supposed to come with a short story amongst other things (which all turned out to be digital, thus making the purchase seem a bit of a waste as I had the original collector's edition that I could've patched). All I got in my copy was a DVD box with 3 discs and a slipcard...

  • immateriaux #21 3 years ago

    I bought the original Witcher and went and bought the Enhanced too, even though I could have just patched the original (sudden swooning show of support for the company etc). Anyhow, my EE has game disk, Map, Audio CD, Short Story book, Bonus Content DVD, Manual and separate Game Guide. So think you got slightly gipped Gwrx.

    Great they've gone and patched the DRM out of it. Was just thinking about playing it again but will definitely put it back on the PC now and give it another spin.

  • hiddenranbir #22 3 years ago

    Do these community adventures plug into the main game, or do I load them separately as if it were an extra side game?

  • One_Vurfed_Gwrx #23 3 years ago

    Immateriaux: Arse, thought that might be the case, but there was no way to tell from the website that I had a slimmed down version. All the bonus content is just on the 2 DVDs digitally (minus the story), and it is an official UK product with a giant BBFC 18 on the front too... Sadly due to it being opened not much I can do about refund etc as it'll technically be as described. Not willing to fork out for a 3rd copy just to get teh proper extras though. Money wasted, was suspicoous of the small box though... Unfortunately was out of country at launch so didn't see what it looked like in the flesh and has long disappeared from shops around here.

  • Paper #24 3 years ago

    @hiddenrambir: I believe you can choose when you select new game. They're seperate adventures.

  • kangarootoo #25 3 years ago

    So, the 2GB demo was downloading more slowly than death last night, despite Virgin media upgrading my line for free the same day. It started off well, but dropped to 9kbps and then seemed to give up. So no demo trial for me last night. Maybe on the weekend (and maybe I'll find a better source).

    Oncve I get it sorted I will report back on "Witcher performance on crappy PC", if this thread is still around. If not, I'll drop a comment into some other RPG related article thread.

  • WJF #26 3 years ago

    My crappy PC/Mac with a 'wicked' X1600 mobile just about runs it fine. A little slowdown here and there, but it's playable.
    Edited by 1 at 10/07/09 @ 13:12

  • the_mtfr #27 3 years ago

    Very well then, I'll buy it today, they're cool guys. Maybe from play.com they had it cheap a while ago.