CD Projekt Red Doesn't "See A Place" For Microtransactions In Single-Player Games

30.03.2024 - 18:11 / thegamer.com / Piotr Nielubowicz

CD Projekt Red's chief financial officer, Piotr Nielubowicz, has said that the company doesn't "see a place" for microtransactions in its single-player games.

These comments were made in a talk with the company's investors, and come as Capcom comes under fire for selling microtransactions for its recent single-player release, Dragon's Dogma 2. This suggests that CDPR is looking to avoid similar backlash for its own single-player offerings, and will keep these purchases out of the next mainline Cyberpunk and The Witcher games.

"We do not see a place for microtransactions in the case of single-player games," says Nielubowicz, responding to a question from an investor (as recorded by StockWatch). "But we do not rule out that we will use this solution in the future in the case of multiplayer projects."

CD Projekt Red has a few games in development now. The ones that are, presumably, single-player focussed are The Witcher 4, a remake of the first Witcher game, and Cyberpunk 2077's sequel, Orion. The Witcher's spin-off game, known as Project Sirius, has been confirmed to be both single and multiplayer, opening up the possibility of it having microtransactions.

However, the studio has also revealed that it's "considering" multiplayer functionality in the next Cyberpunk game, so it's not clear if that would mean it's also a candidate for microtransactions. That said, many would still be expecting the game to focus mostly on its single-player campaign, so it would be a controversial move for CDPR to consider it a multiplayer game and fill it with microtransactions.

The debate surrounding microtransactions in single-player games was reignited by the launch of Dragon's Dogma 2. While the concept is not a new one - especially for Capcom - it seems that this example disappointed fans greatly, especially when they had already waited years for a sequel to the first game. The backlash was so severe that the game launched to mostly negative reviews on Steam, although this has since recovered and climbed up to mixed - likely still far below Capcom's expectations.

As for CDPR's next game, we still don't know what the studio will release next. A safe bet would be The Witcher 4 since that has more than 400 devs working on it right now. Still, CDPR is keeping its plans under wraps for the time being, so we could be in for a long wait regardless of what comes next.