CD Projekt Red resolves legal dispute with author of Witcher novels

The Witcher is a fantasy property on the rise. CD Projekt Red’s series of video games are tremendously popular, Netflix is a readying a live-action series with Henry “Superman” Cavill in the lead role of Geralt of Rivia, and sales of author Andrzej Sapkowski’s original Witcher novels are going strong, no doubt helped along by those first two things.

It’s the novels I want to talk about today. For a while now, they’ve been at the center of a pretty-funny-if-you-look-at-it-the-right-way story. You see, CD Projekt’s original Witcher game came out in 2007. Before that, the company secured the video game rights from Sapkowski himself, who elected for a lump-sum payment of $9,350 rather than a share of the profits. “I said, ‘No, there will be no profit at all – give me all my money right now!'” Sapkowski told Eurogamer in a 2017 interview. “It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn’t believe in their success.”

Basically, he thought video games were dumb and no one played them. Fast-forward a few years and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt comes out to critical accolades and smash sales. Sapkowski realized his mistake and threatened legal action against CD Projekt Red, arguing that he was being paid too little given how successful the games were and that the original contract only covered the first game anyway. He demanded 6% of lifetime profits for the series, which amounted to $16.11 million for The Witcher 3 alone. CD Projekt Red, in summary, said no.

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So it got ugly there for a minute, but just recently, Polish newspaper Puls Biznesu reported that the parties have reached an “amicable settlement,” meaning that CD Projekt Red offered Sapkowski more money if he’ll just stop complaining. We don’t know how much, but it’s probably more than the original $9,350 lump sum and short of the $16.11 million profit share. Back when it was first responding to Sapkowski’s demands, CD Projekt wrote that it wanted “to maintain good relations with authors of works which have inspired CD Projekt Red’s own creations.” With any luck, this will do the trick.

And thus ends a funny little story about an older guy who maybe didn’t understand how much people like video games, fantasy, and fantasy video games. I don’t bear Sapkowski ill will — his books are good and he deserves success — so let’s chalk this up to an example of someone who fell through a generational gap. It happens.

That said, what do you want to bet he made damn sure he got a better deal for the Netflix show?

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h/t Variety