'The Witcher 3' news: 2015 game still outgrossing today's AAA games due to lack of microtransactions
"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" is still putting other AAA games to shame in 2017, as the single-player roleplaying game (RPG) from 2015 has outsold some of the biggest titles last year.
Steam has released a new list of its most bought video games for 2017, and surprisingly, "The Witcher 3" is still in the platinum tier and is actually in the same cluster as "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," "DOTA 2," and other big multiplayer online games despite being a single-player-only game.
This was quite an impressive feat for a game which did not have any new content last year. Fans will recall that the last expansion for "The Witcher 3" came out in 2016 and was titled "Blood and Wine." This could be an indication of how CD Projekt RED, the game's developers, ensured the quality of the RPG, as it was even crowned as Game of the Year by multiple outlets, making it not only one of the best RPGs of all time, but one of the best video games in general.
One thing to note is that "The Witcher 3's" reported Platinum status was only for the Steam market platform. There are also other online resellers like GOG whose statistics for the RPG remain unseen. GOG is also owned by CD Projekt RED.
PC Gamer attributes the game's success to how the developers were generous with their content for the game, where CD Projekt RED even released 16 free downloadable content (DLC) packs and two expansions, each adding up more than half the original game's content. On top of that, the game also did not employ any anti-piracy measures like intrusive digital rights management (DRM) softwares from Denuvo and the like, and the developers even admitted that they focused on ensuring the game's quality and trusted the consumers not to pirate the game, which apparently paid off.
The game has now outsold some AAA titles which incorporated anti-piracy DRMs in in an effort to stave off hackers from making the game free for everyone. This could be an indication that the anti-piracy DRM may be hurting the sales of a title more so than helping it, though "The Witcher 3" could just be an isolated case of overwhelming success.
