CD Projekt Is Getting Fans To Crowdfund A Witcher Project

Call me a realist if you must, but I don’t understand why everyone under the age of 26 seems to think the only acceptable way to get entertainment is anime and manga. Nonetheless, here we are, one of the worst ideas in the universe. A multi-million dollar game developer, distributor, and publisher began asking fans of The Witcher to crowdfund a manga project yesterday morning. It might not shock you that less than 24-hours later, fans had surpassed the initial $107,000 goal, doing so in about 2-hours.

At the time of writing, the total pledged is already over $400,000. The manga will bring the titular Witcher to the land of the rising sun: it is a manga after all, and the Japanese theming is very apparent in that. “To bring this ambitious what-if? scenario to life, CD PROJEKT RED, creators of The Witcher series of games, have assembled a dedicated creative team made up of talented individuals who all wanted to explore a different take on the world of The Witcher,” as stated in the description of the Kickstarter project. Titled “The Witcher: Ronin,” the world of The Witcher is ripped from its European root and steeped in Japanese traditional culture of a similar period to its European counterparts.

The description goes on to state: “The main story arc of The Witcher: Ronin contains 4 chapters, around 100 full-color pages.” Detailing that we’ll be, “following Geralt as he searches for clues, fights deadly monsters, and is faced with difficult moral choices.” With a further 3 short stories written, the manga world will also feature new versions of Vesemir and Yennefer. Going into further detail of what to expect, the description notes backers will get creator commentary, draft sketches, and shared details on the mythology that influenced the manga. Followed by listing the tiers, which you can check yourself if you are so inclined.

The question I have is, why couldn’t CD Projekt fund this themselves? According to reports, their latest game released on December 10th last year, Cyberpunk 2077, grossed $609-million by December 31st, 2020, in digital sales alone. With the company turning public and being valued at $8.1-billion, making it the most valuable European developer surpassing Ubisoft, there should be a little bit of cash to spread around. Even with those pending lawsuits over Cyberpunk 2077‘s state of release and fans returning the game, you’d believe there would still be enough to spread around. Especially when the initial goal was only $107,000.