In the series, the player controls Geralt of Rivia, one of the few remaining witchers on the Continent. He is a traveling monster slayer for hire, mutated and trained from an early age to slay deadly beasts.
Releases
Main series
''The Witcher''
In 1996 and 1997, a Witcher video game was being developed by Metropolis Software in Poland, but it was canceled. The game's director was Adrian Chmielarz, former People Can Fly co-owner and creative director, who coined the translation "The Witcher" during its development. According to Chmielarz, the game would have been a 3Daction-adventure game with role-playing elements such as moral choices and experience points. In 2003, Polish video-game developer CD Projekt Red negotiated with Sapkowski for rights to The Witcher, given the languishing work at Metropolis, and released The Witcher, a role-playing game based on the saga in October 2007 for personal computers. It was well-publicized and, although it was the developer's first game, it received critical praise in Europe and North America. The Witcher was published in Poland by CD Projekt and worldwide by Atari. A console version, The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf with the same story and a different engine and combat system, was scheduled for release in fall 2009 but was canceled that spring.
''The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings''
is the sequel to The Witcher, developed by CD Projekt Red. On 16 September 2009, before Assassins of Kings was introduced, a video of the game was leaked; two days later, CD Projekt Red confirmed that it was in development. Assassins of Kings was published in Poland by CD Projekt, by Namco Bandai Games in Europe and by Atari in North America. The game was also distributed digitally through Steam and DRM-free on Good Old Games.
' was released on 19 May 2015, and has become considered one of the greatest games of all time, shipping over ten million copies by March 2016. Subsequently two expansion packs were released, ' in 2015 and in 2016.
Other games
The Witcher: Crimson Trail, also known as The Witcher Mobile is a mobile-phone action game created by Breakpoint on license from CD Projekt in November 2007. It features a young Geralt as a promising student who has completed his training to become a monster-slayer – a witcher. The Witcher: Versus was a Flash-based multiplayer fighting browser game, developed for CD Projekt Red by one2tribe and released in 2008. In the game, which has been discontinued, players created a character from one of three classes and challenged other players in battle. CD Projekt Red announced Battle Arena, a free-to-playmultiplayer online battle arena game for mobile devices, on July 1, 2014.
Reception
In October 2018, Sapkowski sent notice to CD Projekt demanding he be remunerated for sales of The Witchervideo games, asking for more than 60 million Polish złoty representing between about 5% and 15% of the game's revenues over the years. Sapkowski had originally provided the license to CD Projekt based on a lump sum payment, but now believes he is due more since the series has become much more successful than expected. CD Projekt stated that while they had met all obligations on the initial acquisition of the license, they will work amicably with Sapkowski's legal representatives to come to a fair outcome for all parties. By February 2019, CD Projekt worked out a settlement agreement that would provide Sapkowski additional royalties for their video game series, though not as great as those Sapkowski had asked for, as to maintain a working relationship with the author for future Witcher projects. The settlement was finalized by December 2019.
Sales
The series had sold over 33 millon copies by March 2018, increasing to over 50 million copies by May 2020.
