Gwent: The Witcher Card Game Open Letter from CDPR CEO

CD Projekt CEO Marcin Iwiński has penned an open letter to the Witcher fan community to thank them for the enthusiasm for the Gwent minigame in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the same enthusiasm that ultimately convinced the company to pursue the development of a free-to-play standalone version of the minigame. I'm going to quote the letter in full:

Hey everyone!

As I hope many of you have heard, CD PROJEKT RED announced GWENT: The Witcher Card Game at this year’s E3. Aside from the fact that we were finally able to shout out that we’re working on an awesome game, this was a special moment for us because of one more thing -- we could say THANKS to a very special group of people who made GWENT possible: you.

Please allow me to say that one more time: I would like to thank all Wild Hunt / GWENT fans for supercharging us to make GWENT: The Witcher Card Game happen. Supercharging is a pretty good word, because the flood of emails, calls, forum posts, and everything else was simply crazy. There was a moment that literally everything was beeping, buzzing, vibrating and otherwise communicating one idea: GWENT or nothing. I mean, over 40 fan-made versions of GWENT were created, people printed their own cards, made real wooden playing boards -- positive madness.

So, here we are. We’ve taken all that heart and energy you gave us and put it into GWENT. If you enjoyed it in Wild Hunt, I think I don’t have to convince you to sign up for the upcoming beta (it starts in September for PC and Xbox One, PlayStation 4 will join the battlefield a bit later), but if you never tried the game, there’s no better time -- go to playgwent.com and sign up. When it launches, play it and tell us what you like and what you don’t like; tell us what we should change and improve. You wanted us to make the game, now we’re kindly asking you to help us make it truly yours.

Thank you one more time!

Cheers,
Marcin Iwiński,
Co-founder of CD PROJEKT


Iwiński wants to galvanize the community, no doubt about that, but I have to say that his words match the kind of demand and enthusiasm I've seen online since The Witcher 3 has been released. Whether that will translate in a success for CD Projekt RED remains to be seen, especially since this is their first free-to-play title, but they have a better base than many other developers to start from.