Jenuall wrote:I think they could have done better with the messaging on the free DLC campaign at launch, but it was very clear even then that the expansions were a separate thing.
I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me... but, having checked, I don't believe so, Jen!
CDPR wrote:We love games. We love collecting them, playing them, and everything connected to that experience. Every time we reach out for a new release, we expect to be taken care of. We expect support if we encounter any problems, we love updates constantly improving the experience, and we feel really special when we receive free content that gives us more than we initially paid for. It doesn’t have to be huge, it can be an awesome skin for a character, or an extra sword, or armor.
Unfortunately this treatment is quite rare these days. As gamers, we nowadays have to hold on tight to our wallets, as surprisingly right after release, lots of tiny pieces of tempting content materialize with a steep price tag attached. Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game?
As CD PROJEKT RED, we strongly believe this is not the way it should work and, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we have decided to do it differently. Cutting to the chase, everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform. You don’t have to pre-order, you don’t have to buy any special edition to get them — if you own a copy of Wild Hunt, they’re yours. This is our way of saying thank you for buying our game.
Source: CDPR, 6 Nov 2014 -
clickI applaud CDPR for making the sixteen pieces of content free (although another angle would be to ask why they weren't just included on the disc if they were known about this far ahead of launch)... but the text suggests that gamers shouldn't have to pay more for content. No additional content for the game was mentioned at this time. It feels like this idea was then changed a bit when - six months later in April 2015 - paid expansions were announced -
click for source.
Don't get me wrong; I think the paid content offered great value. But, looking back, despite that initial bluster from CDPR that went on to get huge coverage in the gaming media, the end result is that the game included some free items... but also had paid content much like any other AAA game.