The release of The Witcher card game Gwent's single player Thronebreaker has been moved back to 2018 by developer CD Projekt RED.
The change was announced in an update on the game’s official site. The dev previously stated in August that the campaign mode would release this year.
In the new update post, CD Projekt RED co-founder, Marcin Iwiński, reasoned that: “We decided to increase the campaign’s scope and need more time to work on it. Shifting release windows is always something we approach seriously, however, we’ll never hesitate to do it if we feel you’ll get a better game as a result.”
Gwent is a spin-off from the main Witcher games series - which turned 10 this year - the most recent of which being The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and appears in the main series as a playable card game minigame. Gwent is available to play now for free in a public beta on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
The post also describes how the company intends to take Gwent out of beta in 2018, and so players should: “Expect content additions like cards, challenges, vanity items, but also game patches, and balance tweaks to be published more frequently.” This idea fits with our previous report that CD Projekt has bigger marketing plans for Gwent next year.
Gwent was an early example in a trend of card game spin-offs for major RPG titles, with its public beta first launching in May 2017. Other examples of this trend include The Elder Scrolls: Legends, released in June, published by Bethesda Softworks; Mediatonic-published Fable Fortune, released in July; and Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone in August. Even DOTA 2 is set to get in on the action, with Artifact having been announced by Valve Software at this year’s International Dota 2 Championships.
CD Projekt RED’s attentions may also be drawn elsewhere as the studio is known to be developing a new full title, Cyberpunk 2077, said by CEO Adam Kicinski to be “Nothing less than The Witcher III — huge single player, open world, story-driven RPG,” which, if to be believed, is a grand scale indeed.
The company felt the need recently to make a public statement in defence of the working conditions there following criticisms on employee rating and feedback site, Glassdoor. Perhaps this extension of development time for Gwent is an attempt to postpone, for now, the strains of the ‘crunch’ and offset possible worker displeasure.
