4Game

For those of you really concerned with the end of Gwent, you shouldn't be.

1. CDPR has devotes huge resources to Gwent, equal to what they put into Cyberpunk support. They are now working in earnest on not only the Witcher 4 but also a remake of the original Witcher as well as other titles. Witcher 4 is scheduled for a May 2025 release date, and knowing CDPR that will almost definitely be pushed back, especially since the director has gone on record saying that there will be no "crunch." If you fall behind progress the only way to avoid a crunch is extend the launch date.

The studio has had some huge successes and also some debacles and rough times. Their priority is single player Witcher titles and they need the resources that go into Gwent to avoid another CP disaster (unfinished final product).

1. Gwent is not that profitable. Whatever Gwent has actually earned was only in the past year, the game officially recouped it's development investment at the end of Q3 2021. Again now is not the time to waste resources on a project that isn't giving much of a return on investment.

2. Monster Witcher Slayer has also been discontinued and it taught some important lessons about CDPR culture:

A. CDPR isn't very good at monetization. My understanding is that the game was popular but not making much money after the first month. Gwent is a great game that also does not make much money and CDPR otherwise focuses on standalone titles so we can surmise that they are not great at developing game economies or managing content paywalls.

B. Monetization is important to CDPR. In return for WMS not being very profitable, the studio responsible for the game revamped it making it almost entirely pay to win to such a degree that they effectively killed it, not only making it more difficult but also removing RPG elements. Since the game was good already, the only reason to do this was because it wasn't making enough money and the decision was made to try and increase profitability.

To the degree that they attempted that we know how important it must have been, and they butchered that game hoping the whales would carry it maybe? It's hard to say what they thought because the attempt was so horribly executed but they sent the message loud and clear either the game make money or it be shelved and now it's shelved. This shows again that CDPR isn't good at Monetization because of how horrible of an attempt they made. And since the studio is merging with CDPR and many of the employees are being kept that's another indication that game quality was not the issue.

C. It is probably not a coincidence that Gwent and WMS are being affected at the same time, and shows it probably has less to do with either game and more to do with CDPR priorities currently which are the Witcher, Cyberpunk, and stock holders.

But keep in mind that these priorities change.

1. That brings me to my next point, which is why Monetization may be so important to CDPR, which is that 33% of the company is owned by four individuals, who's wealth is directly affected by the stock price. And to be honest I don't think I've ever read game news about another developer that was so often about quarterly reports and shareholder meetings, but maybe that's confirmation bias.

2. So making money is important to CDPR, like with all companies, but when it comes to monetizing their properties they aren't that great. They do, however make great games, like Gwent, and it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to abandon Gwent just because they don't know how to monetize it yet.

And CDPR seems to agree since they also recently announced they will be focusing on Single Player titles and outsourcing spin off projects to third party developers from now on, as they are with the Witcher remake. That doesn't mean they aren't intimately involved with production or not investing resources.

CONCLUSION:

CDPR is putting Gwent into maintenance mode while they work on Witcher 4. When you consider the size of Gwent's team, how little money it makes, the disaster of Cyberpunk's launch, and how important financials are to the company, they almost have no choice but to do what they're doing. You could even argue they killed WMS or let it die just to scavenge the devs to make sure Witcher is released without a hitch. And I bet if we were privy to behind the scenes at CDPR this would be an even more obvious decision.

But again they know it's not Gwents fault that it isn't profitable, it's theirs for not being good at monetizing their properties. The game, overall, is great and they've invested very large sums of money into it over 6 years. That's not the kind of investment you walk away from right when you're about to release Witcher 4, which would provide arguably the largest advertisement for and renewal of Gwent player base possible.

So instead Gwent is being shelved to make sure that the Witcher has a successful launch, and it's even being put into maintenance mode where balance changes will continue to be made. In which case one would expect that by the time W4 is released, the game should be as fully polished as possible, with all 1650 (!) cards as balanced as they can be. Gwent would theoretically be in the best condition of it's existence and could maybe even justify a standalone version for $50 with a truncated library and/or thronebreaker.

Just when the community is done balancing the game, it will be ready for tie-ins with W4 and other properties (e.g. maybe they'll add Gwent to the remake). It could be as simple as finding card kegs in W4 that would unlock cards in Gwent, or having progress in Gwent translate into W4 rewards. The possibilities are endless and Gwent is too much of a polished product to not include it in the W4 release and use it as a second launch for for Gwent.

I think this is kind of a reverse homecoming thing: instead of getting your hopes up and dashing them, they're lowering your expectations knowing you'll be thrilled with the end result. In fact the core community will be so thrilled when Gwent comes back many of them probably won't even complain about whatever ways CDPR attempts to monetize it in relation to Witcher 4. Especially since there will be an entire new game full of lore to create new content from.

So don't worry, relax, enjoy the rest of the year with Gwent and see if they even go through with pulling the plug in 2024 before worrying about it. And if they do, I almost guarantee the game will be back for Witcher 4. If I'm wrong, that's on CDPR because otherwise it's a no-brainer.