‘Cyberpunk, ‘Witcher’ Studio Doesn’t Believe In Microtransactions In Single Player Games

There is constant fight between players and publishers when a new single player game launches at full price and also contains microtransactions. Games that do this are lambasted, recently Dragon’s Dogma 2, previously a whole lot of Ubisoft games, and games that don’t are praised, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate, Spider-Man, etc.

Now, CDPR is just saying it outright, that it doesn’t believe that single player games should have microtransactions, as its past titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 have not. Those have just had large (huge!) paid expansions, or smaller, free DLC added in time.

Here’s what CD Projekt’s Chief Financial Officer, Piotr Nielubowicz said in an interview with StockWatch.pl (Via Insider-Gaming):

“We do not see a place for microtransactions in the case of single-player games, but we do not rule out that we will use this solution in the future in the case of multiplayer projects.”

Multiplayer games are a different breed. Free-to-play MP games with microtransactions are the new norm at this point, and debates there are about what’s being sold and at what price. In this case, it seems like CDPR would agree they would have to head in that direction for multiplayer content.

There have been strong indications that the next Cyberpunk game, codenamed Orion, will have some sort of online multiplayer component joining a normal single player campaign. This seemed to originally be the plan with 2077, but years of fixes and improvements took priority instead. But it’s easy to imagine that next time around, CDPR may want to emulate GTA V(VI) and GTA Online to build a multiplayer world within Night City. And then they’d probably sell stuff.

It does feel like a good rule that single player games should not have microtransactions. There is always the “who does it harm??” argument, but this gets into murky territory as you wonder if XP is throttled, or items are limited in the game based on trying to sell things to players. And generally speaking, the highest-praised single players we see are almost always ones that avoid microtransactions entirely. It’s a pretty long list at this point, as most publishers seem to agree with CDPR, though some continue to push their luck.

I am very curious about what a multiplayer Cyberpunk will look like. We also know that CDPR is developing a separate, new IP alongside The Witcher, and I would be a little surprised if it wasn’t something multiplayer. But we’ll see (in a number of years).

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