Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, a single player collectible card role playing game based on the popular Gwent minigame from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, recently launched on PC. It was available exclusively via GOG at first, though less than month later, it ended up launching on Steam too.
The reason for this was that the game ended up underperforming relative to CD Projekt’s expectations. Early feedback, and the general popularity of Gwent, had led them to believe it would do well, but it seems to have underperformed relative to their expectations. CD Projekt is at least candid in admitting that making the game exclusive to GOG may have had something to do with that.
“The game appealed to the community, which drove up our expectations regarding sales,” said CD Projekt’s joint-CEO Adam Kiciński in a financial call with investors. “Unfortunately, as yet, these expectations have not been fulfilled. Still, we remain optimistic… We expect to continue to sell Thronebreaker for many years to come, even though the initial period may not have lived up to our initial expectations.
“The game appeared on GOG first for fairly straightforward reasons. GOG is our priority platform and we wanted to release the game there first to gamers who support us there. However, the reach of GOG is incomparably smaller than that of Steam. We know that there’s a large Witcher fan community on Steam and that’s why we also released the game there.”
Hopefully, the game does end up doing well in the long run, because by all accounts, it’s a well made game that fans of the Witcher universe will greatly enjoy, as will fans of card RPGs. Maybe the upcoming console release will help as well.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is out now on PC, and launches on PS4 and Xbox One on December 4.