The Witcher might not release on Steam
CD Projekt Red announced earlier today that the next entry in The Witcher franchise is finally in development, seven years after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released which helped catapult both the franchise and CDPR to new heights of popularity.
As part of the announcement of the new game, CD Projekt Red also announced their multi-year partnership with Epic Games which would see The Witcher developed on Unreal Engine 5, rather than CDPR’s own REDengine.
This caused many fans to speculate that The Witcher might also end up being an Epic Games Store exclusive, something that we have seen with many games when the developers partner with the company.
Epic Games is best known as the creators of both the Unreal Engine, a popular game engine used to develop thousands of games, as well as being the creators of Fortnite.
But, they also own their own digital storefront, Epic Games Store, which is a competitor of other platforms such as Valve’s Steam.
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In the past, we have seen Epic Games buy up the exclusivity of games, either as complete or timed exclusivity, with games such as Borderlands 3 not releasing on Steam until much later.
Following the announcement, fans took to Twitter to ask whether the game would become an Epic Games exclusive, which CD Projekt Red denied saying,
“We are not planning on making the game exclusive to one storefront.”
It is worth noting that CD Projekt Red is also in the game store business as they are also the owners of the GOG storefront.
So while they will be telling the truth, not making the game exclusive to one storefront could still mean that The Witcher isn’t coming to Steam as the deal could be for the game to release on both GOG and Epic Games Store.
While this is all purely speculation at this stage, CD Projekt Red does seem very vague in their responses, with them not openly mentioning Steam or what platforms it is coming to, which does add weight to the possibility that it could bypass Steam.
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As of right now, there is no news regarding a release date or any gameplay footage, but with how long previous games from CD Projekt Red have taken, don’t expect the game to release any time.
