- Primary Subject: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Remastered & Songs of the Past DLC)
- Key Update: CD Projekt Red announced a free graphical and combat remaster for The Witcher 3 alongside a brand-new narrative expansion titled Songs of the Past, sparking a shift toward value-driven DLC development.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: September 1, 2026
- Quick Answer: Focusing on high-quality DLC expansions rather than full sequels reduces development crunch and marketing costs while delivering love to the players.
The folks at CD Projekt Red have once again proven why they are one of the best developers in the industry today with the announcement of a Witcher 3 revival.
First came the DLC reveal of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a game that was first released over a decade ago. Then shortly after that news, they announced a remaster of The Witcher 3 complete with a graphical and combat system overhaul - for absolutely free. As someone who’s been teetering between “Gaming is dead” and “we are so back”, this news has pushed me over to the side of the latter as a wave of hopium entered my lungs.
This release is important because not only is The Witcher 3 a beautiful game, but I am also hoping that CDPR becomes the vanguard for a newer generation of gaming development - The DLC generation.
When 007 First Light first came out, I remember being really impressed by the systems they put in place. Granted, IO Interactive was the perfect people to pull off a 007-style game with their experience in the Hitman franchise, but everything added on top of that formula made 007 First Light the perfect James Bond game any Bond fan could dream of.
I remember finishing the game and feeling excited for the next game, which, hopefully, wouldn’t take years since the engine was already in place. But then that got me thinking: why make a new game in the first place when 007 First Light could tell so many more stories?
I believe that developers should start piggybacking off of their games, considering not much additional work is required to make the game feel new again. Sure, you would have to draft a story, storyboard the gameplay experience, model new assets, characters, etc etc. You get the gist of it. This process of creating a DLC, knowing you already have a good foundation for the gameplay, is much easier than having to build everything from the ground up.
A good example of this would be any Resident Evil DLC since its revival in Resident Evil 7, where each DLC used the same engine, but still felt fresh because of the creative approaches to the same tool.
Similarly, lessening the load on developers wouldn’t only benefit their performance and crunch time, but also improve the pricing of the games that release. Pricing of video games these days has come under much scrutiny, especially with the recent discourse on physical copies of video games and gaming company layoffs.
A shift to focusing on DLC without having to resort to a full-blown sequel would mean a smaller price tag and more of a game that you already know and love. An example of this that comes to mind is the Vergil DLC from Devil May Cry 5, where a whole different system of action-oriented gameplay was unlocked for fans of the series.
And if any Capcom devs are reading this, keep throwing Devil May Cry DLC my way, and I will singlehandedly fund your Q3 profit margin.
Marketing-wise for the greedy corporations, it would also save a lot of money in marketing. It does not take as much effort to convince players to play more of a game that they already love. There will still be baseline marketing such as a trailer, post, maybe a hype train or two. But the risk of spending on marketing for these DLCs is far less than what you would have to spend on a new entry or IP. DLCs also stretch out the marketing investment you made on the initial release of the base game since you don’t have to recapture the attention of your fans.
At the same time, I think it’s super important to note that companies are not the only people investing in a game. When someone buys a video game, they are putting a personal stake in that game by literally placing their hard-earned money on the table in hopes that the game is good. Making sure that the players’ investment in a game is also stretched out means that you are building a trustworthy brand among the player base. The more that a game is willing to continually support its game well after its “life span”, the more encouraged a player would be to shell out their money on its future.
With that said, this philosophy still has its limits. Not every game is meant to last forever, and not every DLC will keep your audience happy. One of the most glaring examples of that would be The Sims 4, a game that EA has milked for two decades with insanely overpriced DLCs that I am absolutely fed up with. I do not want to spend the equivalent of a chair from IKEA just to get a digital chair that I could have bought from IKEA.
Immortality is a curse, and you can either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In this case, The Witcher 3 is still a hero, and live service games might as well be Thanos.
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