Gamers were shocked and surprised, in a good way, with The Witcher 2"s developer CD Projekt Red decided to do away with the DRM set up in the recent fantasy RPG game. Now it appears that the action will have consequences. According to Giant Bomb publisher Namco Bandai, one of the game"s publishers, has filed a lawsuit against CD Projekt Red in part because the DRM set up has been removed for all copies of the game.
Namco Bandai published the PC version of The Witcher 2 in Europe. In its lawsuit Namco Bandai says that the development team for the game got rid of the DRM set-up without the publisher"s permission. CD Projekt released the game from GoG.com without DRM and then released a patch just a few days after the game"s release that did away with DRM in all of the downloadable and retail game copies.
In addition to the DRM issues, Namco Bandai is also suing the developer for letting the European publishing rights for the upcoming Xbox 360 version of the game go to THQ. Namco Bandai said that it is withholding about $1.75 million that it had planned to give CD Projekt on sales of the game. The developer"s parent company, Optimus, said in a statement "Namco"s claims are unfounded."
Launched last May, CD Projekt said had sold over 400,000 copies of The Witcher 2 in early June. The Xbox 360 console version, which was announced last May, is now slated to be released sometime this fall.