News - Is The Witcher Author blackmailing?
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| A great game, an upcoming series and an awesome fan art by FrostedFlakes62 (DeviantArt). |
Today I bring you a case that got me rattle about the values of the creative community in general and the gaming community in particular.
Here's the case. More than a decade ago a small video-game studio bought the rights to a fantasy novel by an unknown author. Since they were barely starting, the small studio offered the author the possibility of a smaller amount of money in exchange for the writer to keep ownership of the "royalties" of his creation (Basically allowing the author a part of the profits for sales of the game and other merchandise made by the studio). But the author, selling presumably stories to other studios/publishers/magazines with non to little success, decided for a full commission of his work and they both went their separate ways.
This video-game company was CD Projekt RED, the author was Andrzej Sapkowski and the novel... was The Witcher (1993)!
Jump to now and The Witcher is now a well known and establish powerhouse in the word of games and CD Projekt RED, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. The success is so big that talks for a series or a movie begin to spawn in the media, being a co-production series with Netflix and Henry Cavill announced this year!
And here's were things start to get messy...
The story nowadays is that the original author - Sapkowski - is "blackmailing" CD Projekt RED for 16 millions for compensation over the success of The Witcher and my mind is blown on how much the gaming community is up in arms against this man!
Here's the thing, writers selling theirs stories cheap with no rights to anything is nothing new in the creative community. Ask Stephen King (The Shinning - 1977), ask Neil Gaiman (The Sandman - 1989), ask George RR Martin (A Game of Thrones - 1999), all of these authors sold stories for pennies in the beginning of their careers and it was only after they became huge successes that they started to get the return for a lifetime of writing. Not only that, the entire artist/creative community seemed to support and defend their rights cause, after all, if we had new stories or great universes it was because of these guys.
But it seems when we talk about the gaming community, everyone's more concerned about what the contract was ten years ago then if the author who sold it is entitled to have a part of the profits, when the company is already making millions out of a creation that isn't theirs!
This also happen in comics with star artists like Joe Mad (Uncanny X-men), Todd McFarlane (Spiderman) and even Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld all leaving their company (Marvel) because whatever they would draw/create was not their own but the company they worked for. But now everyone recognizes and values their creation in the community.
So my question is "Why all this hate for Sapkowski?"
Some people will say "He's just trying to check in on the money cow that The Witcher is now!" to what I reply "So why didn't he do that after the multimillion dollar success of The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt?" Certainly if money was central issue he could of done it a lot earlier than now.
The think to me is, he sold the rights to a starting small studio for something they're now selling to a third party for an even bigger profit, on something that they didn't create. He sold his story for a game not for a multi-media million dollar making machine!
And, for those thinking 16 million is a lot of money, let me remind you that CD Projekt RED has made more than 300 Millions on The Witcher franchise alone, not including the new upcoming series or movies. Sill think Andrzej Sapkowski is blackmailing anyone here? I have serious doubts.
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