this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
165 points (95.6% liked)
Games
16937 readers
404 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Isn't this the guy who was a dick about copyright to his work concerning derivatives? I remember someone saying that either for the games or for the movie they had to fight to retain licenses because he was acting up about it.
Yeah, if I remember correctly. He sold the rights straight up to the developers of the game, no royalties or percentage or anything because of his anti-game bias, then when the game was successful and that decision bit him in the ass, he tried to change the deal and get more money out of them. As I understand it he lost and still receives no revenue from the games.
Even then they're still benefitting him tremendously because while he was popular in Poland, it's the games that have really made his work popular overall, and people are buying his books and all because of it.
Yeah he made money off the game when I bought every single Witcher book
This article says he settled with CD project https://www.vgr.com/cd-projekt-witcher-lawsuit-author-sapkowski/
Ah, I recalled he didn't win, I suppose I should've assumed it was settled, that's usually how that goes down.
Personally I think he should've lost and had to pay CDPR's legal costs, the whole thing was absurd. He admits he made a stupid mistake but wants money out of them anyways despite having been an arrogant shithead to start with.
I mean he had a very weak case iirc but it's very unsatisfying to hear he still got a settlement. Makes sense tho, lawsuits are not worth it 95% of the time.
Off the top of my head, he sold the game rights for a lump sum. Basically, he didn’t believe the games would be popular, so he didn’t believe royalties would ever pay out. So he demanded a large up-front payment instead of the standard “small payment plus royalties” deal that authors would go for.
Then when the games ended up being super popular, he came back and tried to demand post-dated royalties. When the company (obviously) refused, he got crotchety and started shit-talking the games to anyone who would listen.
Honestly, the games have been a huge benefit to him. Tons of fans ended up buying the books because of the games. But he’s salty that he demanded a bad deal, because he didn’t want to risk losing if the games flopped.
It's a bit complex. IIRC He sold the rights of making games to a tiny indie company and then CDProjekt bought the company and made the much elaborate Witcher 1.