The Witcher author demands $16 million from CD Project red

The Witcher author demands $16 million from CD Project red
It'sAGundam
Published on Oct 3, 2018


Witcher Author Demands $16 Million from CD Projekt Red and Threatens Legal Action
YongYea
Published on Oct 2, 2018
SOURCE: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investor...

 

Greedy bastard. He made his (wrong) choice, and received the money he asked for upfront. The ship has already sailed.

 

Thats pretty old news. So far he doesnø't get squat.

 

The case is being made that it only included the contracted games, and not the follow on DLC and spinoff's, like the Netflix show - for example - details are in that video I posted...here's info on the Netflix show:

The Witcher Netflix TV Show Diverse Casting Backlash
It'sAGundam
Published on Sep 14, 2018

 

Apparently the Netflix version will follow the storyline in the books as much as they can @ 02:39...

Netflix The Witcher - CIRI & YENNEFER Casting Finally Revealed and Fans Are Happy!
LastKnownMeal
Published on Oct 10, 2018
We finally know that Freya Allan is going to be Ciri and Anya Chalotra is Yenner.

 

FWIW Witcher was an established, well-known fantasy franchise well before the first game was released in 2007. There were even a movie and TV series, both aired before CD Project came to Sapkowski in 2003.

 

What does CDPR have to do with TV show? As far as I know they are not involved in it.

To add to the topic, I think Sapkowski should be grateful to CDPR for making his books popular outside of Poland. This alone should have brought him more profit.
But instead most of the time he just complains about the money when talked about the TW games in interviews. Really sounds like a salty old man.
Luckily Pondsmith is a complete opposite of Sapkowski. He gladly involves himself in the development CP2077 and enjoys being a port of it.

 

If the guys got a grating personality, that doesn't mean he can't ask for review of compensation for his work. If the contract has been in place for a while, and different things have occurred than planned, or effects to either's work is different than anticipated, those are all good reasons for revisiting the situation many years down the road.

Gladly involving oneself in the work may be compensation to one and not the other, and money as compensation if not asked for won't be forth coming.

Many people won't ask for raises, or reviews of contracts to adjust compensation, and should.

You and I don't know anything of the situation that matters, and we should let them work it out where it counts. I was only pointing out the news of interest, not putting up for judgement, or passing judgement, one way or the other.

 

Sapkowski outright demanded an up front lump sum, and turned down CDPR's offer of royalties on future sales. He didn't think video games would be successful, thus decided to take sure money.

He can't retroactively change the deal after the game series he thought would fail proved to make millions. It's a huge "oops', but he got the agreement which he literally forced, as it was CDPR would wanted the royalty contract.

 

This is the best analysis from an actual lawyer:
https://www.mediawrites.law/the-wit...ditional-royalties-from-video-game-developer/

it seems Polish law might not actually be protecting him. He was an IDIOT to not take a cut of the profits in royalties. Besides that, he seems to be a bit of an a-hole, not that it matters legally.

I imported the first game on release because it wasn't available anywhere else (Atari UK, gamesplanet I think..) , liked the world so much I bought his book, poorly translated as it was.

Do I think he should have gotten more money from these wildly popular adaptations of his work? Absolutely. I have a friend that is a decently well-known fantasy author and it would suck if this happened to that person.

Do I think he was an idiot and doesn't DESERVE any more money legally? Yes. I do. You can't legally agree to one thing then retroactively decide you screwed up and hold CDPR accountable for your legally binding mistake.

Do I think CDPR might throw him a bone? Maybe.. they have their own employees to think about who also want to have a life, send their kids to school, pay bills etc. It would be nice if they did, sure. CDPR may have gotten popular on the fantasy workd Sapkowski created, but lets not think CDPR didn't work SUPER HARD to build those games. They're masterpieces not only due to the characters and the world, but the technical prowess as well. I don't think they HAVE to. If the whole company votes to do it, maybe that would be nice. But I don't think the guy is winning any sympathy, he seems to look down on the people that play the games, seems to be a grade-a a-hole every chance he gets. I definitely don't think I'd want to have a beer with him.

We shall see what happens if he decides to move forward with actually suiing them I guess. I'm tired of hearing about it it's old news at this point. Awaiting new news, everything else is just wild speculation.

 

He gambled that the game(s) would be a failure and had the first one completely flopped, which it easily could have, he’d be chilling in a bar in Poland telling his friends how he got paid a decent lump sum for something that no one has heard of. CDPR gambled big time in producing the games in the first place and at the time, paying out a lump sum probably hurt more than promising royalties would have.

Whether he has a legal leg to stand on regarding the number of games made and expansions, etc., I have no idea and don’t really care because he sounds like a d-bag. Hopefully (for him) his lawyers aren’t wasting his time but I really couldn’t care less.

 

No bearing legally, but a take from the author of the Metro book series (Metro 2033 and it's sequels).

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/449559-metro-2033-the-witcher-author

 

Lol.. just pondering this again..

If that idiot causes us to miss out on this series because Netflix gets spooked.. ugh.. what an idiot..

 

The timing of the authors demand seems coincidental with the Netflix deal, and may be tied in or motivated by Netflix or some other party involved, and they would like the earlier IP exposure to be contained.

The author may not be the guy behind the motivation for closure on what has been treated up until now as open ended access to the source material, which will soon include the Netflix shared IP...

The author let this go for a very long time, not dealing with it until Netflix got involved.

 

Glukhovsky's perspective there really doesn't make much sense to me. Netflix has no reason to get scared about the suit, when the person pursuing it literally owns the IP. It'd be different if it was CDPR suing Sapkowski.

It's not like a situation where they have to worry about rights being revoked, so what does Netflix care?

 

Investors into an IP don't like to share, for a start, unless there is something in it for them as well. It maybe the first step in a longer term plan to integrate the IP space as well, to make it consistent.

If the original games contract was limited to a range of use, then enforcing the use and stopping further encroachment into later IP would be another goal.

It's too coincidental for the lawsuit to occur now vs any other time, given the recent investment by Netflix, the timing suggests some kind of house cleaning at the least, with taking advantage of the dual success not a bad idea either.

Asking for a bunch of money, putting a short leash on the response, all point to a need to resolve the parameters quickly by coming together to deal with it rapidly.

Who knows, maybe this came up after the fact with Netflix or another party involved in the curating of the series that doesn't want things to stay "messy" and would rather have it tidied up quickly and definitively.

That's why I said it would be best to let those close to the situation work it out as we don't have enough detailed situational information to make a definitive assessment.

 

Theory has merit. I just think it would be silly to constrain CDPR, they pretty much built up the world of The Witcher into a household name where a couple other attempts at expanding it's reach had failed. I'm probably biased here as I think that game series is arguably the overall best one of the last 20 years or so. When talking character and narrative based games anyway. Assassin's Creed and Uncharted can argue as well. IMO I don't even think Half-Life can throw in here, it's been abandoned for too long and there was ZERO closure.

No, I won't let them do that, I think this thread has full control of the legal proceedings.

 

Constraint and control is the intent of contractual arrangements. It's a legal tradition.

It is also an internet tradition to engage in independent unauthorized wild speculation based on an absolutely non-factual basis.

Authors being an old boastful coot or a brash upstart are long held roles of tradition as well.

Here's to upholding our traditional heritage.

 

Exactly. I had a talk with a friend about this whole ordeal recently. As you guys have said, he was silly to have accepted the legal terms for what they were, but that's because at the beginning of the franchise he honestly didn't believe that games were ever going to be more popular than his own literature. He basically laughed it off and accepted really simple terms because he never could have imagined it would become what it is today.

Good on CDPR for taking the moral high ground by actually agreeing to have a talk with him about what they can offer in addition to the normal contract. They are very well in their rights to laugh him off, but good on them.

He could have benefited from this in so many ways (and already did with increase popularity & sales of his books) but decided to stay greedy and conceited. Shame.

 

You all seem to forget this guy is a fantasy fiction writer, not a lawyer or a business man, or an intellectual property agent - with years of education, hard learned experience, and the trained mind for getting the best out of a contract negotiation.

If anything this should be a good example of how limited our thinking is when put into this kind of situation. No matter how experienced and intelligent we are, without the specific knowledge, training or experience, we'd all make silly beginner like mistakes - especially up against the other party's lawyers and agents working for them to keep as much as they can for their client without giving you anything.

It's easy to be critical or be an armchair expert with decades of historical track record as hindsight.

Moral of the story, you're too stupid to make good contract negotiations on your own, the smartest thing to do is realize how limited your thinking on the subject is due to your lack of experience and wise up and get an agent and lawyer to do your negotiations.

And, more importantly - listen to their advice, if you don't agree with it get a second opinion, or third, or fourth if you must, but eventually realize they know more than you.

Now you only need to worry about how their individual motivations are clouding their advice.

He got a token amount, with nothing else, for everything. Exactly what one would expect to happen given his inexperience going up against a company looking to get what they can and give away nothing.

I'm sure he was advised by the lawyers and agent from the new round of negotiations with Netflix that he was ill treated - ripped off - and now this old agreement for the IP affects Netflix too - so go get it cleaned up, likely as part of the deal he was asked to do this.

Let's see how it play's out.

 

CDPR offered the royalty deal because they could barely scrape together the lump sum he was demanding at the time. The small and dirt poor gaming company at that juncture was not the huge monolith we see today. They weren't trying to rip him off. He's the one who came up with the exact figure.

He literally played himself.

 

Yup. You know when a lawsuit reaches the media its because one side's strategy is to use public pressure to aid their case... or perhaps instead of actually having one worth a damn

 

There's an old saying:

"The art of diplomacy is the ability to send a man to hell, and have him happy to be on his way."

Contract negotiation is much the same as diplomacy.

You are being played against yourself, your lack of experience and knowledge of the situation, your personal demon's, all thrown into an attack for which you have no defense.

The best thing to do is to walk away from those situations, until you can rally the defenses to properly defend yourself and your IP.

Mistakes are the only thing you can make without proper defense.