CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises are no stranger to collaborations and crossover with other games. At BlizzCon, we learned that a Geralt-inspired Barbarian skin is coming to Diablo 4 and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners outfits are headed to Overwatch next year. The collaborations don’t go the other way, though. The Witcher 3 Remastered, for example, doesn’t include any Diablo-inspired outfits for Geralt when you buy it on Battle.net.
I asked CD Projekt Red why this was the case at BlizzCon earlier this month. Level design lead Miles Tost explained that the lack of crossover or collaboration content in CD Projekt Red’s own games comes down to the studio wanting content parity across all platforms. CD Projekt Red is open to changing that approach in the future, though.
Why CD Projekt Red doesn’t put collaboration content in its own games
When asked directly whether CD Projekt Red had considered putting Diablo-themed content in The Witcher games, Tost admitted that “we haven’t really thought about this yet.” He added that CD Projekt Red has historically preferred physical goodies as platform-exclusive bonuses rather than any sort of exclusive content.
“One thing we really value is to not have content that is purely exclusive depending on where you buy,” he said. “Usually, when we need to do something exclusive for [partners], what we’ve done in the past are things like an exclusive physical hoodie. I can recall we did this for Xbox. Xbox pre-orders for The Witcher 3 got an exclusive set of cards. For us, it’s really important to preserve that, if you buy the game and play it, you always get the full version of it.”
CD Projekt Red is fine with a Geralt skin in Diablo 4 being platform exclusive, but it wouldn’t want to lock any Diablo-themed content to a single storefront where The Witcher 3 Remastered is available. Tost’s statement about physical bonuses also lines up with what the company’s CEO previously said about The Witcher 4’s physical release in a disc-less 2028.
For now, we should only be expecting The Witcher and Cyberpunk to keep popping up in games like Diablo 4, Fortnite, and Overwatch, not the other way around. Tost didn’t completely kill the idea, saying CD Projekt Red is “always sort of open-minded with figuring out cool ways to collaborate” and could change its mind in the future.
“It’s not that we are of a mindset where we’ll do one thing and then never do another,” Tost concluded. “Honestly, we’ll listen to what feedback we’ll get from these [BlizzCon announcements], how the responses are, and then we’ll see about this with an open mind.”