Widescreen Games Halts Work On Console Witcher

While not exactly confirmation of yesterday’s cancellation rumor, French developer Widescreen Games has announced the suspension of development on The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf due to “financial problems”.

With CD Projekt Red mum on the rumors of the game’s cancellation, French development partner Widescreen games have issued a press release addressing the fate of Rise of the White Wolf. The company indicates that financial difficulties between the partners involved in the game’s creation have caused them to halt progress for the time being. Note that the following quote is a translation of the original French press release.

https://lastchance.cc/the-witcher-canceled-on-consoles-5231108%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

“The development of the game The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf was suspended for the duration of the resolution of financial problems between the various partners of the project. We regret this event particularly in regards to the fans who awaited this title impatiently. I hope that we will find a solution in good understanding with our recent and historical partners on this ambitious project,” explained Olivier Masclef, manager of the company Widescreen Games.

Update: The CD Projekt Group’s joint CEO Michal Kicinski responded to allegations brought on by Widescreen boss Olivier Masclef in an interview with VG247, in which he alleged that CD Projekt had missed several payments to the company for its work. The following response was posted in the comments section of VG247.

It is sad that we cannot talk with WSG in normal business way, but communicate through media. It is absolutely not our style of making business, and we answer here as we feel forced to do this to clarify the unclear information:

1. All payments were done on time according to milestone plan.

2. Truth is that payments were later than originally planned but this was solely due to delays in production. The delays were growing in the project due to WSG continued to miss the deadlines.

3. Delays and risks of further development by WSG were unacceptable by CD Projekt (this happened even though CDProjekt RED was constantly increasing main team involvement to help in the production). The most important fact is that development process didn’t make planned release date possible and moreover propositions of the new release date were changing few times. Besides the schedule, technical incapability created a risk of missing planned quality which is absolutely unacceptable. And this brought an end in our cooperation with WSG.

4. Currently the works are on hold. We are evaluating all possible options to continue the production.

Making this decision was extremely difficult and sad as we know that many people are waiting for this project. We do our best to find a way out of this situation. But final decision must guarantee high quality of the product, otherwise we won’t continue the production no matter what consequences it will bring. We are committed to the highest quality of all our games, and this is unnegotiable for us.

So no matter what the final decision or solution we will find, please be sure that it will be the best for the game quality, and satisfaction of gamers, which is the most important for us!

Michal Kicinski

Joint CEO

CD Projekt Group

So there it is, laid out in a very odd forum. There’s no telling who is in the right at this point. Here’s hoping that the differences can be settled and Rise of the White Wolf will one day rise again.

The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf ‘Frozen’ [Game Banshee]