BioWare may be gone, but the legendary studio's legacy lives on through the countless developers who loved its RPGs. But in the case of CD Projekt Red, it's more than an abstract influence. As the first Witcher game celebrates its 19th birthday, CDPR is keen to remind fans that it wouldn't have been possible without BioWare's direct support.
"19 years ago, an ambitious dream to bring an iconic book series into the world of video games came to life with the release of The Witcher. It was the start of an unforgettable path, which wouldn't have been possible without our friends at BioWare," CD Projekt Red says in a Bluesky post.
"From lending us their Aurora Engine and sharing their knowledge, to giving us a spot at their booth at E3, their support helped turn our vision into Geralt’s first interactive adventure."
The makers of The Witcher have extensively credited BioWare's support in the past. CD Projekt started life as a distributor of PC games in Poland, which was once completely dominated by piracy. "Software is free, hardware is what you pay for," as CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński recalled in a 2017 interview with NoClip.
But CD Projekt began to find success by creating Polish localizations of games from around the world at a level of quality the pirates couldn't compete with. One of the company's early coups was a publishing deal for the original Baldur's Gate, the 1998 classic that had put BioWare on the map. It was a frightening deal for CD Projekt, since the company had to assume all the risk on an initial order of 3,000 units.
"Before we signed the deal, we were shitting our pants with [co-founder] Michal [Kiciński] that these 3,000 units can bankrupt us," Iwiński explained. "Because if we fail, you know, we're done. We're never seeing a lot of money in it, and maybe we'll not sell 3,000, or 1,000."
But thanks to CD Projekt's lavish treatment of Baldur's Gate, which included professional Polish voice acting, a deluxe collector's box, and a deal with a local publisher's version of Dungeons & Dragons, the company created a hit. 18,000 units had been ordered before the game even hit the market, and the game had sold 50,000 units "within the first year."
After building a successful publishing business, CD Projekt decided to expand into developing its own, original games. You probably know where this is going: the company secured the license for a series of fantasy stories legendary among Polish readers, and got to work on The Witcher.
Amid a scramble to secure a publisher for The Witcher, the company founded a development-focused subsidiary in CD Projekt Red. (Now, of course, the entire company is known as CD Projekt Red.) The studio would end up approaching BioWare to license the Aurora Engine which had been used to create Neverwinter Nights.
A year later, CD Projekt Red flew to Edmonton to show the Aurora-powered Witcher to the heads of BioWare. The studio's half-broken demo "magically" worked during this demonstration, and managed to impress. "You talk to the RPG gods, and they will rule on your demo if it's good or not. Imagine the amount of stress," Iwiński said.
In fact, BioWare liked that original version of The Witcher so much that the studio invited CD Projekt Red to show the game at a shared E3 booth. A tiny studio which few outside of Poland had even heard of would share space with a glitzy demonstration of BioWare's presumed next big hit: Jade Empire.
Ultimately, The Witcher would cast a much longer shadow than Jade Empire, but both BioWare and CD Projekt Red would find mainstream, mass market success with the likes of Mass Effect and The Witcher 3, respectively. The history of both companies are directly intertwined, and there's an alternate timeline where CD Projekt Red might've assisted BioWare in taking on Steam. Oh, what might have been.
