Witcher Creator Demands $16 Million from CD Projekt

His "OH SHIT!" moment after the games made tons upon tons of money. Now he wishes he didn't take that lump sum payment. It's like wishing I could put money in Apple and Microsoft stocks before they hit the big time. Don't we wish we knew what we know now in the past. Too bad for the creator. :(
 
Krenum said:
Didn't the original creator already take a lump sum of money during the development of the first one? I seem to recall that the original writer stating that he didn't think the series would be popular in video game format.

Sounds like Sellers remorse.
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He said "I was stupid enough to sell them rights to the whole bunch. They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, 'No, there will be no profit at all - give me all my money right now! The whole amount.' It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn't believe in their success. But who could foresee their success? I couldn't."
From: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-sapkowski-the-writer-who-created-the-witcher

Now he wants more. He screwed himself outta more money, but he's trying to get it now.
 
Dude wants all of the reward but wasn’t willing to take any of the risk. Screw him.
 
Sycraft said:
It really annoys me when creators do this shit. Oh you sold your thing and it ended up being worth more? Well too bad. That happens, you shouldn't be entitled to any more money. Particularly when you are talking about something like taking a lump sum vs royalties. If you take a lump sum, what you are saying is "I don't want to risk this not succeeding, so I want the money up front." Fair enough, but then if it does succeed you don't get to be complainy. You chose the safe option, the company took more financial risk by paying out more up front, that's how it goes. Same deal with other way around. If you are willing to do something for royalties/profits instead and share in the risk, you can get a greater reward. But it also means if the product fails, you get nothing. That's the risk you take.

What we see here is a "have your cake and eat it too" situation. The guy didn't think the game would be a success, so he wanted money up front. He wanted to get his cash and go, and then if the game did nothing, no skin of his back he'd already been paid. However now that it has become a huge success, something that has taken quite a while by the way (the first game made money but was not a huge success), he is having seller's remorse and feels like he should be entitled to more.
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Take Jack Nicholson for example.
Dude opted to take a $6 million salary for "Batman" instead of his usual $10-mil.
He got "points" (a percentage) on the back-end.
Nobody actually figured the movie was going to do blockbuster business. So they tossed him a bone.
Dude has made over $50 million from that one movie.
 
Chas said:
Take Jack Nicholson for example.
Dude opted to take a $6 million salary for "Batman" instead of his usual $10-mil.
He got "points" (a percentage) on the back-end.
Nobody actually figured the movie was going to do blockbuster business. So they tossed him a bone.
Dude has made over $50 million from that one movie.
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Yep there's plenty of people who've been willing to take a chance and made a good bit by having a stake in something that went big when people were skeptical. Another example would be The Book of Mormon. Broadway production companies didn't want to risk it, so the creators financed it themselves, along with some private investors. As such they have made way more than they normally would since they own all the rights. Did mean they had to put up their money though.

However for all those stories, there are tons you don't hear about people taking a chance on something and that chance not paying off. Happens all the time where something just doesn't succeed and the people who went in on it get a fraction of their money back, if anything. I have a friend who took equity in lieu of more pay a .com startup back in the day and it went bust so he ended up doing a lot of work for what came out to be a very low wage.

So long as a person went in eyes open, was ok with the deal, and the other party didn't try to screw them, I don't feel sympathy for anyone who took a risk that didn't pay off, or chose not to take one that did. That's how things go, and you don't get redos in life.

I don't know the whole story in this case, but it really, really sounds like he knew what was going on, CDPR didn't lie to him or try to pull a fast one. They offered him a cut, since they did not have a lot of money, he didn't want that he wanted pay for play which is 100% fine and he got it. Now he's just regretting it and rather than just taking it to heart and saying "Well, I fucked up there," he's getting greedy and thinking he's owed. I'm also not sure I buy the "They only bought the rights for one game." I have trouble believing a company would make a deal like that and if that were the case, why didn't he contact them right after they released the Witcher 2?
 
My guess is that Sapkowski has some grounds, since CDPR has already said they are working with his lawyers to come up with an amicable solution.

My hobby is working on classic cars. If you are knowledgeable about collectible values and you're trying to buy an item from a seller, and if that seller is pricing their item way too low and then asks you what you think the item is worth, you could be in trouble if you still buy the item for the seller's price. You can find yourself in civil court if you misrepresent your knowledge. I had to walk away from a very straight, running, rust free 1972 Dodge Demon that the owner wanted to sell for $1200. I backed off because the lady who was selling kept asking (repeatedly) what I really thought it was worth. (It was really sad, because it had the Hurst transmission with a console and buckets, a 340, and the demon decal. Rarest of all, it was FACTORY BLACK with a flat black hood, which you never see. I cried for days, she eventually sold it for $8,000.) This is one of the reasons The Pawn Stars have the format they have - seller brings an item in, Pawn Stars asks what amount of money the seller wants, Pawn Stars brings in an expert to give an opinion on the retail price, and then The Pawn Stars spit in the seller's face and offer the seller almost nothing for it.

Suing the buyer for false representation of value is rare, but suing the seller is very common. If a seller offers any opinion or guarantee that an item is worth a certain value when they know (or should know) that that claim is false, and the buyer later finds out his purchase was grossly overvalued, it is common for the buyer to sue.

In the late 90's The Witcher had already been optioned for a video game by a different Polish software developer, but that company couldn't complete the project (I've read that Sapkowski even lost money trying to get his IP back since creditors wanted to sell the IP to recoup their loss.) Give credit to Sapkowski for being nationalistic, because CDPR was another Polish software company (and not a very big one at the time), and wasn't the only software company or necessarily the best software developer interested in The Witcher video game rights. You can't blame Sapowski for wanting money up front the second time around, but regardless, if at any time during the negotiations CDPR said, "We can't offer you any more money than (this amount) because we have projected sales of (this amount), and after development and marketing costs if we don't hit that sales figure we'll be out of business." Sapkowski, who doesn't play computer games and doesn't even use a computer, can certainly argue that CDPR is a better expert on the video game market than he is. In court he can say that his selling price was negotiated on CDPR's estimate of game sales, and that CDPR drastically misrepresented or underestimated the market potential.

I'm sure CDPR's contract is legitimate, but with the amount of profit involved from all three Witcher games it wouldn't surprise me that CDPR and Sapkowski are going to work out a deal to spread the love around.
 
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just give him US10m as a good faith payment for PR points.

Ask him to dedicate at least 10 hours of positive media spin appearance for that too.
Heck, go ask him promote the card games for a year or something.

US 16 m is quite small in the overall context of things.
 
I hope this author knows what he is doing because his reputation is pretty much ruined now. The videogames made his books popular outside of Poland and now those new fans will most likely turn against him. How many Witcher books he thinks he can sell after this fiasco?
 
DrezKill said:
He said "I was stupid enough to sell them rights to the whole bunch. They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, 'No, there will be no profit at all - give me all my money right now! The whole amount.' It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn't believe in their success. But who could foresee their success? I couldn't."
From: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-sapkowski-the-writer-who-created-the-witcher

Now he wants more. He screwed himself outta more money, but he's trying to get it now.
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This is pretty incriminating evidence against his claims that he sold Witcher rights for only one game and not several. He MAY get some extra money thanks to the Polish law that prevents small authors getting cheated by big companies (god knows the developer of Tetris could have used such law) but he is clearly lying about the actual contract and he knows it. Hell if this is not the case then he should have made some noise the moment Witcher 2 was a big success, so big that a copy of the game was gifted to Obama by their governement!
 
Hell, this is so amateur. They bought the rights from him, and he was the one who refused to get a cut from the profits. Now that it is successful, he sues them? He should sue himself for being stupid. There is no legal ground here, this is clearly a bullying tactic, he just hopes they'd rather settle than go to court with him.

Even if he gets the money his name is forever tainted as 'that guy'.
 
Hell forget about his rep being ruined over this, he already did that when he did nothing about Netflix destroying his work. All about dat money ho.
 
M76 said:
Hell, this is so amateur. They bought the rights from him, and he was the one who refused to get a cut from the profits. Now that it is successful, he sues them? He should sue himself for being stupid. There is no legal ground here, this is clearly a bullying tactic, he just hopes they'd rather settle than go to court with him.

Even if he gets the money his name is forever tainted as 'that guy'.
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This is Poland, not USA. There is a law that is meant to prevent big companies from cheating/screwing over small authors, buying rights for noticeably cheaper than they are truly worth. Andrew is basing his accusations on that. I'm not saying he is right (faaar from it. Screw that guy!), just saying it the matter is not a "deal is a deal" clear cut.
 
ryamkajr said:
Apparently Polish law does allow for this to occur.

Interested to see how this pans out - whether within Polish law or if it goes up to something in the EU.
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I'm not so sure it isn't that the contract wasn't comprehensive enough. Only recently has there been a TV series for which I'm sure some coin was involved. And now the guy sues. I think the intent was for him to sell off all his rights for a lump, but if hte contract only called out video games and books and didn't mention Television. Blame CDPR's lawyers, too.
 
lcpiper said:
While my initial reaction is to tell him to "Fuck Off", I think there is a case from CD Projekt Red's perspective to entertain a deal.

I would entertain offering him a small sum, and an additional % contingent on producing another story line for a new IP line.

"Here's a small carrot and a heartfelt thank you, but if you want a long term compensation package you will have to put up again" And since it is in his very best long term interest, perhaps he would be properly motivated to follow through.
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Nah the guy hates videogames and has been public about not liking the Witcher games nor attributing any kind of trickledown success. https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/the-witcher-games-andrzej-sapkowski-profits
 
I guess I should start making calls and try and get that "bitcoin money" I didn't believe in.
 
MaZa said:
This is Poland, not USA. There is a law that is meant to prevent big companies from cheating/screwing over small authors, buying rights for noticeably cheaper than they are truly worth. Andrew is basing his accusations on that. I'm not saying he is right (faaar from it. Screw that guy!), just saying it the matter is not a "deal is a deal" clear cut.
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Yeah, there is a difference between screwing someone out of royalties or he outright refusing that deal, and trying to sue when realizing that mistake. I don't know anything about polish law but I doubt this is what they had in mind when they passed it .
 
I just learned a lesson.
If I ever create something that someone want to buy and use, I will ask for both a lump sum and a percentage.
 
M76 said:
Yeah, there is a difference between screwing someone out of royalties or he outright refusing that deal, and trying to sue when realizing that mistake. I don't know anything about polish law but I doubt this is what they had in mind when they passed it .
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Isn't that true with most of the laws? The original meaning and spirit of the law is gloriously ignored and they get twisted to suit peoples (usually rich and higher ups) needs, just because the wording just happens to allow it. :p
 
MaZa said:
This is Poland, not USA. There is a law that is meant to prevent big companies from cheating/screwing over small authors, buying rights for noticeably cheaper than they are truly worth. Andrew is basing his accusations on that. I'm not saying he is right (faaar from it. Screw that guy!), just saying it the matter is not a "deal is a deal" clear cut.
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CDPR was not a big company when the deal was made...
They offered % and he refused, demanded up front payment.

I don't think he has any grounds whatsoever for the suit.
 
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MaZa said:
Isn't that true with most of the laws? The original meaning and spirit of the law is gloriously ignored and they get twisted to suit peoples (usually rich and higher ups) needs, just because the wording just happens to allow it. :p
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The only way this case ever goes to trial if they can somehow convince a judge that their original deal only pertains to the first game. But we'd have to see the actual deal to know whether that has merit. And since it is likely written in polish...we'll never know.
 
Malurt said:
Nah the guy hates videogames and has been public about not liking the Witcher games nor attributing any kind of trickledown success. https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/the-witcher-games-andrzej-sapkowski-profits
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And how does that change anything I have said ?

If you don't think the guy is good for it fine. Just what does CDPR loose by giving him a shot? A $100 or so? If the guy goes go ahead and go to court what would that cost them even if they should win? Granted they already pay their lawyers most likely anyway. But I'm talking chicken feed, the guy has to know he has a small chance of getting anything. Compare that with what they have to gain?

Anyway, you wouldn't do it, I'd at least consider it, such is life.
 
GoodBoy said:
CDPR was not a big company when the deal was made...
They offered % and he refused, demanded up front payment.

I don't think he has any grounds whatsoever for the suit.
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I know and I agree.
 
CDPR says no.

https://www.neowin.net/news/cd-proj...author-for-161-million-in-additional-royalty/

In the Company’s opinion, the demands expressed in the notice are groundless with regard to their merit as well as the stipulated amount. The Company had legitimately and legally acquired copyright to Mr. Andrzej Sapkowski’s work, i.a, insofar as is required for its use in games developed by the Company. All liabilities payable by the Company in association therewith have been properly discharged.
 
lcpiper said:
I think you are missing my point. I said I agree that he made his deal already and CD Projekt Red owes him nothing. But at the same time, this guy produced worthwhile IP for them and it's not impossible that he could do so again. It's only good business to promote your IP providers so do some more good business, give the man a little carrot with an agreement for more of what he really wants, a % if he'll produce more good IP for them. It's called looking to the future and doing business. This guy could potentially bring in some terrific IP so encourage him, don't just tell him to fuck off even if you have every right to. You want him to take his next IP to someone else? Your competition?
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The only reason CD Projekt Red would give him more money is because they want to buy the rights entirely. Apparently they had been in talks with the author for a while and now the guy (and lis lawyer) are hinting that if CD doesn't give him money now he won't sell the the rights later. Essentially blackmailing them.
 
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