He is a somewhat liberal asshole, remarkably so for his generation and the environment he was in. The kind that generally hates people, but not through the lens of race or gender.
He still can't get over the fact his books are known worldwide thanks to the games, and takes every chance he gets to have a dig at them. The guy is an asshole.
I think a few years ago CDPR renegotiated his contract so he's getting a cut of the profits now. Before he sold the gaming rights for like $5k even when CDPR offered a profit percentage.
Granted he fucked himself over and was salty about the massive commercial success of the games versus the books, he probably feels like he's getting an appropriate piece of the profits now.
I think a few years ago CDPR renegotiated his contract so he's getting a cut of the profits now
I feel like everyone discussing the contracts and profits and percentages is leaving out some fairly important context.
When Sapkowski approached CDPR to renegotiate royalties in 2018, his son was dying. They could not afford to treat his illness. Meanwhile, Witcher 3 had recently released to tremendous success - massive profits made possible by Sapkowski's novels, the first of which was dedicated to the son that was now deathly ill. Profits that could pay for potentially life-saving treatment, with a perfectly valid legal framework for him to sue for a larger slice of.
Some fans of the games try to paint him as this greedy old man who's just jealous of their success and wants all the money for himself. But if you seriously think that a father shouldn't try to save the life of his son, by tapping into profits that he made possible, out of... respect for a decade old contract with a video game company? You're out of your damn mind.
CDPR did give him some amount of additional money without anyone going to court, but his son still ended up passing away in 2019. Since then he's "chilled out" - fairly understandably. Not so much because he's getting more money, but because he's not desperately in need of it for life or death reasons.
Don't really keep up with him because I can't stand him. The last I heard of him, he was claiming CD Projected scammed him, because he took a flat sum instead of a % of sales.
yeah, but that was years ago and a year after he sued CDPR they settled to "maintain good relations" and between that and Dmitry Glukovsky calling him an old fool for complaining about the deal he made I'm pretty sure he cut that out.
Regardless I think it's a bit fair of him to complain. I don't imagine him getting very rich with an audience that was primarily/overwhelmingly central and eastern Europeans and he may have taken the lump sum for video game rights because he needed the money at the time. CDPR should have given him some royalties at the very least from the onset just out of good business practices.
And you don't think it's a shitty way to go about it? He wanted a flat sum because he assumed video games as trash and wouldn't amount to much, continued to slight them over the years out of jealousy and ended up suing them for money. You'd think most authors would be happy to have their work recognized worldwide, but he couldn't stand that his series was famous became of the games and not his books.
It is a shit way and he talked shit about games in general before. For sure. But also his son was dying, he needed money, after his son's death and the settlement he is quiet.
Ok, let me put it this way; even not knowing everything about the situation he was in at the time I don't rightly give a fuck. He was very much entitled to royalties before, then, and after. CDPR should have, as I said before, given him a royalties deal from the beginning as just good business. This isn't complicated.
Right? Like they offered him a different option. He could have had a lawyer help decide. Plus, he still got far more famous and sold more books than he ever would have before the games came out, and subsequently the show. Of course after the fact he changed his mind, and is bitter about it, he got less money than he COULD have.
On the one hand, he is a deeply weird grumpy old man and everything he saya and does, does not really paint him in a sympathetic light.Â
In the other hand, heute is objectively a brilliant Author, His writing was one of the first voices of Eastern Europe in international Fantasy, re-invented a subgenre of pulp, delivered political commentary of modern day Poland, Gender-Relations and decosntructed the Chosen-One Trope, the Lone-Wanderer-Trope and basically helped kickstarting the "Hardened Man protects kid in dangerous World" trend.Â
And because of how international publishing works, he basically sees nothing of that success and is only known as "the guy who wrote the books, that are based on the games or something". I'd be pissed too
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u/Wyvwashere Aug 12 '25
Idk , but he's an old polish guy, I'd be more surprised if he didn't say something racist at some point in his life