Computer RPG Games

But also, the game is very much its own thing now and he’s maybe feeling left out and maybe a bit salty about that. And who could really blame him? I’d guess he just wants to be more involved with the more accessible media telling the story of characters and a world he created. Barring anything too weird, I’m kinda with the writer here.

I doubt that. Sapkowski has been pretty public about his disdain for games and has said games are a poor medium for telling stories. He also considers what CDPR has done with the Witcher as fanfic and not in any way canon. The last thing he wants is to be more involved with what CDPR is doing.

CDPR offered him a percentage of all sales. He told them to get bent, because they won’t make anything worthwhile anyway and demanded a flat fee of IIRC 10k instead. When Witcher games became a huge success he sued for more.

what was CDPR before The Witcher

The largest game publisher in Poland that made it's name by hiring top billing Polish actors to voice characters in e.g. polish release of Baldurs Gate.

A small studio was able to afford the rights because the rights were underpriced, not because the price was set so that a small studio could afford them. When selling exclusive adaptation rights, there's a single price for one IP, not a different price for each potential buyer. You sell to whoever is willing to pay the most. If you give someone smaller a discount, you can't later sell things on to a bigger buyer for more money, but the party you sold to could.

Also, it's not clear-cut that the rights were massively underpriced as no one else was trying to buy them. CDPR were willing to pay more if that had been the asking price, but they were the only ones biting anyway. The one thing in favour of the price being too low is that the author thought that video games were a fad that was about to pass, so there was no need to ask for royalties or withhold the rights to make sequels as the game was never going to make money anyway.