Off-topic, but relevant to a lot of you (Gaming)
by Claude Errera 
, Saturday, March 25, 2017, 13:33 (2810 days ago)
The dude who wrote the stories the Witcher games were based on refused a percentage of the games' profits, because he didn't believe they'd make any. He demanded a lump-sum payment up front instead.
Now he's a little annoyed. :)
Always bet on Black... Unless you bet on CD Projekt Red...
by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Saturday, March 25, 2017, 13:53 (2810 days ago) @ Claude Errera
The dude who wrote the stories the Witcher games were based on refused a percentage of the games' profits, because he didn't believe they'd make any. He demanded a lump-sum payment up front instead.
Now he's a little annoyed. :)
That would make him the anti-George Lucas in terms of business deals. It's a bummer, but it goes to show you the difference in long-term investment vs. instant gratification.
Like he said though, the success wasn't very foreseeable. CD Projekt hadn't made anything worthwhile up to that point (pretty much just some game localizations), and the rights had already been sold to a mobile developer who simply sat on them.
The odds of a small developer crafting a hit half as successful as the Witcher series ended up being were slim.
No word on how much he sold the rights for other than "the bag of money" (which in Polish currency couldn't have been a whole lot)... But when you consider that Witcher 3 alone has shipped more than 10 million copies (with a direct profit of nearly $100 million for CD Projekt), it's easy to see why he's awful bitter...
Ah, the dreaded "reverse Alec Guinness" deal
by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, March 25, 2017, 18:00 (2810 days ago) @ Claude Errera
The dude who wrote the stories the Witcher games were based on refused a percentage of the games' profits, because he didn't believe they'd make any. He demanded a lump-sum payment up front instead.
Now he's a little annoyed. :)
As many of you may already know, Alec Guinness was just about the only person involved with the original Star Wars movie who thought it would be a huge success. He was the only actor in the film that negotiated for a salary based on a percentage of the film's earnings. All the other actors were paid a (low) flat rate.
The author of the Witcher did the exact same thing, only backwards XD
Off-topic, but relevant to a lot of you
by cheapLEY , Saturday, March 25, 2017, 19:20 (2809 days ago) @ Claude Errera
He's also very apathetic about the games. He doesn't know anything about them, he doesn't care about the story they tell. As far as I can tell, he sees video games as a useless medium and sees the Witcher games as not worthy of his attention. I wonder if a little bit of bitterness plays a part in that. I'd also b curious to know how much the Witcher games boosted sales of his books. I'm sure it did, but I wonder if it was significant at all.
I bet it has. I also bet he doesn't need it.
by Funkmon , Saturday, March 25, 2017, 20:00 (2809 days ago) @ cheapLEY
He has a huge book series, a board game, comics, a TV series and a movie, plus the new movie which is coming out.
Also, the books were essentially unavailable to Western European languages until the games started coming out, now you can find them in tons of languages. Furthermore, with the increasing expansion of localizations of the books, we can infer that as long as the publisher doesn't have a death wish, the series is profitable in most markets; markets it wouldn't have been in without the game, probably.
Off-topic, but relevant to a lot of you
by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Saturday, March 25, 2017, 20:36 (2809 days ago) @ Claude Errera
The dude who wrote the stories the Witcher games were based on refused a percentage of the games' profits,
Yeah but was it net profit or gross profits? A percentage of net is a percentage of nothing.
Smaller share of game revenue might have been worth as much
by narcogen 
, Andover, Massachusetts, Sunday, March 26, 2017, 06:10 (2809 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by narcogen, Sunday, March 26, 2017, 06:21
The dude who wrote the stories the Witcher games were based on refused a percentage of the games' profits,
Yeah but was it net profit or gross profits? A percentage of net is a percentage of nothing.
Games also retail for $60 (less on PC in various markets).
Trade paperbacks go for what, $6-7?
I've honestly no idea if gaming is as bad as Hollywood in terms of making even the most obviously profitable properties look like failures, at least on the level where you involve all your external funding, but even a tiny slice of the Witcher games right now I bet is worth more than what he gets off his novels.
The game series has topped 20M in sales now. Up until the popularity of the games, the books were largely restricted to his home market and extensions of it-- Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia etc. It's very likely that even all the novels together didn't sell 20M copies; the population of Poland itself is only a tad under 40M.
Even if every man, woman and child in Poland bought one of his books each, that's 40M sales x $7 a sale for a total revenue figure of $280M. Industry author royalty rates range from 8% - 15% for paperback and hardcover. Let's assume Sapkowski is a big enough deal in Poland that he gets the maximum-- so that means 42M for him. Not too shabby! However, it's probably an overestimation, as that would put the series in the same worldwide sales category as To Kill A Mockingbird.
Then again, 20M copies of Witcher games at an average price of, say, $40, would be $600M. He sees none of that. So it's possible the stake he was offered in the game is at least as valuable, and possibly more valuable, as his stake in the novels.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/03/24/the-witcher-book-author-doesnt-profit-from-the-games
https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/49iows/how_many_books_did_the_witcher_games_help_to_sell/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#Between_30_million_and_50_million_copies
https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/the-wages-of-writing/
http://www.slj.com/2016/03/research/sljs-average-book-prices-for-2016/