The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has just turned 10, and CD Projekt Red announced earlier this week that it would be celebrating the game's 10th anniversary with a set of Special Edition Xbox controllers and a slew of live events and memorabilia. Following those announcements, CD Projekt Red has confirmed that it has at least one more content update planned for The Witcher 3. The next, and seemingly the last, The Witcher 3 patch is slated to more or less unify the game's modification scene, bringing cross-platform mod support to the open-world fantasy RPG. CDPR has not confirmed an exact date for the cross-platform mod support update, stating only that it will be available "later this year."

According to a new support page detailing the cross-platform mod support, modders will now be able to publish their mods for The Witcher 3 on a platform called mod.io, which will allow players and modders to upload and download mods across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. This will be the only way for consoles to access mods for The Witcher 3, however PC players will still be able to use services like Steam Workshop and Nexus Mods, if they prefer. Unlike with third-party sites, like Nexus Mods, any mods published on mod.io will need to comply with certain guidelines laid out by both the console makers, Sony and Microsoft, and the CD Projekt Red Fan Content Guidelines and User Agreement. For this reason, the mod selection available on consoles will be less expansive than what's available on PC, where restrictions are less of a concern. In a technical sense, the only restrictions modders will face when using mod.io is that any console mods that use scripts will need to be made with CDPR's REDkit mod tools. Meanwhile, texture packs and other bundles can be created using any other tools.

CD Projekt Red has to be the most renowned games developer in the world, due to its consumer-friendly policies and overall posture when it comes to creating and maintaining their game worlds. The company has always given gamers more than the average company, with free DLCs being delivered throughout the first year of support for a given title (looking at you, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt), and added goodies to packages that from most other companies usually only feature the plastic packaging around the game disk. Their GOG games platform is also one of the most well-established out there, and has helped build the company's image due to its DRM-free approach.

All of this, alongside the fact that The Witcher series has seen a resurgence with the release of the Netflix series, and expectations on their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 title, have led the company towards tremendous growth, with it now ranking as second largest European gaming company, second only to Ubisoft - and the difference is still tremendous. Ubisoft has around 16,000 employees (as of 2019), and is home to some of the world's most historic franchises, while CD Projekt Red counts more than 900 employees (as of 2018), with that number having certainly increasing in size in preparation for, and in continued development, of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.

Well, that's it, then: we now have yet another CD Projekt Red game to look forward to. It was always expected that this would be the case: that The Witcher didn't end with The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. It just couldn't; that game was much too close to a masterpiece, and too much of a commercial success, for that world not to be visited in other circumstances. In an interview with Bankier.pl, CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kiciński spoke about the possibility of a new Witcher game - outside the pretty clear-cut The Witcher trilogy arc we already know (and love).

"This does not mean, of course, that we will leave the world of The Witcher. The Witcher is one of two franchises on which to build the future activities of the company. Today, unfortunately, I can not reveal anything more."

Adam Kiciński, CD Projekt Red CEO

Gwent was a runaway success for CD Projekt Red. Embedded in The Witcher III - Wild Hunt, Gwent stands as an inception of sorts of a deep, strategical game within a deep, satisfying single player experience. And it was so successful, in fact, that the company decided to spin it off into a separate, standalone game that has been widely accepted as well.

The standalone Gwent differs from the version implemented in The Witcher III in a great many ways, as was to be expected for a competitive card game as opposed to the satisfying time killer it was in The Witcher III. And one thing lacking in the game was an alternate mode that allowed players to compete in other environments other than a Constructed format. Gwent's Seasons are typically a race to the top for the best prizes, but it can become a slog for players reaching the top ranks as deck diversity is reduced to a couple of high-power behemoths in the hand of extremely skilled players. As such, Gwent's Draft Mode introduction should not only give players another way of having fun on Gwent, but also give them ways of earning prizes near the end of the Season, allowing them to build up their decks even in the face of what would be insurmountable odds in the Constructed portion of Gwent.