Namco Bandai Wins The Witcher 2 Publishing Suit Against CD Projekt RED

You’ll recall that CD Projekt RED inked a publishing deal with Namco Bandai for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, then later signed an agreement with THQ to distribute the game in selected regions, which consequently resulted in a lawsuit and the withholding of $1.75 million in payments. Well, according to this report on Gamasutra that quotes Polish newspaper Parquet, Namco Bandai has won the lawsuit, which effectively means that THQ is out of the picture:

According to Polish newspaper Parquet, a court in Lyon has now ruled in favor of Namco Bandai, and ordered Projekt Red to hand the European distribution rights back to the company.

This ruling does not affect the North American distribution rights for the game, hence Warner Bros. Publishing will still bring the game to North America early next year.

Marcin Iwinski, a board member at CD Projekt Red, said of the decision, “We are not satisfied with the verdict… the most important thing for us, however, is ending the dispute.”

He continued, “Now we can focus on refining the game, which is in the final phase of testing.” The console version of The Witcher 2 was delayed in August as a result of the legal battle.

I wonder if the payments are still being withheld, and if they had to pay a settlement of any kind for the DRM removal. Can anyone extract more information out of the original report?

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