The Witcher: Enhanced Director’s Cut is now free to play via GOG Galaxy

Given yesterday’s news that The Witcher is getting a remake, it was built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, so the original is now permanently free on GOG Galaxy.

The Witcher is 13 years old, and it’s definitely more worthy of a remake than other games that have received them recently (Look at You, Horizon Forbidden City). It’s also not the first time the game has been free to play, but this time, it will be free forever.

If you haven’t played the game yet, or just want to revisit it before more news about the remake comes out, now’s your chance to do it without spending a cent. However, fans on the GOG forums were not happy about it anyway.

Free games? How can people be unhappy? Well, the problem is GOG Galaxy. Rather than being one of the many other games you can simply buy and install through GOG’s website, you actually have to install GOG’s Galaxy client to install The Witcher. To many, this was seen as “another example of GOG aggressively pushing people to install their crappy non-portable proprietary ‘optional’ spyware DRM client.”

Having said that, some users did notice that complaining about GOG Galaxy was “dumb” in their opinion, and people should be happy that they can get the game for free. Another user also pointed out that while the Galaxy client is required to add games to your account, you can actually uninstall Galaxy and install The Witcher.

That said, if you do want to install The Witcher, you need to install and open the GOG Galaxy client. You’ll then find The Witcher under “Discover” where you can claim it. From here, go to your game library and install it. Or you can uninstall GOG Galaxy and claim it from the website, your choice!

What do you think of the GOG Galaxy debate? On that note, would you choose The Witcher, or are you one of the many who already have it for free or for sale at other times?