CD Projekt Red have announced today that anybody who wns The Witcher 3, regardless of platform, can look forward to getting 16 pieces of free DLC.

In an open letter CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński took a mighty swing at current state of affairs where heaps of DLC is released just shortly after a game’s launch with hefty price-tags, tempting fans who have already spent money to spend even more.

“We love games,” he began. “We love collecting them, playing them, and everything connected to that experience. Every time we reach out for a new release, we expect to be taken care of. We expect support if we encounter any problems, we love updates constantly improving the experience, and we feel really special when we receive free content that gives us more than we initially paid for. It doesn’t have to be huge, it can be an awesome skin for a character or an extra sword, or armour.

“Unfortunately this treatment is quite rare these days. As gamers, we nowadays have to hold on tight to our wallets, as [un]surprisingly right after release, lots of tiny pieces of tempting content materialise with a steep price tag attached. Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game?

“At CD Projekt Red, we strongly believe this is not the way it should work and, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we have decided to do it differently,” he added.

“Cutting to the chase, everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform. You don’t have to pre-order, you don’t have to buy any special edition to get them – if you own a copy of Wild Hunt, they’re yours. This is our way of saying thank you for buying our game.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you treat your fans. The culture of announcing content that must be paid for a game before said game is even released has become horrendous over the past few years especially. Just this month Dragon Age: Inquisition will arrive and while the game looks great EA have already announced paid-for DLC.