As a sister company of popular DRM-free digital games retailer GOG.com, The Witcher developer CD Projekt RED has also been a passionate advocate of distributing games without the need for customer-inconvenient copy-protections, and is continuing to lead by example with the upcoming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The original Witcher, and The Witcher 2 have long been available sans-DRM on GOG.com, and with The Witcher 3, that liberation is now being extended to boxed retail versions of the PC game (recently announced as being distributed by Namco Bandai Games in Europe and Australia).

A new blog post from CD Projekt Joint CEO Marcin Iwinski explains that for the PC version of the game, only those electing to use DRM-protected platforms such as Steam will be restricted by any manner of digital rights management (console platforms still obviously being restricted by the requirements of their platform holders):

I’d like to say it loud and clear: The PC version of The Witcher 3 will have absolutely no DRM from day 0. Zero. Zip. Nada. It doesn’t matter if you choose to buy it on GOG.com and support us directly or buy the game in box format, you’ll still get the 100% DRM-free experience. And this goes for the whole world.

We’ve fiddled with DRM in the past (Oh boy! How young and naïve we were;)) and that’s enough. Lesson learned.

Having said that, I’d like to thank you for your continuous support. You’ve bought six million copies of the Witcher games so far. Whoo-hoo! Let’s celebrate. Here, have some cake!

It’ll be on Steam; the team isn’t going to exclude that community by any means. Gamers have a choice in where they buy their games, but where CDPR does have control — like GOG.com — there will be absolutely no DRM.

Keep fighting the good fight friends.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due in 2014 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.