Support for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is coming to an end

Support for CD Projekt Red’s Gwent: The Witcher Card Game will wind down and conclude at the end of 2023, the studio announced on Sunday.

From 2024 on, a small CDPR team will support the game at a maintenance level, while the Gwent community will be given tools to continue balancing and playing the game. The 72 cards coming in three expansions in 2023 will be the last new cards added to the game.

“We are planning to close the card pool with every idea that we wanted to add, every mechanic that we want to see, pretty much everything that we would like to see in Gwent,” game director Vladimir Tortsov told fans in a 2023 roadmap video posted Sunday.

That means the end of rotating cards in and out of use in the game. “With this fixed number of cards available within Gwent, we will do our best to make sure that it’s in a good state,” Tortsov added.

The community tools that will help manage the game from 2024 on are called “Project Gwentfinity.” That involves a seasonal progression system, as well rebalancing changes made by community vote. (CD Projekt Red said there will be restrictions and other safeguards to prevent any game-breaking distortions of Gwent.)

“We have a very unconventional solution here, but at the same time I’m a very big believer this is the right way to move forward,” Tortsov said. “We want to give you, the Gwent community, the right tools and opportunities to drive the balance changes of the game, going forward.”

The tools will be used and managed in-game (as opposed to in another application, or through a website). “When it comes strictly to the balancing tools, the main balancing tools, that’s something we believe is feasible,” Tortsov said, “and will ensure that players can interact with the game, not just by playing it, but also deciding which direction it should go balance-wise, what are the problematic cards that need to be nerfed, which cards should be buffed, and things like that.”

Gwent launched in an open beta in May 2017, and an official release followed for Windows PC in October 2018. The free-to-play card-collecting game launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One the following December, although support for those versions shut down in 2019.

A spinoff of the in-world card game playable in 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Gwent itself spawned another stand-alone title, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, which is effectively Gwent’s single-player campaign. The game also saw a roguelike deck-building expansion, called Rogue Mage, back in July.