BioWare opened its own digital storefront back in the early 2000s, and the legendary RPG studio had even briefly considered selling third-party games on that store - including The Witcher.
That insight comes from a 2018 interview with former BioWare product manager Rob Bartel in the Wild Surge fanzine, with a telling quote recently highlighted by Jeremy Peel on Twitter. "Digital downloads, online stores, and post-release content are everywhere now," Bartel said, "but, in hindsight, we missed our big opportunity to be Steam - we beat Valve to market and CD Projekt approached us about selling The Witcher through the BioWare store, as did others, but we turned them all down, fearing that it would somehow dilute the BioWare brand. We’re kicking ourselves about it now."
