In June 2021, we reported on a huge leak regarding The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. As we claimed back then, the source codes of these two games were leaked online. However, there was a catch to this. Apparently, the source code archives were password protected, meaning that most who got their hands on them could not unpack them. Until now.
While I won’t be sharing any links to the place where you can find the passwords for the archives, we can confirm that these work. The passwords that were shared were for The Witcher 3 (both the original and the next-gen versions), Gwent and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales.
CDPR will be releasing the REDkit Modding Tools for The Witcher 3 in 2024 on PC. So, while this leak is an unfortunate turn of events, it’s not particularly exciting for most PC gamers. After all, with the REDkit tools, you will be able to create everything you can think of for TW3. From DLC-sized expansions to even total conversions, modders will be able to fully express their creativity.
This leak will most likely be useful for those who want to learn how CDPR has managed to create this game. The source code will expose every trick the team used. So, for your average modder, this won’t be particularly useful.
In short, I don’t expect anything noteworthy to happen. Don’t believe me? Well, have you seen anything regarding GTA5? Or how about the first Far Cry game? Their source codes were leaked on the Internet a while ago and we haven’t seen any ground-breaking mod for them. Hell, we haven’t even seen anyone implementing Ray Tracing effects on them. Or how about the arcade version of Mortal Kombat 2? Oh, and let’s also not forget Watch Dogs: Legion.
Basically, this is a nothing-burger for most of us. My guess is that those who will benefit from this leak are small game developers. By getting access to the code, they will see how CDPR has managed to create the game’s scripts, AI and renderer. Of course, they won’t be able to use them in their games. However, they can give them an insight into how things were done in this particular game.
Before closing, I suggest taking a look at some mods for The Witcher 3 Next-Gen. You can download a really cool first-person mod. Furthermore, the Characters Reworked Project improves the quality of over 100 characters. Yesterday, we shared a must-have gameplay overhaul mod. Let’s also not forget this mod that lets you kill most in-game NPCs. In December 2023, we shared this mod that restores content that was cut from all previous The Witcher games. Then we have the Witcher 3 Next-Gen Combat Redux Mod. Earlier this month, we shared a mod that attempted to remove the fake “hero” light from the game’s cut-scenes.
We also have some mods for those playing with Ray Tracing. The RTX Mirrors Mod adds proper reflections to the game’s mirrors. Then we have this mod that improves the fire effects via Ray Tracing Global Illumination. And finally, this mod fixes the Ray Tracing bleach issues.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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John, does the leak contain the full source-code for CDPR’s REDengine as well?
IMHO, it’s a real shame they abandoned it in favor of UE5, which right now has way worse multi-threading capabilites than the REDengine.
In fact, one of the reasons why Windows’ synchronization model is getting properly implemented inside the Linux kernel (called NTsync) is precisely to benefit highly multi-threaded Windows applications & games such as CyberPunk 2077 for running more efficiently on Valve’s SteamOS (among others).
The results are quite promising indeed:
Old Fsync method https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8314660d052d45e6150cc9c2bacc842b16d51248379d31269be221dba5d6e238.png
New NTsync method https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c896777aa6a9097e37c8f5c4af1bc29390388efe8209dd0cd275c511b354b303.png
The pieces for the gaming on Linux puzzle are all starting to fall into their proper places, finally…
Unreal Engine 5 manages multi-threading effectively, however, it is often the developers lack of knowledge that hinders its capabilities, as with many other features of Unreal Engine 5.
Indie developers have been seen to utilize Unreal Engine 5 more proficiently so far, than AAA developers.
Asserting that an in-house engine is superior to a third-party engine is considered short-sighted, CD Projekt was intimately familiar with their own engine.
Could you please name an indie UE5 title which is highly multi-threaded?
Also, if CDPR was intimately familiar with their own REDengine, then why on earth abandon it for UE5?
Core red engine devs left studio and also most in house engine are not documented well making development nightmares for new hires and current CDPR is full of newbies .
Because they understand it’s shortcomings better than anyone else.
https://github.com/natsu-anon/AsyncDemo
Developing in-house engines entails extensive training and maintenance, often leading developers to dedicate more time to the engine rather than the games themselves.
Because RedEngine had to be kludged to work with DX12 and really needed a full from the ground up rewrite of the code. With most of the people that developed RedEngine having moved on it just was too much of an undertaking.
Ubisoft has basically the exact same problem with the Assassin’s Creed AnvilNext game engine which is why Valhalla ran so poorly and crashed a lot. All the original developers of AnvilNext had moved on years ago.
Making a DX11 Game Engine work with DX12 is a fool’s errand
One of the best tutorials for multi-threading in UE5 is not found in the UE5 documentation or the DirectX 12 documentation but in the documentation for Vulkan
John they did do something with GTA v source code leak
They ran it on the switch