In 1993, Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski created a fantasy book series by the name of The Witcher with the release of “The Last Wish.” The series went on to spawn numerous other entries, and quickly became not only beloved by the Polish people, but eventually a popular global series.
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Years after the first book, Sapkowski famously sold the gaming rights to the series to polish developer CD Projekt Red for less than $10,000, thinking that the medium of video games was going nowhere, and thus games based off his series would produce nothing. But he was drastically wrong. Not only did CD Projekt Red grow The Witcher into one of the most popular video game franchises in the world, it brought the book series to a global audience, and helped usher in a TV adaptation by Netflix.
Suffice to say, Sapkowski regrets and isn’t happy about selling the gaming rights for so little, and has even made a recent — and likely fruitless — effort to get more money out of CD Projekt Red.
And then you have Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, the creator of the Metro 2033 series, which has spawned its own — albeit less popular — video game series, Metro. Unlike Sapkowski with The Witcher, the Metro series from 4A Games has been quite profitable for Glukhovsky, who clearly took a much different approach to dealing out the game rights.
That said, speaking to Russian outlet DTF, Glukhovksy revealed his opinion on Sapkowksi, and let’s just say, he doesn’t like him very much.
According to Ostrog and its translation, Glukhovsky revealed, that, as a gamer himself, he looks at Sapkowski as “an old fool.” The Russian author notes that his Polish counterpart “f**cked up,” and the reason he has filed a lawsuit against CD Projket Red is due to his “wife nagging him about it in the evenings.”
Glukhovksy kept on the matter, calling Sapkowski “an ungrateful schmuck,” and noting that without the success of the games, he would have never had the Netflix deal.
Glukhovksy continued:
“He is just an elderly man, he missed his chance, and well, what can you do? I feel sorry for the man.”
Glukhovsky concluded on the matter by noting that the Polish author shouldn’t be pursing the lawsuit, as it may harm the ongoing Netflix project, who, as he points out, isn’t very fond of legal issues.
