Yesterday, Polish game site Polygamia reported that development of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf has been put on hold. Widescreen Games, the French developer behind the PS3 and Xbox 360 port of The Witcher, spoke to GamesIndustry.biz and gave his reasons for the project's suspension.

"Basically, after a few months of not being paid, we stopped," said Masclef speaking to GI.biz. "We've not been paid for a few months and we had a very nasty broken payment. We had no choice but to put the product on hold. We've not been able to find a solution."

Masclef went on to say that Widescreen was not properly informed about milestone dates for The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf. "It's unfortunate because we have very nice technology, we're replicated all the features of The Witcher," he noted. "Atari has validated the product and seen that our tech is working. And we've heard that the distributors have been committing a very high volume for the title, and it was extremely promising. It's a very silly situation. I can't disclose the budget, but it would be a profitable title if it hit the shelves. But at this stage it will not."

Another frustrating consequence of this, says Mesclef, is that this situation has damaged Widescreen's ties with Namco Bandai, which was going to act as a distributor of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf. "I really don't like the situation because we've also had a good relationship with Namco Bandai, and it's a huge chunk of their portfolio," added Mesclef. "Historically we've always had extremely good relationship, we really respect them and we've worked with them in the past, they have a lot of time for developers. I feel sorry for them because they've not going to have this title."

Michal Kicinski, CD Projekt CEO, came out quickly to deny Mesclef claims. In an interview partially translated at Polygamia, Kicinski threw the onus of the situation back at Widescreen. "Because of the delays with handing over milestones and because of their quality deficiencies we had to stop the cooperation with WSG," said Kicinski. "There were new milestone plans made, but they were quickly becoming useless in face of more delays. Moreover, new technical risks appeared. In that case, after a few attempts to heal the project (also by increasing the support given by CDProjekt RED main team) we finally had to terminate the cooperation with WSG. It was tremendously difficult decision, because we put a lot of effort, time and energy into this project. But it was necessary, because it is our priority to mind the highest quality of production."

"WSG behaves in a way that is far from our business ethics," continued Kicinski. "We paid for all the milestones on time, just after they had been accepted. Of course, it was later than planned, because the milestones were presented for acceptance with delays and they were inconsistent with the specification. We put an enormous effort to make sure the production goes the right way, and still the plans were becoming invalid, and there were new delays? After a few such incidents, we sent a large team over to Lyon. The group consisted not only of people involved in the project, but also of technology managers from RED and Metropolis. They spent one whole week to examine thoroughly the whole project and its technology. As a result, we found out that WSG's promises had no grounds in reality and that the game's premiere date and quality cannot be guaranteed. So, after a long discussion, we decided to suspend the cooperation with WSG, because we understood there is too much risk in it. And actually we haven't paid for the last milestone, but only because it wasn't complete and we have already started the termination of the contract."