Witcher card game Gwent's final update has arrived, marking the end of its path

The development of Gwent, The Witcher series’ spin-off card game, has reached its conclusion, with a final update having given players the chance to take the reins going forwards.

Having begun life as a minigame in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that I, for one, dedicated far too much time to, Gwent got its own dedicated release back in 2018. Through a raft of changes and additions, including the story-focused expansion Thronebreaker and a rogue-like deck-building element in Rogue Mage.

Now, in line with what CD Projekt announced regarding it late last year, the game’s last official patch, Update 11.10, has arrived to deliver some final changes from the devs, in addition to introducing the Balance Council. The latter is designed to be a “a voting system that allows the players to decide which cards should be stronger, weaker, costlier, or cheaper.”

In order to take part in the monthly vote on which changes will be enacted to the game’s cards via this mechanic, you’ll have to have reached Prestige 1, in addition to either being in a Pro Rank or having won 25 ranked games in the current season.

Assuming those apply to you, you’ll be able to access the Balance Council via Gwent’s main menu and cast your votes for which cards should receive specific changes by dragging them into four brackets that’ll nominate them for increases or decreases to their power or provisions values.

Players will be able to vote for a maximum of three cards in each bracket, with a threshold of 50 overall votes for a specific change having to be met in order for a card to have a shot at making it into the group of between three and 15 from each bracket that’ll be revamped once the monthly cycle rolls over.

“The reason for these limitations is that we want the Balance Council to be able to shake up the meta without creating chaos,” CD Projekt wrote in its FAQ about the system, adding: “It is difficult to predict how many players will interact with the feature before it is released, so we might tweak the thresholds according to the initial results.”

There could also be some additional patches for the game if any serious technical issues require addressing, but aside from that, Gwent’s now set to continue its monster-slaying travails with only its community for company.

Following several rounds of layoffs at the publisher, it was announced last week that some CD Projekt Red staff have formed a union that’s offering membership to the entire Polish video game industry.