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The Witcher 3: Wild HuntCensorship(8 posts)(8 posts)
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Posted February 20, 2026
Hi, I have the Steam version of this game and it was censored. After doing some research, I found out the GOG version is supposed to be DRM-free and uncensored, so I bought the game on GOG as well. However, the game is still censored in the GOG version.

I am from Turkey, and to my knowledge, the Turkish version of the game on GOG should not have any censorship. I have already checked my Windows region settings and GOG account settings, and both are set to Turkey. I even found a file named metadata.censored.store in my content folder, which confirms the game is running a censored build.

How can I get rid of this censorship and access the global, uncensored version of the game? Since I specifically purchased the GOG version for this reason, I would appreciate any help on how to force the global build.
Posted February 21, 2026
This is the first time I hear there is a censored version of Witcher 3 but after I googled a little it seems to be true. You should message the support. I could not find any information about your country having censored version. This seems to be only for middle east. Or it could be something new/very recent. No way to know!
Posted February 22, 2026
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Omniscient48: Hi, I have the Steam version of this game and it was censored. After doing some research, I found out the GOG version is supposed to be DRM-free and uncensored, so I bought the game on GOG as well. However, the game is still censored in the GOG version.

I am from Turkey, and to my knowledge, the Turkish version of the game on GOG should not have any censorship. I have already checked my Windows region settings and GOG account settings, and both are set to Turkey. I even found a file named metadata.censored.store in my content folder, which confirms the game is running a censored build.

How can I get rid of this censorship and access the global, uncensored version of the game? Since I specifically purchased the GOG version for this reason, I would appreciate any help on how to force the global build.
Does the game run if you just remove the metadata.censored.store file ?
Posted February 22, 2026
Yes. But nothing changes.
Posted February 24, 2026
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Omniscient48: Yes. But nothing changes.
I'm not an expert on this stuff and never installed the game. But sometimes you have to start a new game once you make a change (big or small), as the pre-change state is sometimes baked into the save files.

I only mention this cause that's the case for some mods I used for Dragon Age: Origins.

So after you do the suggestion that olnorton mentioned, you may want to test it in a new game and see (without deleting your old game of course or back it up just in case, since I have no clue how TW3 saves work).
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Posted February 24, 2026
Yes, I have deleted my old saves and started new games many times in many different orders. I even changed the language to force it to download the uncensored version as it is supposed to be. I performed the Verify and Repair process three times. I also asked various AIs for advice and followed their suggestions. Nothing works. It seems like GOG made a new agreement with Turkey to enforce censorship on games without notifying anyone; that is the only logical explanation I can come up with. If that is the case, I want a refund because I already own the game on another platform.
Posted February 25, 2026
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Omniscient48: Yes, I have deleted my old saves and started new games many times in many different orders. I even changed the language to force it to download the uncensored version as it is supposed to be. I performed the Verify and Repair process three times. I also asked various AIs for advice and followed their suggestions. Nothing works. It seems like GOG made a new agreement with Turkey to enforce censorship on games without notifying anyone; that is the only logical explanation I can come up with. If that is the case, I want a refund because I already own the game on another platform.
If that's the case, then that's sad to hear. I don't know if gifted copies are also censored, so that's something you can look into maybe.
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Edit:
It may have to be in a different language probably if it's gifted though. Not really sure about this sort of stuff.
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Post edited February 25, 2026 by gog2002x
Posted March 04, 2026
Can you enlighten me as to what was censored?
All I'm aware of is the censored monsters which was included as part of the high res monster texture pack because they didn't catch it... even though they were allowed to include them. Despite that they yanked them.

If that's the only thing censored then it's easy to mod back in... you just download the high res texture pack & add it as a mod.

Complaining to support won't help because I posted a message on the Steam forums about them being yanked... I personally don't care if they're 'accurate' or not but hate censorship... and they gave me something like a 2 month ban.

Maybe it'll be different with GOG support now that they're owned by someone else...but I kind of doubt it.
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The Witcher 3: Wild HuntCensorship(8 posts)(8 posts)
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