The day has finally arrived. CDPR announced back in 2022 that they planned to slow down the support for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. As of the last patch update, that support has now ended, mostly.
Update 11.10 brings the usual card changes, balances and updates, but it also brings with it the Balance Council.
The Balance Council is a platform where players of Gwent will get to vote on the monthly changes and balances made to the cards in the game. This means that CD Projekt Red will no longer be doing the balance updates themselves.
Not everyone will be able to cast votes on the balance changes for the cards, though. This is deeply explained in the FAQ, but only players who have achieved Prestige 1 (those who have earned enough in-game experience to roll over their level) and have either made the rank of Pro or completed 25 ranked games in the current season will have the opportunity to adjust the meta.
However, this doesn’t mean the game is going offline; CDPR says they plan to keep it running for years. They just believe they have exhausted and implemented all the card ideas they have had for the game, and from 2024, they will shift towards more of a maintenance mode for Gwent.
A small team of developers will remain to ensure bugs are squashed, the game keeps running smoothly, and the aforementioned Balance Council is kept in check.
If you prefer getting all your information via video rather than reading through the whole blog post, the October Dev Update from CDPR can be watched below. They go into detail about the Balance Council and how things will work moving forward.