One of the year’s most unusual stories thus far has been the Witcher 3’s spiffy next-generation update not only polishing the game to a mirror sheen, but adding detailed vagina models to a select group of monsters. Four characters suddenly found themselves in possession of anatomically accurate nether regions (The Crones of Crookback Bog, who look more like Victoria’s Secret models than crones, and the vampire-like bruxae) and the weirder element was that, initially at least, the game’s developer CD Projket Red didn’t seem to know why.
When first reporting on this, PCG’s Josh Wolens speculated on a likely cause (opens in new tab): The various community made mods that CDPR integrated into the new version of the game. Looks like that was on the money, because CDPR has now confirmed in a statement to Kotaku (opens in new tab) that the rogue vaginas originate in a mod called HD Monsters Reworked (HDMR), which was ostensibly about adding more realistic textures to in-game characters, but it turns out also incorporates parts of another mod called, straightforwardly enough, Vaginas for Everyone.
“In 2021, at the time of signing the copyright transfer agreement, the HDMR mod author confirmed to CDPR that they were the sole author of the mod in question,” said CDPR in an emailed statement. “The HDMR mod author granted CDPR rights to use the mod and was credited & compensated for their work. We have contacted the HDMR mod author with questions for clarification.”
Things get even murkier, because it turns out the creator of Vaginas for Everyone was asked for permission to incorporate it into HDMR back in 2019, but never responded. “The author [of HDMR] apparently nevertheless used my mod textures for his/her own mod, [and] also never mentioned it nor gave credits to me on the HDMR mod description page.”
Which… actually explains a lot. The author of the HDMR mod goes by Denroth and if you look at the HDMR page over at NexusMods, there’s no mention of it incorporating Vaginas for Everyone in the description (it is standard practice for mods that incorporate other mods to explicitly credit them, not just because it’s right but also for compatibility). So it looks like this may have been a case of one modder being a little unscrupulous and hoping no-one would notice.
Well that didn’t work out, did it. Despite the creator of Vaginas for Everyone not being compensated for their work’s inclusion in the new version of The Witcher 3 they rather bluntly say they “don’t care.” Well, arguably the mod did its job. CDPR has announced that it intends to pull all of the content in question from the game (opens in new tab).
“We want to also add that the removal of these elements is not intended as a statement against nudity or mature themes,” said CDPR, “but rather an attempt to maintain visual coherence across all character models—including these textures in the game was not something we planned from the start.”
What was always a little queasy about this is how localised it was to a select few female characters, rather than being a more far-reaching change to the game’s cast. It’s one thing if your shiny new update gives all the male and female characters in the world new and furry genitals, but it lands a lot differently when it’s just four attractive female character models getting very detailed vaginas.