Yesterday, some goober cut a cable in my area killing all internet connection. Since I couldn't work, I thought I'd play a single player PC game - Witcher 2, perfect! No, not so fast. It wouldn't launch, something about a connection. Why does my single player game need internet to play!? Is this a GOG thing? Are all my GOG games going to need internet to play?

None of the games on GOG require an internet connection to play, but the Witcher 2 does require one in order to install patches (usually). There was some weirdness with that one needing a one-time internet connection the first time you launch the game, but then I think that requirement was removed later... does anyone remember exactly what happened with that? The retail version had DRM online activation which was later patched out, but I thought that GOG's version NEVER had any DRM, but I could be mistaken.

Was this your first time trying to run the game?

Anyway, the Witcher 2 is kind of a special case, other GOG games definitely do not require an internet connection, and the Witcher 2 is probably only saying that it does due to some issue with getting it patched. If you have another place where you can access the internet and can manually download the patches and put them on a USB stick or something, you should be able to patch your game and then play without an internet connection. Or just play any other game from GOG instead, those should work without any trouble.

OK, that's weird. I assume it's fully patched to version 2.0? If so there should not be any need for an internet connection. Anyone else know what's happening here?

Try running it directly from witcher2.exe in the bin directory, & not launcher.exe.

I'll give that a shot if my internet goes down again. On another note, this is the most unstable game I've played in a long time. Plays well for about 20-30 min and then starts crashing. Don't see any common denominators with the possible exception of scene changes.

What hardware do you have in your system? You might be overheating your graphics card. I never experienced any crashes with the game.

Vista 32 byte
8 gig ram
Saphire Radeon 6950 HD 2 gig
AMD Phenom II x4

Hmm, that hardware should be able to run the game no problem.

There are some players who have been experiencing crashes like you, but I'm not sure if they've found any solutions yet. Check out this thread:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/list_of_known_bugs/page1

People there are discussing various bugs they've encountered. Also, if you're not patched up to v2.0, make sure you do that as they've fixed a lot of performance issues with the patches.

Anyone else know what can cause these crashes?

Thanks for the input. Today I played using the exe instead of the launcher. The game seemed to run better. I had only one crash which took place when I used F5 quick save.

I can't seem to get the Witcher 2 running at all without any internet connection before launching the launcher. Exe doesn't give access to the game either..it just freezes after intro scenes. Is this due to the patch 2.0 for arena connection? 'cuz if it is, it's stupid that there are no fixes till now.

You should check out the Witcher 2 sub-forum on GoG to see if they have any solutions to your problem

The game will work, the launcher won't. I am trying to find a fix now.
If you start the launcher with the connection up you can disconnect and every thing else works as long as you don't have to go back to the launcher. It will quit working after you start the game, You have a lightning bolt in the upper left corner when the launcher is connected, and a deaths skull when it is down.