The best answer to a dumb question I ever saw was from the Witcher author, when they asked him how he felt about the success of the games. It was something to the effect of "They made me a ton of money. How do you THINK I feel about it?"

Wasn't he angry about it not making him a ton of money? AFAIK, CDPR have managed to get the license at a flat fee of like 10k USD because the author didn't believe that video games had potential and preferred an upfront payment over royalties.