Lebostein: "ERROR: The game failed to initialise"

When you look at the requirements, it should work:
"OS X 10.8.5 - macOS 10.14 for x86 architecture / macOS 10.15 and up for x64 architecture"

Or is the problem Rosetta? It is a x64 Application, but Rosetta should handle this? Or not?

Celedam: M1 is a new ARM-based chip architecture. It's not x64. Therefore, most x64-emulation technology will not work on an M1 Mac, and that includes many of the toolkits used to "port" Windows games.

The move from Intel chips to M1/M2 chips breaks even more stuff than the move to 64-bit in macOS 10.15 Catalina. But that is Apple's strategy, for better or worse. Apple wants to sell lifestyle products and services, rather than general-purpose computers, so speed and battery life are more important than compatibility (either cross-platform or backward).

EDIT: I just installed and tested it on my Intel iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020), and it works as expected.

Lebostein: Yes. That why I talked about "Rosetta". See my first post.

Celedam: Sigh.

Rosetta (technically, Rosetta 2) is for running natively-compiled Mac software.

This game is a "port" of Windows software. It uses different toolkits that are specifically designed to run on Intel chips (x86/x64). Even if those toolkits were recompiled to run on Rosetta, it would be emulation on top of emulation. It would be very unstable, and no one would support it.

You need to understand these things before you complain about the lack of support for M1/M2 Macs.

JohnMHammer: You might try going to /System/Library/CoreServices and double-clicking the Rosetta 2 Updater.

If that doesn't work, there is an incompatibility with the Apple SOC architecture. There are games which work perfectly well on Intel Macs but which will not run on Apple SOC Macs. Rosetta2 is very good but it can't work around some issues such as memory register incompatibilities.

You might try downloading the Windows version of the game and running it with Codeweavers Crossover, a commercial version of WINE. I can't post a link but if you look at The Witcher compatibility page on the Codeweavers website, you'll see that there are people running the Windows version of the game in Crossover on Apple SOC Macs successfully. Crossover is not free but it does have a 2-week free trial so you can be sure it works for you before committing to a purchase.

Valandil2009: No need to be snarky or condescending. We can educate users in a polite manner. We're all gamers here.