Witcher 3 - GMG keys are not authorized

zahratustra said:
And you know that it's shady based on what? Maybe they simply couldn't agree on a price and GMG went to a cheaper but not quite legitimate source?
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The publisher part is normally pretty much fixed, so I doubt it was about CDPR's share. However, GMG tends to let you apply discount vouchers, like 23% today. Some publishers don't like that, even if it doesn't touch their revenue out of this specific sale.
 
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Thing is that for now we don't actually know if the source is legitimate or not.

They claim it is. But they also claim that they are purely doing that due to their love of the game, and making it available for more players is their good deed for mankind.

On the other hand CDProject claims it isn't as it wouldn't be possible to sell it that cheap.
 
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Kordanor said:
One thing which was quite surprising to me on that note was that Square Enix didn't make actual profit from Tomb Raider (at first), which sold 3.4 million times during the first month. And this was a retail price game (for people buying it regularily). But it costed about 100 million Dollars to make and this was probably including cutting costs via outsourcing.
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And then over time the game sold almost 9 million copies.

Reasons?
When you step on Square Enix doppings aka DX:The Fall, The Last Remnant and Final Fantasy 13, would you really risk another possible fail by buying TR reboot?
I bought it only when everyone and I mean literally everyone said it's great game. I just couldn't trust Square Enix nor reviews any more.

Sorry, but in that particular case, the whole fault was the publisher who sold garbage thinking noone will ever punish them for it.

But that's offtopic. :)
 
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It might be that GMG's source is authorised to sell CDPRs products in Russia or Brazil but not in the UK. We will have to wait and see.
 
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There is also the deal that you get the game for free when you buy special graphic cards.

So it might also be a reseller of Hardware decided he would get more money by selling the keys to GMG and selling the hardware as normally gives him more profit.

@Joxer: Yeah, didn't get into the reasoning. Just seemed insane to me that with 3.2 million sold copies a game could still be in the red zone.
 
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Kordanor said:
There is also the deal that you get the game for free when you buy special graphic cards.

So it might also be a reseller of Hardware decided he would get more money by selling the keys to GMG and selling the hardware as normally gives him more profit.
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I was thinking about it but can a seller legitimately split a bundle like that? Besides hardware seller is not an authorised CDPR's retailer so GMG would be telling fibs...
 
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I highly doubt that they are "allowed" to do it. But "normal" key resellers (you know, the Hong Kong based ones) don't care about that. They are also reselling keys intended for press.

But for now it's word vs word, so...
 
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Kordanor said:
One thing which was quite surprising to me on that note was that Square Enix didn't make actual profit from Tomb Raider (at first), which sold 3.4 million times during the first month. And this was a retail price game (for people buying it regularily). But it costed about 100 million Dollars to make and this was probably including cutting costs via outsourcing.
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What's the source for that?

How is it possible? A couple of brief ideas:
- Very successfull predecessors -> expensive production
- many platforms
- console tax (10-12$ per unit, upfront, non-refundable) * 3M units
- double the amount for marketing, licenses, internal publisher costs and other stuff they need to reach the magic number of 100M$.
 
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Gorath said:
Sounds to me like CDPR didn't sell to a number of bigger EU and NA shops because they want to channel this high margin business directly through GOG. Cheaper areas (South America, Eastern Europe, RU) appaarently have been supplied with keys. Looks like GMG then bought keys from there.
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May be this explains why the standard physical copies in the US don't come with any the goodies promied by CDP? Or may be I am just looking for excuse. :?
 
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vurt said:
It's always cheaper to shop around for keys. Be careful with region locking though so that you are sure that the game will work in your country and so that you don't get the language in russian or something..
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Yes, I was burned a couple of times because of that (with physical copies), so I now I don't buy from non-US based ebay sellers. :?
 
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Turjan said:
Yup, there's this:

http://www.nuuvem.com.br/produto/2244-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

That's just shy of USD 30.
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IIRC that store won't let you buy unless your IP is in Brasil.
There was some fuss about cheap GTA5 keys on it that are not regionlocked, but I didn't read it in detail because I don't want to buy GTA5 (still. perhaps should?).
Thrasher said:
ebay
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Isn't that a place you can buy only Britney Spears vomit from? When did they start to sell games? :p
 
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joxer said:
IIRC that store won't let you buy unless your IP is in Brasil.
There was some fuss about cheap GTA5 keys on it that are not regionlocked, but I didn't read it in detail because I don't want to buy GTA5 (still. perhaps should?).
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Well, yeah, but that's not a principal problem. Most stores don't really care if you use a different IP. Just make sure the game itself isn't region-locked, at least regarding Steam keys. GTA5 was a UPlay key btw (I didn't buy that one though).
 
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I seriously doubt GTA5 is DRMed by uPlay.
 
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This is what I don't understand:
Earlier today, a CD Projekt RED representative indicated to GameSpot that any keys Green Man Gaming is offering are coming from an "unknown source." What this means is that since these keys are essentially unauthorized, none of the revenue from these sales will go towards the developer.

Unless a keygen or stolen keys were involved, wherever these keys originated would have paid CDPR for them, so how can they say that they recieve no revenue? Maybe it is not as much as they would have wanted if they had negotiated a price with GMG directly, but they can't say the developer gets nothing. If I buy a key from CDPR then sell that key to GMG so they can sell it to you, CDPR got paid with the first sale.
 
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But they won't earn anything if these keys originate from a fraudulent purchase or were coming from other deals. E.g. press/review keys (unlikely) or were meant for other programs like the one mentioned with the graphics cards.
 
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That they don't want to reveal where they actually got their keys from doesn't really help.
 
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Xian said:
This is what I don't understand:
Earlier today, a CD Projekt RED representative indicated to GameSpot that any keys Green Man Gaming is offering are coming from an "unknown source." What this means is that since these keys are essentially unauthorized, none of the revenue from these sales will go towards the developer.

Unless a keygen or stolen keys were involved, wherever these keys originated would have paid CDPR for them, so how can they say that they recieve no revenue? Maybe it is not as much as they would have wanted if they had negotiated a price with GMG directly, but they can't say the developer gets nothing. If I buy a key from CDPR then sell that key to GMG so they can sell it to you, CDPR got paid with the first sale.
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Exactly. I'm not on any side, I buy from GOG and I buy from GMG. After reading both sides, right now I think CDPR is in the wrong. GMG bought keys from authorized resellers so as far as we know those keys are completely legit. Also, CDPR saying that they don't get any money is really stupid, as they sold those keys to the reseller in the first place.

I've bought many games from GMG in the past, and they're not a "shady" store at all. They're as legit as Amazon (you can also buy digital keys from Amazon too). You order the product and you get a key. Simple. No VPN, no nothing.
 
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