Witcher 3 - GMG keys are not authorized

zahratustra said:

But you can explain it on the basis of income levels. Average earnings in Poland (for example) are about 4 times lower than those in the UK.

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Yes sure and that's what's called price discrimination and region pricing which gog.com claimed was terrible practice which was only done by evil publishers :lol: Now when their own money is involved all bets are off!!

lostforever said:

Yes sure and that's what's called price discrimination and region pricing which gog.com claimed was terrible practice which was only done by evil publishers :lol: Now when their own money is involved all bets are off!!

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And if they didn't price discriminate a lot of folks in poorer countries wouldn't be able to afford CGs. Wouldn't that be evil?

zahratustra said:

And if they didn't price discriminate a lot of folks in poorer countries wouldn't be able to afford CGs. Wouldn't that be evil?

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It looks like you didn't read my previous post. I never claimed price discrimination is evil, GOG/CDPR did! They said publishers who price discriminate are "ripping people off", their word and not mine! All I am saying is GOG/CDPR are hypocrites and liars and we should be careful of their business practices

Region pricing isn't something a world wide company can avoid. The only way to avoid would be to limit yourself to a certain audience and do not sell the product to anyone else at all.

E.g. a company could say "We sell the game for 50$ for everyone". This of course is then a western price and this company would not be able to sell the game in Russia for example as due to the rubel crash they wouldn't be able to pay that price. And lowering the price for them would conflict the "one price for the whole world" idea.

So in the end it's just unrealistic to have the same price in each region as long as there are fundamental differences in each country. And now as GoG is expanding their horizon to other countries they might realize that their previous claim was kinda stupid.

lostforever said:

All I am saying is GOG/CDPR are hypocrites and liars and we should be careful of their business practices

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I'm taking it on a case by case basis and ,so far, I'm not worried. With time very company matures and evolves and CDPR has lost their virginity. But it's a long way from not being a virgin to become a hooker so we will just have to await what time will bring...

All this seems fine to me; if anything, it spurs me to buy from GMG. Feed me a fanboy line about "supporting CDPR" all you like, but using your market position to squeeze out other retailers is never a good thing.

So what exactly is there drama here -outside of GMG trying to out-promo GOG-? GMG got keys from Steam or whatever. Why is this the end of the world exactly?

spiraling69 said:

care to share that link with us?

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The link no longer works, it was a discount price for pre-order, the discount wasnt much though. Either way you would have to be in brazil (..or use a VPN).

edit:
Had to check my order (in case i was lying). The price was actually $14.99 (with $2.6 discount): http://i.imgur.com/qw6tksh.jpg

It's crazy how much cheaper it is in some countries so i would really advice to shop around..

vurt said:

It's crazy how much cheaper it is in some countries so i would really advice to shop around..

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Is that your general strategy or was it a one-off?

So you will bash CDPR Lostforever calling them liars and such, when their business practices are miles above the likes of EA, or ubisoft. They may not be perfect but in my books they are a hell of alot better then the other choices out there.
I have to laugh at people who will bash the hell out of GOG if they make a minor misstep but blindly support Steam, Origin or Uplay at the same time, now that is Hypocracy.
As for GMG I can't say as I ever shoped there but by taking such actions they are puting them selves in to the catigory of shady dealer, one who may or may not actually sell legit keys, which means either their prices need to be much cheaper to compete with all the other illigitatmate key sellers or come back in line with every one else.
It can't be expected for countries with greatly devalued currancies to pay the US dollar equivelant but at the same time digital retailars in the US market can not be allowed to go there buy keys cheep in bulk and then resell them in to a higher priced market.

Kostas said:

Is that your general strategy or was it a one-off?

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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..

vurt said:

The link no longer works, it was a discount price for pre-order, the discount wasnt much though. Either way you would have to be in brazil (..or use a VPN).

edit:
Had to check my order (in case i was lying). The price was actually $14.99 (with $2.6 discount): http://i.imgur.com/qw6tksh.jpg

It's crazy how much cheaper it is in some countries so i would really advice to shop around..

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You are absolutely right. I usually go with either Steam or GOG, because I feel like it's a safe purchase and it's easy, but I really should go shopping for better prices. Gaming can be a very expensive hobby...

As mentioned in the other thread.
Some people are saying that globalization is bad because companies exploit people in poorer countries like india or china.
The cause for that is that people don't want to pay a reasonable price for the work.

And the game industry (excluding physical goods) is actually not doing lots of outsourcing to these countries, especially indie developers. So people who only want to pay the cheaper price are on the same level as the previously mentioned companies exploiting poorer countries.

It's called the first sale doctrine. You wouldn't think it is not OK to buy university manuals in China and resell them in the US where they cost 20 times more. Why should game publishers get a pass?

Because the majority of work done on software is not done in these cheaper countries.

Developers are not outsourced to india or china.
Correct me if I am wrong and tell me a couple of games where a substantial amount of work was actually done in "cheap" countries just to save money.

Kordanor said:

Because the majority of work done on software is not done in these cheaper countries.

Developers are not outsourced to india or china.
Correct me if I am wrong and tell me a couple of games where a substantial amount of work was actually done in "cheap" countries just to save money.

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Just about every Ubisoft AAA game.

That's why they work so well right?

CDPR is already working in a relatively cheap country. Not as cheap as a third world country, but the savings are substantial.

GMG is a UK-based store, so I wouldn't put them in the same bag as other key resellers. They are legitimate resellers for many publishers. They usually give the games away cheaper, because they don't take the usual 30% of their sales price but just 5-10%. In general, that has no repercussions for the publisher. If they now sold keys from some low price region, that's a different story. Then again, it's a bit of a shady move by CDPR not to let the usual stores sell keys for Witcher 3.

Who knows, maybe CDPR is short for cash again, like with the last games during the end of their development. Selling the DLC already before the game release may be a hint into that direction. Let's hope they never go bankrupt like their Polish colleagues Reality Pump (Two Worlds and Raven's Cry) did today.

@Gorath: Should have excluded major publishers as Ubi and EA.


Most games which we see represented an RPGwatch are without lots of contributions from these countries.
In any case, as long as people want their prices cheaper by any means, the industry will also do everything to get them cheaper by any means (in addition to maximize their profits).

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.

On another thought we PC Gamers can actually be happy that the price situation excluding key resellers is as good as it is today.
If I check my game magazines from the early 90s I can see a Civ 1 for a PC retail price for 105 DM there, which after inflation translates to 83€ or 93$.
Now considering it doesn't take half a year anymore until you get everything in a 50% off steam sale, games were never that cheap to get.

This is not including console games, which profit less from sales, and cost more in general at release.

Turjan said:

CDPR is already working in a relatively cheap country. Not as cheap as a third world country, but the savings are substantial.

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While it might have been the case until recently but, with the opening of CDPR's US office and a massive TW3 ad campaign, it's no longer quite true.

Turjan said:

Then again, it's a bit of a shady move by CDPR not to let the usual stores sell keys for Witcher 3.

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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?