The Witcher 2 - Official GOG Announcement

Myrthos

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The website at Good Old Games for preordering The Witcher 2 is up. It offers a 10% discount, several downloadable goodies and one of the following games for free: Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Gothic 2 Gold, Realms of Arkania 1+2 or Realms of Arkania 3.
Here is the official announcement:
Pre-Order Now. Pay at the release. Get The Witcher 2 at GOG.com
During today's CD Projekt Autumn Conference, the digital distribution platform known for DRM-free classic PC games announced it is taking pre-orders for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Warsaw, Poland – November 18, 2010. GOG.com (http://www.gog.com), the 'net's best collection of classic PC games without copy protection, announced its pre-order offer for The Witcher 2 Digital Premium Edition today, available at http://www.gog.com/tw2. The announcement, which was made during the CD Projekt Autumn Conference, brings an incredible one-time offer of a 100% DRM-free title, fair worldwide pricing, and exclusive additional content to GOG.com users.
Starting immediately, GOG.com is accepting free pre-orders for The Witcher 2 Digital Premium Edition. “Part of what makes pre-ordering The Witcher 2 on GOG.com such an incredible deal is that it won't cost you a penny, and you'll get instant, free access to unreleased music from the soundtrack, HD wallpapers, avatars, and behind-the-scenes photos of the development team at work,” said Guillaume Rambourg, Managing Director of GOG.com. “No other retailer has this exclusive content that we're offering on GOG for our preorder, and no other retailer has our GOG.com Fair Price Package either. Whether you're a fan of the Witcher franchise or just looking for the easiest place to pre-order The Witcher 2 on the Internet, GOG.com's unbeatable offer is something you should be sure to check out.”
In addition to the game, the Digital Premium Edition will contain a wealth of digital content, including in-game soundtracks, a digital art book, a game guide, papercraft figurines, and much more. Everyone buying The Witcher 2 on GOG.com will get to choose one of the following RPG classics for free when they complete their pre-order on release day: Gothic 2 Gold, Realms of Arkania 1+2, Realms of Arkania 3, Divine Divinity, and Beyond Divinity.
The game is scheduled for release on or around May 17, 2011, and is priced at €49.99 for EU citizens, £34.99 GBP for UK citizens, and $49.99 USD for the rest of the world. Customers who pre-order the game will receive 10% off their purchase, bringing the price for a pre-order down to€44.99 EU, £31.49 GBP, and $44.99 USD respectively. Because the price in Euros is almost $16 USD more than the price in dollars, and the price in GBP is roughly $6 more than the price in dollars, GOG.com is making its pricing fair by giving EU purchasers a $16 USD GOG.com store credit and UK customers a $6 USD GOG.com store credit to spend on any game at GOG.com after they finalize their pre-order.

Rambourg continued. “This one-time offer is a great opportunity to help promote this highly-anticipated RPG by our sister company, CD Projekt RED. Further, by pre-ordering and purchasing their copy of The Witcher 2 from GOG.com, gamers will be supporting the developer more directly, since we're sister companies. This offer reflects the principles that have made GOG.com so popular to our users, such as quality gaming, great value, and DRM-free downloads. The opportunity to bring this to our community and the internet at large was one that we cou...More information.
 
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This is brilliant. Simply brilliant.

For the first time, we will get to see whether DRM really makes any difference at all in the sales of a high-profile PC game. All it takes is one publisher to strike out in front of all the others into unknown and scary territory (scary to the beancounters, anyway).

This will either result in a revolution in terms of future DRM capabilities, or in a flaming disaster. Major kudos to CDProjekt for being the guinea pig to give this a shot.
 
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I applaud this, and hope it works (despite my concerns for the average character of people). GoG is my favorite digital market-place, and this only lifts it up a notch.
 
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It will definately be pirated either way. DRM or not.

The only difference is that they don't punish the people who don't pirate it.

This will get them a plus in the appreciation column of honest customers.

It will however do nothing to change the opinion of people who would normally pirate this game. DRM is there to deter pirates but it always fails. So costwise it makes sense to not put money and energy into an already lost battle.

Those who pirate will still pirate but there will be no colateral damage to the honest customers.
 
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Actually it will make it easier for people to pirate it. We'll see.

If sales are lower than expected, then they will blame the lack of DRM.
If sales are up, they will laud the lack of DRM. :)

Essentially, they've turned the game evaluation into an evaluation of DRM. This makes me worry more about the game content...
 
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Ok the DRM-Free thing is very welcome but it's not what I found to be one of the most impressive parts.

The way in which they recognize and make up for the normally unfair pricing across currencies is pretty cool of them. While companies like Impulse will often charge a single price (in USD) that your credit card company will convert at the end of day exchange rate - ensuring everyone is paying the same real price- this is usually only in the absence of pre-determined regional pricing. In this case they are abiding by the regional prices they agreed to with their other distributors but also making up for it by compensating their customers. Most places won't do that part if they can't charge a flat single currency price.
 
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As opposed to any other game?

Well, the generally held belief amongst game publishers is that the "buffer period", which can extend as long as a few days for some of the better DRM, is a key to getting a lot of game sales. And judging from the midnight sales party and similar nonsense, people don't have a lot of patience to get their games. Furthermore, early cracks tend to be unreliable and/or hard to use for people without a lot of PC knowledge.

That's the logic applied by publishers, anyway. This is a fairly good test to see if it's true or not.
 
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Yep… because there's a huge difference between "immediate" and 24-48 hours.

The difference isn't so much in time as it is in convenience. It is pretty inconvenient to track down a working(!) torrent and a working(!) crack. It can also be pretty inconvenient for not so tech savvy users to get Daemon tools to work correctly, to apply the crack correctly etc. etc. etc. ... you know, all those things that are a piece of cake for people like us can be a real obstacle for other people (= casual pirates).
Now remove those obstacles and offer those people a simple download of an archive that they just need to extract and then run setup.exe.
I agree with Thrasher that it is a somewhat interesting experiment. If people have a choice between saving $50 for a blowjob or spending it on a game, I think they'd rather save it for the blowjob and download the game for free if it is as convenient to save money as they (= GOG) are making it.
 
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This just ticks all the right boxes for me, if they offer a slightly better pre-order discount I'm getting this.

Can't believe some complain about the lack of DRM, you can usually find most games on warez sites before they get to our local stores.
 
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The difference isn't so much in time as it is in convenience. It is pretty inconvenient to track down a working(!) torrent and a working(!) crack. It can also be pretty inconvenient for not so tech savvy users to get Daemon tools to work correctly, to apply the crack correctly etc. etc. etc. … you know, all those things that are a piece of cake for people like us can be a real obstacle for other people (= casual pirates).

Exept that it's not really that inconvenient when you're talking about saving money. I also don't think you have to be tech savvy to use something as simple as Daemon tools, just not totally stupid. :)

Sure, there will be a difference. I just don't think it's going to be that significant. We'll find out soon enough though.
 
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Can't believe some complain about the lack of DRM, you can usually find most games on warez sites before they get to our local stores.
Pretty much. This release being DRM free will mean, in terms of piracy, nothing. What it does mean, however, is that if this release does better (Or really well) then it proves that customers are more willing to have a DRM-free release and incentives to buy the game.

Assassin's Creed 2 is one of the few exceptions to the cracked-before-release rule that I can think of, and that was due to Ubisoft's abysmal DRM scheme.
 
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*pre-ordered*

And I did that just because the game is DRM-free. (well, I also wanted to buy the game...)
 
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