The role and value of a distributor are lost on those who do not consider how damnably expensive and effortful it actually is to get a title that needs to sell millions into a marketplace where it can actually sell millions. A distributor who is well established in the market and who can fund and execute everything from advertising to shelf placement is absolutely essential.
CDPR is not so abjectly dependent on the distributor as many game studios are. Often the development is funded in whole or in part by the distributor. Because the development is on CDPR's funds, they have a lot more leverage than they would otherwise. But there is still an inequality of bargaining power at something like 50 to 1. That's how much smaller CDPR is than even the tiny bit of Time Warner that is Warner Interactive.
You couldn't buy the game for cheap (and $60 or whatever it comes out at is damn cheap) without a distributor to go out and get the volume needed to sell the game profitably at that price. CDPR knows this very well, being a distributor themselves, and has engaged a distributor that is capable of generating the sales in North America that it needs.
Whether they have to give away more control than some of us want them to seems to be a worthwhile question until you compare it to the alternative, which is that we do not get the game at all, CDPR loses their sunk development costs, and the next we hear from them has "bankruptcy court" in the headline. Because that is what would happen if they refused to deal on terms acceptable to the distributor.