so far like cdpr isn't interested in fixing anyhting though. they pretty clearly said no restocks. have fun paying those scalper prices on ebay. [...]
Simply as that:
DON'T buy from scalpers. Your imply to buy from them is kind of vague.
Supporting scalpers will result in more of this trouble for future limited edition games and items of this sort. You'll just hurt yourself more, and everyone else too.
[...]
Yup... picked up Xbone copy with similar thought. It sucks the PC crowd is basically forced to buy the game twice... This was really poorly executed by all parties involved.. CDRP, WB, and e-tailers.
Not just in the US market but also there was quite big issues with the EU market too. Just to mention one of these aspects, there were dozens of people from the USA pre-ordering in the EU market, since initially, counterintuitively, the PC version was excluded from the NA market, resulting into shortage of the capacity that was meant for EU residents.
The fact that later it was confirmed NA would obtain the PC CE, resulted into an reverse effect within the USA, which is why Amazon gold sold out immediately since they offer international shipping.
Another issue was localization of the retail content within the EU states. Most collectors prefer English as base language, but when it's localized language it is kind of problematic for those, even if they've had a chance to pre-order their local versions. We've talked about it in this thread in earlier posts.
My tin foil crystal ball hat tells me this was deliberate to let the friendly scalpers move in on this non-limited opportunity.
Doesn't make any sense to me.
It only resulted into more issues for the legit customer, who wanted the PC CE for himself and not for resale, because the legit customer couldn't find it in the listings.
In fact, it resulted actually in even supporting the scalpers, because scalpers are aware of such methods and they know better how to search for a product, than the usual common-person who is there to buy a CE the first time in his life.
Even I was expecting something like that before the pre-order opened up, thus I was respectively searching through google deep search as well but was too late unfortunately due to the mess up with the pacific times. However, my expectations in the end were proved true.
Not fair.
JUST A PSA:
If you buy from scalpers on Ebay you are as good as throwing your money away. Ebay/Paypal buyer protection only lasts between 30-90 days after the sale of the item (depending on the product). This means that if you pay $800 for a PC CE today, your coverage runs out in September. CP2077 doesn't release until April.
Effectively if you buy on Ebay the buyer can take your money and walk away without ANY REPERCUSSIONS. They won't even be banned. I could sell the collectors edition at $500 to 10 people today on Ebay and then completely ignore the buyers in April and Ebay/Paypal won't do a thing because it's too long after the sale.
Guaranteed there are going to be a TON of people who get scammed on Ebay and screwed out of their CE's because they chose a buyer who has no intention of delivering. If you HAVE to buy on Ebay, at least buy from someone with a solid, large, and long feedback history, although even then its a massive risk because 1 negative review might be worth getting $800 for nothing.
Unfortunately, due to the way this all was handled by CDPR and WB, there are going to be folks getting scammed. Its why companies need to be more vigilent about limiting how many can be bought by single individuals, and actively partner with resale sites to prevent scalpers from selling there. If nothing else, they should only be allowed to sell AFTER the actual release of the product.
Very well said and good post of you, except for the last part about the must-have buy-idea from scalpers which kind of ruined the whole impression. I wouldn't support any of them, even if they've a good reputation. These people are reason why the CE is sold out so quick at the first place, giving the legit buyers less of a chance to obtain a piece.
I ended up pre-ordering from game.co.uk (GAME UK) shipping the PC CE to a very good friend of mine who lives in the UK who then will ship it to my country once he receives it, since GAME UK won't ship it to outside of UK.
If anybody here knows someone trustworthy, or have family in the United Kingdom, this could be a good opportunity for you to still obtain the PC CE for a good price. Shipping from UK to EU countries isn't that expensive. For a large parcel like the CP2077 CE requires it'll probably be in-between 10-30 GBP. Can't say how expensive it might be for the USA or any other non-EU country.
If you do so, tell your friend to protect the package additionally with better isolation to avoid delivery damages (Just a suggestion).
However, I only suggest to go with this way with someone you can not 100% but 200% trust.