I'm curious to know what reasons there are for not having a GOG code in the retail editions.
GOG is CDPR's sister company, and as far as digital copies go, there can never be a shortage. Since technically one would be able to install Witcher 3 on as many PCs as he wants, I can't see any drawbacks of having a GOG code included in the retail edition. So, why wouldn't it be done?
Sometimes discs get scratched, broken, or lost. If the concern is that someone who has both a disc and an online copy will give the online code away (and thus, cost them in sales), that concern would be there regardless even if it's a purchased GoG copy, no? Since there's no DRM and all.
GOG is CDPR's sister company, and as far as digital copies go, there can never be a shortage. Since technically one would be able to install Witcher 3 on as many PCs as he wants, I can't see any drawbacks of having a GOG code included in the retail edition. So, why wouldn't it be done?
Sometimes discs get scratched, broken, or lost. If the concern is that someone who has both a disc and an online copy will give the online code away (and thus, cost them in sales), that concern would be there regardless even if it's a purchased GoG copy, no? Since there's no DRM and all.
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There's no reason for having one, if you have working media, and it's your responsibility to safeguard your media. And CDPR's been good about support for defective, damaged, or lost media.
The very good reason for not having one is anti-piracy. I explained this earlier when the discussion was about Steam codes. If you have such a code, others will tempt you to sell it. Most of the people who do so are pirates. Not mere freeloaders, but pirates who then offer the game as warez for profit.
Even if pirates cannot be eradicated (which would only require all the freeloaders in the world to start boycotting them), reduction of piracy by reducing the opportunities for piracy is a legitimate business goal.
The very good reason for not having one is anti-piracy. I explained this earlier when the discussion was about Steam codes. If you have such a code, others will tempt you to sell it. Most of the people who do so are pirates. Not mere freeloaders, but pirates who then offer the game as warez for profit.
Even if pirates cannot be eradicated (which would only require all the freeloaders in the world to start boycotting them), reduction of piracy by reducing the opportunities for piracy is a legitimate business goal.
But GoG codes aren't Steam codes -- GoG has no DRM. Someone who'd buy a code from someone else would probably buy it from CDPR anyway if he was going to pay for it, and if he wasn't, being that there's no DRM, nothing stops him from torrenting the game.
Maybe CD Project is helping to kill off physical sales a little bit faster, so they don't want to give any incentive for buying physical copies. If physical copies become a thing of the past, than they won't have to be partners with other publishers to get their game published for retail sales. they make more money from Digital sales than they do with physical retail sales as well. Perhaps they are trying to entice people to go for digital sales rather than physical sales. Physical sales are a dying breed, digital sales already surpassed physical sales with in the industry.
Most real customers value support and other continuing relations with the developer, enough to keep them from freeloading even if the temptation to do so got right in their face. You, I, they are not the ones CDPR, GOG, or Valve is concerned about.
It's the fucking pirates, pardon my Anglo-Saxon. Piracy is lucrative, even if it is a black market. But even pirates need keys, even if it is just to give the fruits of their crime an appearance of legitimacy. Of course the keys are worthless, because if you try to call up support with a blacklisted key, your call gets cut off like John Bobbitt's. But the freeloaders who patronize pirates are either too stupid to know the difference or too greedy to care.
Until pirates are put out of business, and the only way to do that is to make freeloading unacceptable, justifications for anti-piracy measures (and not releasing keys for no overridingly good reason is a pretty mild one) are not going to go away either.
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What are you talking about? There isn't a single penny to be earned from piracy.
Not true. There is a black market full of pirated games that are sold. it is part of the reason why places like Russia that the game are sold so cheap compared to the rest of the world, they have to compete with their own games being sold by pirates.
Baloney. Pirates are not public charities, even if hairsplitters call them something other than thieves. They earn money both from sales of warez and advertising on their Web sites. Antipiracy specialists know exactly how much they make, and it is substantial.
China also has a major market of such games. Even Iran has. Interestingly, authors of The Neverhood reported, that they got a surprising support for their Armikrog project from all kind of countries they never knew The Neverhood was distributed to, because officially it wasn't but apparently it was massively sold there by pirate distributors and gained a major popularity. This just shows that while pirates can profit from such sales it usually happens on major scale in regions where there are no legal sources for the same thing.
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I don't know what definition of the word "pirate" you guys are using, but when I use that term, I'm thinking of people who upload their torrents to places like The Pirate Bay or KickassTorrents where other users can download them for free. They don't earn a single penny from that; I would know, I've been an uploader for years.
In fact, I wouldn't be a fan of The Witcher series if it hadn't been for piracy. I've been downloading pirated versions of games to test them out before buying them ever since developers stopped releasing demo versions of their games. I bought both games on GOG after testing them out and even pre-ordered the CE for The Witcher 3 back in June. There's frankly no use in trying to demonize and generalize pirates - I'm neither a thief, nor have I earned any money from my torrents.
No plans? Oh well, Newegg is having a discount on a lot of Optical drives now so I just ordered one for cheap. Now I'm wondering about Galaxy support for physical copies. Mostly about updates if the TW3 ever gets a patch or anything. Galaxy is supposed to have autoupdating
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No, those aren't pirates, though the industry calls them such. The real pirates are the criminals who run the sites. They make themselves rich on the gullibility of freeloaders.
As a moderator, I must also direct you to cease posting about your freeloading habits immediately. The manufacturer's forum is no place to discuss your having contributed to piracy of their own games. It is one of the grounds for an immediate and permanent ban.
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That's fair enough. Thanks for giving me a heads-up before banning me; I won't talk about it any further.
I've bought GOG version, and happy, but steam version should have trade cards, achievments and possibly arena. So now i'm looking the way to get steam version without paying extra money for damn valve. Could someone help me?
It doesn't really work that way. Valve provide download servers and a place where to publish and advertise the game. Them not getting any money out of the copy you download from them is bad business.
I like steam, I really do but given a choice between a steam version and a DRM free one from GOG I'd go for the GOG one.
I like steam, I really do but given a choice between a steam version and a DRM free one from GOG I'd go for the GOG one.