KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Yesterday, The Witcher 3 developer, CD Projekt Red, told the world that Green Man Gaming was getting its game codes from “unknown sources”. This new information shed some doubt over the legitimacy of GMG as a retailer and made it sound like it could be engaging in ‘grey market' practices, which do nothing to support the developer or publisher behind these games.
However, as is always the case, there are two sides to every story and today Green Man Gaming CEO, Paul Sulyok, spoke out to clear up the situation. Speaking with Gamespot, the GMG CEO went on to explain that the retailer has consistently tried to work with CD Projekt Red to support the release of The Witcher 3 but it turns out that the developer has been choosing to focus on promoting its own platform, GOG.
“Following a six-month dialogue with [CD Projekt RED] about the launch of The Witcher 3, we were disappointed that despite the offer of significant cash advances, and other opportunities to officially work together, (we even offered to fly to Poland to discuss in detail how we could and wanted to support this launch), CDPR chose not to engage with a number of significant, reputable, and successful retailers, including ourselves, as they instead focused on supporting their own platform GOG”.
“We, like millions of customers, are huge fans of The Witcher series, and have been eager for the launch of this amazing title. We believe that CDPR’s desire to support their own platform by working with retail outlets that would not conflict with their own is greater than that of meeting the demands of their audience, therefore we made the decision to indirectly secure the product and deliver it to our customers.”
Since CD Projekt Red has avoided signing a deal with Green Man Gaming to supply it with keys for launch, the retailer has had to go around the developer and source its keys from elsewhere. According to GMG, these keys are coming from retailers that CDPR did in-fact approve initially, which means that the developer is still being supported for the sales of these keys.
Green Man Gaming is still open to working directly with CD Projekt Red on the launch of The Witcher 3 and would be open to working with the developer again on future titles, despite this misunderstanding. Either way, in this situation, Green Man Gaming appears to be in the right.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: The grey market is a tricky subject. On the one hand, it's just good sense to buy a product the cheapest you can find it. However, it is often the case that we don't know where these keys originate from. A lot of the time, codes are taken from inside of retail boxes, which may well have ‘fallen off the back of a truck' somewhere. Alternatively, they may well have been bought by entirely legitimate means, the issue is, nobody knows for sure. Open marketplace sites like G2A would be viewed in a better light if more transparency was given and people could see exactly where their keys are coming from.
In this case, Green Man Gaming did the right thing, it didn't go in to too much detail but it was honest about its failed negotiations with CD Projekt Red and the fact that it was going through third-party channels to get its keys.
Via: Gamespot
So CDPR is trying to shut out competitors to GOG by providing keys for physical boxes, but restricting the number of digital sales, and GMG have got around that by obtaining keys from stores who know they can’t actually shift physical products to PC gamers these days? If that’s the case then they’re both being asshats. I wouldn’t be surprised if CDPR could still invalidate the keys as they’re being sold “other than in accordance with the contract they were supplied under”.
They could well have bought them from a market that doesn’t have GOG which CDPR have happily sold keys to. Whether that is significantly cheaper than they may have got them for direct will depend on the market, but to be honest if they are being anti-competitive in their practices then they have got what is coming to them.
>Either way, in this situation, Green Man Gaming appears to be in the right.
Very black and white way of seeing things – it sounds to me more like they’re being twits in different ways.
I think this is a shame, GmG is a really good seller and now I dont feel confident buying a key from them :/
CDPR denied GMG, what else did you expect them to do. If Steam denied me a sale on a game, I would go around them and buy the key on G2A and then activate the key.
seems like cdpr are finally getting greedy and being dickish
It’s interesting that of all companies out there, Projekt Red is the one that doing this. They pride themselves on costumer service, but when it comes down to it, they’ll try to push their distribution system on you, which makes competition impossible. If every develop does this (Origin, Steam, Uplay, Galaxy/GOG, and possibly others in the future), consumers will be a lot worse of then they used to be. You’ll only be able to buy directly from the developer/publisher. Steam and Origin are so far open, but I still need uplay to play Assassin’s Creed (the series sucks, so no loss there), and Rockstar did similar things. And who can forget Games for Windows Live.
Consumers profit from competing middle men, companies where you can buy the product. And because consumers profit, so will the publisher and developer. If more games are sold, they can make more money, and keep afloat. But if the market is closed of, like Projekt Red seems to try here, then I fear for the future.
Why? They already claimed how they were getting the keys. They went around cdpr and aquired the keys through cdpr approved retailers.
So you are saying that it would okay for Valve to go buy keys for Origin games and start selling them on Steam again despite what EA thinks? (If that could work)
The only reason GMG can do this is because CDPR didn’t want to load their game with DRM, so now these guys are taking advantage of that… from my view CDPR have every right to choose who to sell their game too. Gamer entitlement is reaching an all time high nowadays…
Fortunately, that’s not true. You can buy the game at many retailers and it’s not locked away at GOG.
CDPR was paying for several promo sales already and I bet GMG wanted to do another one but couldn’t actually afford it. That’s the issue.
It’s a real salt mine down there.
Maybe CDPR just doesn’t trust a system that has been proved time and again to be shady and corrupt…
Oh but poor you, you have to pay more than 20 bucks for a game that 200 people have worked on for 4 entire years. Unacceptable!
“…Valve to go buy keys for Origin games and start selling them on Steam…”
Good point!
How can that be true if the game is available on so many other retail sites?
I hope GMG are at least selling it as a 2nd hand product. Anything else would be false advertising and very, very shady. It’s not at all unreasonable for CDPR to not sell to a competing digital distribution platform.
Perhaps CDPR just have something against GMG, lol.
Green Man Gaming isn’t a platform like Steam or GOG. They sell legitimate games that are unlocked on different platforms or standalone. I’ve bought games from them that don’t go through Steam or something and I’ve bought others that do go through Steam. The codes they are getting aren’t second hand either. They are bought from a reputable retailer and in the case of the Witcher 3, sold at a loss. They probably paid near full price for the game and are discounting it at a loss to themselves to provide a great service. CDPR is interested in promoting their new GOG platform so were too greedy to work out any deal.
Its GMG thats being dickish and greedy, bitching about how they cant get keys from CDPR and cant make a profit from witcher 3. Theres no reason why CDPR has to sell them keys…yes they would get a better profit, but they might have other objectives in mind
< col Hiiiiiii Friends….upto I saw the draft ov $8289 , I accept that my father in law woz trully earning money parttime from there labtop. . there moms best frend has been doing this for only about 8 months and recently cleard the mortgage on there house and purchased a new Dodge . linked here HERE’S MORE DETAIL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~j