Quote Originally Posted by The_Imp_ZA View Post
[MENTION=9032]StaggerLee[/MENTION]

Actually there's a lot of misinformation going on, plus language barriers. CDPR never said anything negative towards GMG. All they said were that they never authorized keys for them to sell.

CDPR had discussion with GMG, and what I'm assuming went down was that GMG wanted to sell some of the keys at a loss, using their promo codes, thus undercutting GOG and every other site that sells TW3 keys. CDPR said no, so GMG went and sourced keys from another place. They list Namco on their site, so they probably bought retail copies in bulk, as Namco is the European partner for retail copies, hence why they also say that the codes will only become available on launch day. They'll just take the GOG codes out the box, and send those to their buyers.

Which makes GMG hypocrites. That's the sort of behavior that authorized key resellers should not engage in. It's not illegal, but it's going against what CDPR wanted, and will no doubt ruin the relationship between them for future titles. It makes GMG no different to other unauthorized sellers, like G2A. CDPR, however, are receiving revenue from these sales, although not directly. Namco is probably the ones being paid, who'll in turn pay CDPR their cut, which will be significantly less than if people bought directly from GOG.

To use an analogy, let's say you want to buy some oranges from Woolworths. Woolworths asks you nicely not to sell them to anyone, only eat them yourself. So you say no, and buy some from Fruit and Veg instead. You sell at a loss, but everyone buys from you instead of Woolworths. Obviously you've now pissed off Woolworths, but the consumer doesn't care, because they've just saved money.

There is one caveat though. If Namco sold GOG codes to GMG directly, and not retail copies, they would be in violation of their agreement with CDPR, as it states that they can only sell retail copies. No doubt CDPR have bought some keys from GMG, to see where they came from. They'd have every right to deactivate them if this went down, or if they were sourced from a region where games are a lot cheaper, like Russia.

No one is really in the wrong here, but GMG are playing a dangerous game. They were not authorized to sell codes, so they shouldn't be.
I don't really feel strongly for or against either one, and the only negativity that I mentioned came from GMG's side.

It seems most likely that what you described is correct, that GMG bought retail codes in bulk from the distributor. I can't imagine that it's illegal though, even if it's a bit underhanded. The only reason that I can think of that CDPR would have for not giving the keys to online retailers other than GoG and Steam is to derive the maximum amount of profit from online sales, which is probably a bit short-sighted, but that's business for you.

It's definitely going to sour the relationship with GMG in future, and I'll bet that CDPR put stronger re-selling clauses into their contracts e.g. "not for resale via digital online distribution methods". In fact, if that line is not in their T&Cs for retail copies, they have overlooked a major problem where people could resell their GoG keys. Not that they can stop them anyway.

It's a bit of a weird situation and I would like to hear what is really going on from both sides.