The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is on sale for pre-order at £32.49 / $38.99 at
Green Man Gaming, a 35 per cent discount off its retail price of £49.99 / $59.99.
However, there is peculiar controversy surrounding this sale that makes developer CD Projekt Red unhappy.
You see, purchasing The Witcher 3 from Green Man Gaming gives players keys to snag the game on CD Projekt Red's own DRM-free platform
GOG, yet the developer didn't sell these keys to Green Man Gaming.
"I would kindly ask our fans not to buy via GMG at this time. We had not sold them keys and dont know the origin of them," said business development manager Rafał Jaki on the game's
official forums. A representative from the developer told
Gamespot that none of the revenue from the GMG sales of The Witcher 3 would go to the CDPR.
So what's going on here? Turns out Green Man Gaming couldn't solidify a distribution deal with CDPR directly, so it had to purchase codes from official vendors elsewhere, the retailer explained to Eurogamer. As such, the developer still made money off these codes earlier in the distribution chain.
Here's Green Man Gaming CEO Paul Sulyok's full statement on the matter:
Green Man Gaming (GMG) has an official contract with, and has been an approved retailer of CD Projekt S.A. (CDPR) products since 11th August 2011. Following a six month dialogue with CDPR 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 at GMG sincerely believe in getting games to gamers, and offering them a range of buying options to suit their preferences is critically important to this industry; we often go above corporate profits and commercial gain to make this happen. 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. To do this, we reached out to third parties and retailers that were approved by CDPR, to legitimately pass these keys onto our customers. This means that at some point, revenue has been passed directly onto CDPR, and any additional discount on the title is absorbed by us, as we want as many people enjoying The Witcher 3 as possible.
We would heartily welcome a renewed dialogue with CDPR, and are keen to continue to not only support the launch of The Witcher 3, but to keep celebrating and bringing the whole catalogue of CDPR titles to a worldwide audience, as we have done since 2011.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will release on 19th May for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
