Insofar as GoG stands, however, I am pretty shocked that they pulled this one given their explicit stance beforehand. I have no issue with GoG changing their policy, and in fact think that it is a good idea all things considered, at least when it comes to big games like The Witcher 3, but I dislike the underhanded manner in which they pulled this one off. It smells a little too much like EA for my tastes.

Saying that, both GoG and CD Project Red have been champions of PC gaming for a good while now. The first two Witcher games were great DRM free titles and I have every hope that the third will be the same. I\m going to hope that this matter is a case of a small misstep by GoG rather than anything more serious. They’ve an excelent track record so I guess its best to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Putin loves him some DRM free Sacrifice multiplayer, it’s true. He’s such a Frostwolf rusher though.

They state in point 2 that customers affected adversely by regional pricing will get store credit to compensate. Presumably that means those who’ve pre-ordered TW3 will get a beefy bonus of c. £30 to spend in store?

I doubt it.

Thanks for highlighting this latest development.

So are you saying GOG pricing structure in Russia is about appeasing Putin to stop him invading Poland?

I’d be very interested to see how regional pricing correlates to piracy for different countries such as Canada, Australia, China, Russia etc. My bet would be that fit very closely. More evidence of this is that alot of free to play games are first rolled out in Russia, such as the new Halo online game.

Mine is still in GOG account, but I live next to Ukraine, so maybe they thought I might have visited the country or what…

I don’t have the kind of data or insight into their politics, I don’t know how big those markets are compared to europe so i can’t really say anything.
But…
Like i’ve mentioned russia is our neighbour, their problems are more immediate to us and whether you talk about the general popultion, politicians or businessman, we all care about what’s going to happen over the border. I do believe that to discuss this subject you’d need a greater understanding of the politics between our nations. We don’t know much about asia and care even less what happens in africa, but when putin farts in pur direction evryone is talking about it (slight hyperbole).
If it were any other european country i would agree with you, but i still believe that in this case you have jumped the shark

Sorry but that is simply BS. They have never stated all DLC will be free. NEVER. It’s one of those bad headlines that got circulated and everyone ate it up as fact.

They said such small cosmetic DLCs will be free and that only bigger content that they feel is worth it will be charged. I remember this because I have waited many years hoping an expansion to Witcher 2 came out since they made that statement.

I can’t find the original 2011/12 articles but I did find this from 2 years ago.

“We could sell extra content to gamers down the road, but we don’t believe in that. Only something really big, and something that will not make you feel ripped off, justifies a price tag. If we ever decide to charge you for something, we think you will appreciate what you get in return.”

– Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, July 2013
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/07/29/witcher-3-dev-doesn-39-t-want-to-sell-you-extra-content.aspx

Was coming here to say the exact same thing. The Witcher 3’s requirements may not be extremely high, but you still need a beefy system to run it decently. So if you can buy such a system, you can pay the same price as the rest of us imo.

Australia and Canada have it worst, their pricing is shameful.

The same is evident into the Chinese market too. Generally regions with very high piracy rates seem to get lower prices in order to convince people to buy legit copies so people if you want lower prices to your region start pirating heavily 😛

But do you not see this is true of many other countries that they do not give preferential treatment too? The argument you have outlined would be a much stronger position if they also charged countries in poorer Asian and African nations lower prices, rather than simply charging the same as in the USA.

I am Polish, I might be biased

Yes, it was definitely removed from my account. The payment was still taken though. So I’m basically paying £11 extra for Witcher 3 now, on top of the regional pricing crap. Thanks GOG!

Yeah, but question is what they mean by DLC.
Many companies release endless amounts of skins and such and feel fine charging for it – CD Project decided not to, good for us. The pass is supposed to be two pieces of DLC that are going to be lengthy (30 hours apparently). You shouldn’t be calling it DLC, you should be comparing it with Reaper of Souls.
I hate when people call others entitled because most don’t seem to understand what that word means, but it does apply here. You can’t expect to get 16 or something pieces of DLC for free and complain that now they’ve decided to make a paid expansion on top of that.
Just for comparison the DLC for DA:I is something like £15, the season pass for Destiny is a whooping £35
CD Project intends to keep it’s word and is still ahead of the others and somehow people still complain…

I’m Polish… i might be biased.

They didn’t take any action beyond the email. Their response was actually pretty toothless.

That would make more sense, especially as those publishers appear to be handling retail distribution of the PC version as well.

If it weren’t for the fact that CDProjekt developed the game I’d assume it simply wouldn’t have appeared on GoG at all (due to incompatibility between their policies and regional publishing agreements).

If this is the case, I imagine that the blame lies more with crossplatform publishers/distributors they are working with than platform holders.