Retail site Green Man Gaming is offering an impressive pre-order deal on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt right now, selling the highly anticipated fantasy RPG for just $39, but the game’s developer CD Projekt Red isn’t too happy about it. The studio is accusing GMG of selling keys from an unknown source that hasn’t been officially verified.
”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,” CD Projekt Red’s business development Manager Rafal Jaki wrote on the game’s forum.
For its part, GMG has responded by accusing CD Projekt of ignoring their regular retail partners in an attempt to drive traffic through GOG.com, its own platform.
“Following a 6 month dialogue with CDPR about the launch of The Witcher 3,” GMG writes, “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.”
The retailer admits it “made the decision to indirectly secure the product”, though it didn’t name its third party source. Wherever the codes were sourced from (and the retailer insists they were from a source approved by CD Projekt), GMG maintains that revenue has been passed directly onto CD Projekt, and any additional discount has been absorbed by itself.
It’s all a bit unpleasant. GMG, a company that’s generally seen as a perfectly up-front and reliable retailer, says that it’s more than willing to re-negotiate with CD Projekt, but given that the studio has specifically warned customers against purchasing from them, I would assume that’s unlikely to bear fruit. Meanwhile, a CD Projekt moderator warned that whose purchasing from unverified sources “will have no recourse, not against CDPR, not against GOG, nothing this forum can help you with.”
We’ll keep an eye on the situation, and follow up on any further developments. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due out on May 19, for PC and consoles.
