All hell broke loose earlier today when CD Projekt RED warned its fans not to buy via GreenManGaming. A lot of controversy surfaced, and GreenManGaming has issued an official statement that can be read below. But will those keys from GMG get people banned? According to CD Projekt RED’s Business Development Manager, Rafal Jaki, GMG might still sell keys that will work.
But let’s take things from the beginning. Earlier today, CD Projekt RED noticed a special promo that GMG runs for The Witcher 3, offering this highly anticipated RPG for 40 bucks.
CD Projekt RED warned its fans and claimed that it has not sold any digital keys to GMG. GMG then issued the following statement, explaining the situation:
“Green Man Gaming has an official contract with, and has been an approved retailer of CD Projekt S.A. (CDPR) products since 11th August 2011. Following a 6 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.”
But what most people wonder is whether it is safe to buy the game from GMG or not. Well, according to Rafal Jaki, if these keys were bought from official online stores that partner with CDPR – like GOG – then GMG can sell them. If, however, these keys were not obtained via such a way, then these keys are not allowed to be sold.
As Rafal Jaki said:
“We have worked with GMG in the past for w2 and they were a legit partner.
We control all digital and the codes, and because we decided not to sell Keys to GMG it came as a suprise that they are doing a special promo without buying Keys from us. We have reach out to ask for the source of they Keys but up until now there was no response. They might sell nVidia Keys (which are not to be sold but gifted with the nVidia promo), or they just bough Keys from gog just like a regular customer and now they resell them with a loss (we cannot prevent anyone from selling something).
They also list Bandai Namco as the published which is not true for w3 (namco is our box distributor in PAL), so GMG is not a CDPR partner for W3 but they still might sell Keys that will work.”
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Conspiracy Theory:
The only logical conclusion is that Bandai Namco gave some keys intended for boxed release to GMG at a discount, without CDPR knowing about it.
Bandai Namco even claimed yesterday that boxed versions of Project Cars (PC) in Australia were damage due to rain. I think those boxed versions never even existed and those keys will be sold to third party retailers at a discounted price.
Bandai Namco is not the only one doing this, its probably all the publishers are doing this kind of smart business and the PC gamers (me included) think they are so clever to find these cheap deals and end up buying hundreds of games and playing only a small portion of them.
Yeah IDK what to do, I bought a code from gmg yesterday, and see this today. Think I’m going to wait a day or two and ask for a refund and get the actual code from gog.
Don’t worry the code is legit, the only issue could be was it used by someone else before you or not. But since it is verified by a reputable third party retailer like GMG it is going to work 100% for sure.
They probably bought boxed versions from Ukraine (which only cost $15 USD) and are reselling the keys for a profit.
No big deal, they’ll just buy it from someone else.
Glad I bought mine on Steam to avoid confusion.
Ah you got to love it when the so called official digital distributors are forced to revert to G2A/Kinguin tactics when they are cut out of the loop.
This is a golden moment.
Don’t worry about your keys they will work.
This game is dirt cheap on G2A, $33 by my last check. I would equate this to there being so many keys floating around right now because of the free codes given with GTX graphics cards. I do client builds as well as recently buying a pair of 980’s for myself so I had 9 codes at one point. I had trouble actually giving them away.
I would rather buy DRM free versions anyway which GMG doesn’t even offer. Even their non steam games must be downloaded from their capsule program last I saw.
The keys GmG offer is DRM free, as they are just for the GoG store, and most of their games are just keys, no download needed.