I know. But I mentioned treatment of customers above (Botanicula, freebies, forward warning, so forth) and it was deemed irrelevant. Trust me, I agree with Knee despite how it sounds, even if I don't personally see it as an issue.

Well, those people wouldn't be buying it here in the first place and giving a Steam key won't make them change their minds.

Which is again not the issue :)

There are many users who use both gog and steam, and this move from GoG happened some time after Witcher 2 was released. There may have been other reasons to buy on gog at the time, but the lessoned learned is that it is best not to buy it here next time. Not sure if this was the lesson they wanted to give.

I can't fault GOG or CD Projekt.

The only people I can see this being an issue for, is people moving from GOG to Steam.

Steam supporters would buy the game on Steam.

GOG supporters would buy the game on GOG.

Those gamers who are more concerned about price than whether the game needs a client or not, will buy the game at whichever store is cheaper and accept the consequences.

Gamers moving from Steam to GOG get rewarded with a GOG key. And this to me is the crux of the matter. The more people who are encouaged to move to GOG mean that Steam is losing it's strangehold on the PC gaming market. And that's something I support. I don't want Steam exclusives becoming the norm.

As for expecting GOG to reward people for abandoning it in favour of Steam by giving them a free Steam key, this would not make tactical sense to me.

I suppose I could admit that Steam users are getting an advantage over me provided I would be able to buy the game on Steam for less than I could on GOG, and I wouldn't have to install Steam to be able to buy the game or obtain the GOG key.

^This. To me it was a sensible move by GOG to snag new people. Basically, you have Steam. And Steam has a ton of customers. Quite a few of those people don't even know GOG exists. A lot of people bought the Witcher. GOG essentially then said, "oh hey, all you people, here's an awesome site full of things Steam doesn't carry and by the way YOU ALREADY HAVE STUFF THERE. Just sitting there, waiting for you! Not only do you have the Witcher but you also have like 9 other freebies. You should check it out. Toodles." Which is a brilliant business move.

When you break it all down it has absolutely nothing to do with fairness. After all we are owed nothing from either CDP or GOG. It is all about a business making money. What I would like to know is 1. How many Steam Keys were redeemed for the GOG "Backup Copy" and 2. of those accounts how many have actually purchased more games. That's all they need to determine if what they did was in any way profitable and generated any long term patronage. For those who fell unfairly treated - sorry you feel that way but you are starting to sound like whinney, privileged, Americans. I hadn't thought such things had spread throughout the rest of the world. ;-)

Not anymore than that GOG didn't compensate the people who had paid money for Fallout 1, as suddenly anyone could get it for free. Yeah, I guess that was "unfair" too.

Not anymore than that the people who are "loyal to Steam" do not get the extra DRM-free installers or Android-versions that they would get for buying the same indie games from Humble Store. Yet, no one is blaming Valve for it and demanding them to retroactively fix it, by offering the missing parts to "loyal Steam customers".

Addressed earlier, tired of repeating myself and not going to bother anymore

ibid

LOL! No, you only said this: Ummm, same thing. "Don't buy from GOG, because later they might offer the game for free!". Yes, both arguments are equally stupid, something about it not being "fair" that someone else happened to get what he perceived as a better deal.

You are demanding something from GOG that no other similar DD service/publisher is doing either, for a very good reason. Smells like trolling at this point.

I am not the one doing the trolling right now. I am tired of repeating myself, and I happily let this thread sleep.

You can feel so superior on me, you won the thread, congratulations.