All of us that bought retail versions are not going to be playing it on midnight the 10th of December 2020!!! As distributors will send it, so we get it on the 10th. If your mail is delivered at midday, like mine that's us installing the game 12 hours after all the digital purchasers installed it. And they'll probably be dozens of streamers already streaming it!

As GAME is the exclusive distributor for retail versions, either standard or collector's edition, CDPR should contact them and tell them they are okay with GAME getting the game to us on the 9th. I have left a support ticket on GAME asking for this, but I am not holding my breath. Midnight is probably the worse time to release a game, as in a way, midnight is the 9th AND the 10th!!!

We know. At least i hope everybody who ordered a physical version knows. This has been the case for every game release since they became digital. Nothing new and no, neither retailers nor CDP will give out retail keys out of their customer's boxes.

I don't mind waiting. The world will keep spinning, and I won't die as a result of having to wait a little longer to play a video game.

I personally would be just happy to be able to preload the files and then wait for activation via the retail key.
As someone who bought the CE it would be nice to have the option to do that at least.

That seems like a smart idea! Send out the discs with the big files that are not likely to change such as the music, textures, or whatever, but do not include any of the game code. Then you can run an installer that would put the files into the directories they will go into eventually, but that is it. Could that work?

I asked this on the CP2077 forums already but no one knew for sure so let me try again here:

Could we — in order to be able to preload — purchase a digital copy on GOG, preload, refund the digital version and once we get our codes from the physical version, use our code to then get it back so to speak? That way we would have the game already downloaded and get it to play immediately like everyone else.

Are there any official GOG representatives on this forum that I could ping to clarify this?

... It would be nice to think there are. But just in case, I sent a support ticket to GOG about it I think it would be easier just for CDPR to call the distributor and say "it's okay to send it to customers for the 9th"!

Nice; let us know if you hear back from them!

Your idea is a backup though! Why I didn't think about it, I don't know! You are obviously smarter than me! Although GOG doesn't do refunds, just puts credit in your wallet, don't they?

All over YT people already have the copy!

True I just meant some people are getting the physical copy.

Again, only console. All PC retail copies just have a CD-Key to download the game. Consoles have real disks.

Correction the ones I seen are Collectors editions.

They should just let retailers ship all PC pre-orders from Dec 7. There's no physical copy of the game inside the box, so what's the big deal anyway. But then of course the console players wouldn't be delighted, and they represent the majority of the market.

Still, there should be some better solution. I didn't pre-order partly because I didn't want to end up being in this situation.