Aelius28: I've been wanting to get the Witcher 3 for a while now, and I'd like to do so on GOG to fight against Steam's monopolization of PC gaming distribution.
However, it's rather discouraging to see that it would cost me CAD
67.24 on GOG while it would only cost me CAD
29.99 on Steam.
Not sure where you're getting that from. I bought The Witcher 3 for approx $37 USD on GOG during pre-release and it's been sold for $23.99 USD to Canada on several sales promos in the last few months. If your bank is charging you $40+ exchange rate, find a new bank. :)
If you look at the GOG catalogue and filter for The Witcher 3 you will find:
- The Witcher 3 game
- The Witcher 3 Expansion Pass (includes both expansion packs, only one is released currently)
- The Witcher 3 game + Expansion Pass
- The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone expansion (part of the expansion pass)
- The Witcher 3 free DLC pack (16 DLC).
All prices shown on the GOG website are in USD for Canadian users and American users alike however the actual price shown for games is supposed to vary as GOG eats the exchange rate difference for some games in the catalogue of which The Witcher 3 stuff is all included. Unfortunately, GOG has a bug in their website at least for Canadian users which will cause Canadians to be shown the incorrect American price as if they lived in the United States. So you might see the correct lower price in USD for the game titles, or the incorrect higher price depending on whether you experience the bug or not, which unfortunately is random in nature and does not happen every time, so the price will fluctuate eventually on a page reload. You can however tell if you're getting the right price by examining your browser cookies for the gog.com website and look for the one named "gog_lc", it should be set to CA_USD_en for Canada, and US_USD_en for the USA. If you ever see it set to US_USD_en and you are in Canada on a Canadian ISP then you'll get incorrect prices shown to you. They incorrect prices are roughly equal to the exchange rate, so about 25% higher at the moment.
Having said that, the game is currently regularly priced (not on sale) so you'll see the regular prices. If some other store has it on sale then naturally their price will be lower than GOG's regular price and no, GOG will not price match it (nor will any other company do this for any games either). If you want the GOG version of the game, then wait until GOG puts it on sale again which happens about at least once every 4-8 weeks if not more than that. In Canada, GOG's sale prices have been cheaper than any other prices I've seen for the game being purchased from a legitimate authorized dealer (The CD Projekt RED website lists all of the official authorized sellers, anyone not on the list for The Witcher 3 is not authorized to sell it.)
I'm in Canada, and right now The Witcher 3 is listing on Steam for $29.99 CAD on a 50% off sales promotion, with the game being regularly $59.99.
The price I am seeing on the GOG website for the game right now is $59.99 USD, which is indeed more expensive than Steam however the GOG website is currently showing me the wrong price due to their never ending bug that is annoying the living crap out of me with pricing, showing me the US_USD_en price instead of the CA_USD_en price.
Deleting the gog_lc cookie forcibly using CookieMonster and reloading the page now gives me the current Canadian price for the game as:
- The Witcher 3 game ($46.99 USD)
- The Witcher 3 Expansion Pass (includes both expansion packs, only one is released currently) ($19.99 USD)
- The Witcher 3 game + Expansion Pass ($66.99 USD)
- The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone expansion (part of the expansion pass) ($7.99 USD)
Depending on the exchange rate, fees, and any taxes your payment processor may charge/process, the regular price of the game might be higher or lower than Steam, but in general it should be lower from what I've found unless someone has a crappy payment processor that charges through the wazoo.
$46.99 USD + 25% == $58.73 CAD which is slightly lower than Steam's regular price. The last GOG sale price for the base game was $23.49 (50% off).
If you're impatient buy it wherever you find the best deal right now. If owning it on GOG is important, wait 1-6 weeks and grab it on sale, probably during the March Break mega Spring Sale Insane Madness Sale(TM). :)