I ask because i saw the witcher sale email and i was interested in purchasing from gog. But i also heavily use steam as my gaming hub.
i want to support gog along side steam because they're both bringing old games back at cheap prices. But i also hate not having steam keep track of what i own. (I hardly play the other games ive bought simply because they arent in my steam library)

I want to buy the witcher from gog, but i also want the game in my steam list.
to do that i need a cd key from gog to tell steam "yes i own this".
so, does gog give me a cd key with each purchase, or is it "you bought from us and we're the only ones who'll know"?

You get no Steam CD keys from GOG, you can however get keys for multiplayer games if they need it (for example for Sacrifice).

So to answer your question:
If you want the Witcher on Steam, you have to buy it there. GOG does not give out a key for it.

No, unfortunately you cannot activate GOG games on Steam. However, if you buy The Witcher 2 on Steam you also get a copy on GOG.

The bloody all that everyone is saying.

If you gift a game they give you a key to give someone. And some games have multiplayer content that require a CD key. But, since everything on this site is digital and direct download there's nothing required to actually install the game. Witcher 2 might be different but I'm not sure.

IMO GOG has been spearheading the return of older games, Steam saw an opportunity for money and like any company went for it. But that is sod all to do with this and the ramblings of a semi drunk me.

To answer your question. As others have said, No.

Spindown has pointed out that buying via steam gets the game on GOG as-well but id also like to point out that more cash goes to CDPR (the dev's) if you buy via GOG and you can add the game to your steam launcher, The game isnt actually on your account but can be accessed through it.

The automatic key system seems to be in place already, but not active for all games yet.
Heroes V has serial numbers on its shelf/list infobox. So, yes, while one has to ask support for the keys of other games yet, there is ongoing work to make it automatic.

As stated you don't get steam keys.

You can add non-steam keys to your library to keep track of your games though. They just don't get steam features such as achievements, hours played, etc.

I'm a bit surprsised that with the update to the site that they haven't implemented an automated request for those keys. I don't need or particularly want those keys, but it seems better to have it automatically even if sometimes they run out of keys. Your loss. But, I'm curious as to why GOG would provide, and pay for, access to a competitor's service.

This sort of dependence on Steam is definitely something that concerns me as it makes it that much harder for people with better products to make headway in the market.

Personally, I keep all my downloads in a games folder organized by store. If you need more than that, it's easy enough to find a program to track the games there.

Ok.. maybe I'm off target here, but I buy from Steam and GOG.... I don't think there is any such thing as a "Steam key"... I've added games to the steam library that I've bought from another source that comes with a CD key for multiplayer usually... I've added the game to the steam library, and as long as the CD key is valid for the game, it has always worked for me.... in fact , you can add pretty much any game to the steam library and launch it from within steam as long as you can direct steam to the path and specify the exectuable that runs the game... just saying....

It's not particularly Steam related. I see the same mentioned here on GOG as well. People preferring to keep their games together on GOG rather than buy them on some developer site (despite that giving more money to the developer). Same with Origin.

Plenty of games have Steam keys, like the ones you get from bundles. I guess the request here is to get one of those that allow you to add it to Steam, at least from the developers who are known to have those.

He already mentioned he knows about the adding to Library thing but I personally also agree it doesn't work that well for keeping your library together, especially for those with a mind that's not quite that great in organizing ^^ It works of course. You buy the game, download it, install it. Add it to the game library, and it sits there just like the rest... until you uninstall. Which is already different since just removing the link doesn't uninstall it yet, you still have to do it manually. That aside. Once you did that... it's gone. It's not there in the list anymore, and for some of us, that leads to a bigger likelyhood we'll simply forget about it over time, especially since the library is the first place we look, and usually we find something there to entertain us already before looking somewhere else.

I could be wrong, but I think that makes somewhat more sense with GOG as it's at least DRM free, whereas opting out of DRM free goodness to go with Steam makes no sense to me. Personally, I buy here because I already shop here, often times I just don't hear about the games when they're on the developers site and it never really occurs to me to check.

I'll admit that this is one thing I do like about Steam, they help organize the games and keep them up to date. Personally, I'd rather spend a few minutes sorting my games when I download them and put them in folders based primarily on the site I got them from and the game. But, it's nice with Steam and the new GOG downloader that it does a lot of that for you once you set it up.

This is the precise reason why i asked.
I was not a computer gamer until steam did all the hard work for me.
if the gog downloader could become a steam-esque program I'd be able to tolerate it slightly more. I'd jump up and down for the games that arent in steams library if that happened, but the game in question here IS in steams library.

And the second thing i love about steam is its willingness to go "yeah you own that game, heres a digital copy" if you feed it a cd key. That means i could buy a new game n a walmart bundle to save money, come home, add the key, and have steam do all the organizational work for me.

And yes, while Steam IS technically drm, its such a light drm that its practically no different from gog.
Gog: log in, yes you own this game you can download it yourself, play it by launching it yourself
steam: log in, yes you own this game i'll DL it for you, play it by telling me you want to

the only difference is steam needs to be online for a few moments every time it starts up while gog requires you to be online, once, to make sure you can download the game.

But I'm not here to say one is better than the other. I just came back to check the topic and give my 2 cents.
imo, gog would get more sales if it had the capability to hand out cd keys along with the purchases.

I'll keep it short and sweet.

We don't have a Steam like client here because it's a tremendously bad idea. I regularly lose access to my games on Steam due to the unreliability of the internet here. It's one thing to have a client check to see if there's a patch and quite another to have it randomly look and refuse to let you play until it's satisfied that it's up to date.

Plus, GOG can't take back your entire catalog of games, something that Valve is well known for. Just google for it if you don't believe me.