...why isn't the sale echoed here on GOG? I already bought the game, so this isn't a complaint at all. It just seems absolutely backwards.

....what?

He's talking about Steam. And it's only 20% off in the US. EU and UK don't get the discount.

Steam's sale not in Southeast-Asia as well I believe. One of Steam's own US-only sales, and for a game that just came out, probably to recoup loss of sales due to their 9GB patch download?

At first I was going to say that doesn't make sense because large patches aren't enough to make someone not buy a game, but I guess that's enough to make them buy the game from someone else, at least.

Yep, that's what I was going for. Otherwise Steam hardly ever drops the price on triple-A titles so early into release.

It is a E3 sale in the US only

Quite an ASSumption and speculative opinion!!

How so? Already comments are all over forums about how places geographically around the US as well as those not so but using US pricing have not gotten the sale.

The sale also kicked in around the time that the patch rolled out and many complaints arising in both forums and Twitter about Steam's exclusively huge patch (especially compared with other versions).

Plus the fact that there has NEVER been a triple-A title that had went on a 20% sale in it's first month of sale on Steam.

Might want to share your views or you might come out looking like the one who is ASSuming things.

Just saw it at Gamestop here for $39.00

Yea, looks like US cause its an E3 promo in Los Angeles?? Who knows maybe because of the high tax rate in other countries we finally get a break!! Maybe you'll get more free games from GOG to compensate (but do you deserve it?). joke

1) To my understanding the compensation for exchange ratesis mainly for the European countries as they often gets the shorter end of the stick. (I might be wrong on this though, but to my recollection that's what GOG stated previously) The rest of us (I'm in Asia), still gets it at the standard US pricing. (at current rates, $49.99 translate to about $61 in local currency here)

2 and 3) I've considered this argument (E3 sale) as I have seen it online, but from what I recalled, there has never been an E3 sale for such a new title. Of course with all things, there is always a first that sets precedence for the rest, so I cannot rule it out completely, but IMO I don't think it was the reason. For a start, IIRC Steam's previous E3 sale included multiple titles. In 2010 they even had a themed event where each day featured a certain theme and the sale of titles that featured the theme. There seemed to be none of that this year; unless you count the Ubisoft Week sale that just went by, but then Witcher 2 was not an Ubisoft title.

4) It seems I have jumped to conclusions, and I sincerely apologize as well.

5) I couldn't quite tell whose security system you meant here (GOG, CDPR or Steam's)

6) Statistically Asia as a region does appear to have a much higher rate of IP piracy, and I assume that your point was that it did not offer the title at a sale so as to recoup losses in the Asian region that were lost due to piracy. I won't rule this out (it's hard to know what exactly are going through the heads of these business folks sometimes), though I have certain points to raise regarding the validity of this possibility. For one, increasing your prices in a market known for piracy isn't likely to help things; rather, it has a tendency to make things worse. It is for this reason that in recent years, Microsoft, as well as other software companies have lowered the overall prices of their products, and even offered chances for users of pirated copies to "convert" to legitimate licences at a reduced price. From what I heard, countries such as China that are known to have very high piracy rates of Microsoft products even gets substantially reduced pricing compared to the rest of the world in order to entice users to "go legitimate". The other thing has to do with the general behaviour of game publishers. There are many titles on Steam that ARE currently US-only on Steam, even though they can be found perfectly easily in retail chains in other countries. Even weirder still, is that there are often US-only "packs" that Steam sells that is not offered in other countries - even if the components in the pack are. For example, the Splinter Cell Echelon pack (can't remember its exact name) is not offered to Singapore Steam users, yet each game inside the pack can be bought individually or in other "packs" (such as the Splinter Cell collection) by us. Some of these titles or packs do become available later on (e.g. the Rockstar collection that JUST became available sometime early this year or late last year), but they are often US-only for a time - even though many such games were here in retail stores, even before its Steam release.

There are a few places in the US that are having a sale on The Witcher 2. Steam, Direct2drive, and Gamestop are all having the sale.

Nothing to do with a 9GB download patch.

Well, there has to be a reason not only as to why the sale is only in the US, but why is there a sale to begin with of a game that was just released 2 weeks ago and for all intends and purposes is a success. For example I just got New Vegas for one of my kids. Steam has it for $50.00. Retail is $20.00. So there has to be a reason behind the sudden price drop on a just-released AAA game.

... maybe sales dropped substantially after the xbox announcement :)