Dude, that logic is pure madness. Not releasing a game for that reason on Steam would simply mean being a stupid dick and it would just hurt both sides, especially CDP. CDP has to make money with its games and they definitely make much more money releasing their games also on Steam so it's the right call. The amount of money they would gain by omitting Steam would not ever compensate for the wasted sales due to all the users who don't want to buy games from other distributors.

Also: who the fuck wants to directly harm another company just because it's in a similar business? That's psychotic. Especially if by doing so you would mostly harm yourself. The wasted Witcher 2 sales would have had massive consequences for CDP while being a minor bitchslap for Valve. Not to mention that CDP just doesn't seem to be a company that operates this way (unlike say EA). CDP was much more clever (and friendly) than that by giving every Steam user who bought Witcher 2 a free copy on GOG.

You know how EA refused to sell Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 on Steam, and were raked over the coals for it by the very sizable Steam fanbase despite the fact that these are massively popular franchises?

Now picture that, except with a game that has a tiny fraction of the aforementioned games' marketing budgets to sway the boycotters. Do you think CDPR has the critical and commercial clout to convince a Steam user to make a new account for the privilege of paying $50 for their game?

What they did instead was genius: they let you register your Steam code on GOG for a limited time. Very savvy way to expand the GOG user base.

EDIT: mildly ninja'd by waiting too long to reply, apparently.

All well and good, but Valve won't release their games on GOG.

Because:
1. They own the most popular platform for digital distribution themselves.
2. Their own products are popular enough to serve as killer apps for Steam (plus most of their target audience already has a Steam account).
3. Their company ideology is a different one with the goal of being the most successful game company ever, not just a successful company.

Thanks, I wasn't aware that GOG was running the same concept as Steam. A friend of mine just let me know about this site and it has a lot of the old games I used to play and love.

- T.