Why is it releasing a day early on GOG and a day after on Steam, I do not understand, and steam wont refund my money to my wallet to buy it on GoG instead

Mwuhahaha, I'll be able to play it a day earlier than you!! :P Hehe!

It's maybe because GOG releases it earlier on the 19th than Steam does, and maybe their timezone is different too compared to each other (and to you). GOG releases it May 18th at 7 PM eastern time, but in their timezone it might be the 19th. For me (and I'm in eastern time zone), Steam usually doesn't release their games early on the release day, more like in the afternoon or evening.

Oh, yes, this "nice" Steam refund policy, once you've given us your money, you'd never get 'em back.

One day is not a big deal. Probably it happens because GOG is subsidiary of CDPR and this is a cute little bonus for GOG users. I'm not sure though.

I think this is just a timezone issue, Steam use their own time zone being about a day behind. I would expect the Steam version to unlock at the same time, or afew hours late at most.

I hope so, its bloody halfway through the day that it says it releases on steam, >.< and I took the whole day off work

looks like the opposite for me.. GoG is saying another 11 hours, and steam is down to an hour.