Aye a Polish forumer posted this yesterday:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/cd_projekt_vs_namco_bandai_gog_com_geolocation

There is a Google translate of the court decision summary in one of the posts.

Essentially CDPR lost on XBOX distribution, lawyer and incidental fees, and GOG has to do forced geo-location IP when a customer buys Witcher 2. However, CDPR won on the DRM front - the court said they had the right to remove DRM.

I'll buy it in -6 months.

My guess is, that either GOG removes it (unlikely) or they do like the preorders, regional pricing and bonuses for those who paid more.

I was almost a jerk about my reply since I'm a little tired, too. In the words of Inigo Montoya, there is too much. Let me sum up.

In many international legal conflicts, there is an obligation to obey a supranational court, such as the UNSC. Because the member states in such a situation come from widely different backgrounds, they have to have a common ground on which to stand, legally speaking. I'm not linking things because I looked on Wikipedia for five minutes to be an internet tough guy. Check out, especially, the links *on the wikipedia pages* that will point to websites or actual books on the law as it applies in the EU.

I use common law because a lot of supernational law resembles common law more than it does, say, secondary and supplementary european law. I also know it better and can use it as a reference, since I'm from the USA where common law is prevalent.

But, come on. Did you really think I'd give you that many links and not bother to have any idea what I was talking about? You wound me to the quick.

Tangentially relevant to this, I bought Runaway: A Road Adventure from DotEmu last night (because they had a good special and I've wanted to try out that store for some time) after spending. Luckily I had already been corresponding with support for the last few days getting them to change their prices from Euro to Dollar because, according to their GeoIP system, I'm in Europe.

GOG's excuse for eschewing location systems and simply believing the customer is actually a genuine good reason.

We are on the internet...

As I was trying to say, it could be that they were using common law as "common ground law" (oh, the pun). But I find it highly unlikely as none of the parties involved have any common law background.

Anyway, without any evaluation on the things you said, I wasn't sure if you were using common law as a reference to international practice, or because you're just used to it in the US and transferred it to this case. Therefore I wanted to caution the pontential reader (and you).

A look in the other thread made me aware that the french subsidiary of Namco (SAS) was doing the litigation. I guess they used european/french trade law or, but they could have used common law.

It just happens a lot that "people of a certain nationality" think their rules apply everywhere. And sometimes Americans are like those people too ...

I've been caught with this, too. I took some law classes for my profession (just business law stuff - contracts and patents, mostly). And I've applied those specifics with some basics that I grew up with to situtations outside of the U.S. And then I was found to be wrong.

Law is so deeply embedded in our psyche and culture that it's difficult to understand others' laws sometimes.

I suppose that's a risk you run with international business, though. Things change depending upon where you're at. Quite often dramatically, too.

I'm from the USA...should I even be worried about anything? I don't see a straight forward answer here...should I just get it on Steam?

Just from past experiences, anyone who has already bought the game from gog shouldn't have to worry. Games that gog lost the rights to distribute, like Toca 3 etc, were all removed from the store but remain available on the shelf for redownload to those who purchased them. I doubt the witcher 2 will be any different.

As far as specifically the USA, I doubt the price would change at all since the pricing is already based off the USD. It's the other countries of the world who will likely feel the sting of namco bandai's pricing changes.

Indeed pb1866 has the right of it. People from the USA will not be affected. GOG still has the right to distribute the game but now they are forced to keep track of geo-IP when they do so - presumably to charge higher prices to those people where Namco is the seller. So those countries where Namco Bandai is the distributor will be affected, probably by higher prices (though hopefully GOG will try to offset that with a fair price package like extra GOG games), and even if Namco Bandai wasn't the distributor for Australia (I think they are), Australians would get affected anyway because geo-IP would force GOG to give them censored version of the game.

BUT Americans are not affected.

Okay thanks for the reply

Just for those who came late to the party...let me reiterate, USA IS NOT EFFECTED BY PRICE CHANGES OR CENSORSHIP

:)

:)

Hopefully there is a sunset clause on the contract Namco over distribution rights which will allow GOG to remove the geo-IP for The Witcher 2 sometime in the future for our affected brethren - i.e. when the game truly becomes a GOG.

Jurisdiction and choice of law and agreed upon by the parties contractually, which is most likely what they did (if their lawyers were any decent that is).
If not, then you get into a series of complex rules under the Brussels I regulation (or potentially applicable national laws if Namco Bandai does not have a representation in Europe, but it most likely will) and Rome I regulation for choice of law ( -||- )