When shopping for games I don't just care about how good the game looks. I also do some detective work to find out who the money goes to. I will seldom buy even a fun looking game that's made by EA or Activision. I just don't want to give my hard earned cash to those assholes. Not even at 75% off.

However, some games I always buy at full price. They are typically games from independent teams with creative ideas and good customer service that I want to reward. It's not just altruism but a good investment as a consumer. With a company like Amanita or CDPR you know they will put the money to good use, not waste it on ferraris and pina colada for some stupid executive who only gets in the way of the real developers.

CDPR don't just have the best service of any big game company, they're also one of extremely few companies that are actually pushing PC gaming forward nowadays. They put out games that aren't just some shitty console port but take full advantage of the PC's power.

There's always the danger that some dumbass CEO will get the idea that you can make marginally more short term $$$ by fucking your customers. Especially now that they're a public company. But for now they're doing great.

As a gamer I want to reward CDPR for going above and beyond the call of duty. And I can't be the only one. The only problem is that there's no easy way to give them all your money! :D CDPR should enable fans to give them as much money as possible. Personally I'm never going to donate to a company. But I wouldn't mind giving a big tip.

This leads to the idea of Kickstarter-like 'pay what you want' for CDPR's next games. Thus when you buy The Witcher 3 you can pay $40 or whatever is the minimum price, or you can pay more. I for one wouldn't mind paying double for TW3, and judging by Kickstarter there are probably some rich nutters out there with $10,000 or more to spare.

To me this sounds like a good way for CDPR to make more money without hurting customer satisfaction. And if they make a lot of money from tips, it would send a message to the industry that it pays to not be a dick. What do you think?

Just buy them here, GOG is a sister company and thus gives them the biggest profit margin. If you want to give them more money, just buy some more copies of The Witcher 1 & 2 here and host some giveaways.

I think CDPR would have a hard time looking for publisher of their boxed copies that way, and I don't think boxed copies are such a small market that they could ignore it. Just do what EC- said, all money you spend on GOG go straight to CD-Project.

Why not just buy two copies of The Witcher 3?

Sorry if it wasn't clear but I'm talking about GOG sales only. Dunno why but I have some weird psychological thing against that. It would be easier for me to just say how much I want to tip, and for others too I'm sure. I believe they would get more money if they added a tip option. It would get them more PR with the whole online discussion about the novelty of it, and stuff like what's a proper tip (20%, like with a restaurant?) and would also let them catch those super rich fans who could easily spend $20,000 on their fave company but are not interested in buying 500 copies. People are more likely to spend more if there's a screen asking 'how much do you want to pay?', don't you think?

They could also offer rewards for big tippers like with Kickstarter. No separate editions of the game itself, but stuff like artbooks, custom made swords (for the highest tiers), and a making-of documentary.

Well yes, I know, that's precisely the problem. CDPR can't do whatever they please on GOG, for instance, they have decided to lift region restrictions and got sued for that. I'm sure that a deal with publisher also says they can't sell the game for cheaper than ... for certain period.

Why not start some giveaways? That's a god way to "tip" both them and the community.

They should have a done a digital collector's edition, those are basic just huge profit boosters. I would have bought it.

They have, that's what a standard edition was called :D

Yes I know, but as it was $50 it is not at all what I suggested.

I'm talking about

-CDPR games only, no other developers
-You can't pay less than base price, only more

How will that get them in trouble?

People are asking in the Project Fedora backers forum if there is a way that people can "pass" on their backing rewards to save them (BFG) money (i.e. to make their donation bigger). The standard answer seems to be that it will essentially be more trouble to attempt this than it would save in doing it.

The number of people that would want to donate to a for-profit company is very small. Kickstarter is a great place when you don't have the capital to begin with. When you do have the capital, I don't think kickstarter is needed or helpful.

Options exists for those that want to help make a company successful:

Buy stocks.
Buy the product.
Spread good word of mouth.

What I foresee is that they will look into your idea, evaluate the pros and cons and determine that putting a model in place that allows overbuying would cost more than the extra money it would bring in. In other words, they would likely assume that you can just keep buying the game if you want to give more, which not only gives them the money, but it boosts sales figures and helps in ways that money can't buy when dealing with future publishers and distributors.

CDPR doesn't publish their games, they contract with other companies like Atari to do that. In their distribution agreements, the publisher can prevent them from doing anything that might undercut sales at all locations, including giving any kind of incentive to buy the game at GOG as opposed to other sites/stores. It is entirely possible that offering an option like "pay extra to support further CDPR development, exclusively at GOG" would be seen as one of those incentives and be blocked.

I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way sometimes, for example, when LGP ported X3 to Linux. I asked them if I could pay a bit more because the price didn't reflect the value to me.

PWYW has shown to be a great system.. why not reap the benefits and just have that with the usual selling price as the minimum? Everything works the same.. but you might get just a little bit more profit. And you get extra information too. There may be fewer people who like game X, but they are all willing to pay more to see a sequel or more games of that type? It'll be really obvious!