CD Projekt’s (CDP) service has essentially flipped off Blizzard and its owner Microsoft, and in the process has slashed the price of both Warcraft.
On November 13, Blizzard suddenly released a remaster of Warcraft parts 1 and 2. A month later, on December 13, the DRM-free classic versions will be removed from GOG. But CDP doesn’t care: Until then, if you buy the two games, you can get them for $15, but if you use the code MakeWarcraftLiveForever, it’s $2 off, so you can pick up two Blizzard classics for $13.
Only Blizzard is selling the two games on Battle.net. Will the company take them off there, too, just to get everyone to buy the remaster (which is $40)? Probably yes. There are a few differences between the Battle.net and GOG versions. The GOG version of Warcraft 1 has an in-game configuration tool to make multiplayer easier, and the second part has a new DXWrapper to preserve the game’s original visual style at modern resolutions.
But GOG has also added the two Warcraft titles to its game preservation program we mentioned earlier! So even though you won’t be able to buy the games on the platform, the developers will make sure that they will still run perfectly even if you can’t buy them from them. This means that if something is added to the list of preserved games, it will stay there. So even if it’s a product that the Polish company can’t sell (or Microsoft’s armada of lawyers would hit CDP…), they don’t make money on it, but they do indirectly, because many people can choose the GOG versions of games over the Steam/Epic Games Store.
This is very fair of GOG, and as usual, a bastard move by Blizzard…
