FREE --> The Witcher: Enhanced Ed Director's Cut (requires Ars Technica account)

[steve58]

Please note that this giveaway is only running for the next 48 hours as of the publication of this post. We can't just give away codes forever, but for the next two days we've got as many codes as there are people who want them. You can check the fancy timer in the sidebar for how much time is left. Note that in order to prevent bots from taking codes, you must first create an Ars account and be logged into it in order to claim a Witcher code.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/ars-and-gog-two-great-tastes-that-go-great-together/

[steve58]

update:

Apologies, all—this is proving to be popular so far beyond what we'd projected that we need to take a bit and reassess how we're handling the codes. We'll resume the giveaway in the next hour or so once we've got a better method in place!

...not sure what they'll be doing now.  Just keep checking the link I guess.

[mirth]

I couldn't create an account. Their servers must be getting crushed by new account creations.

[mirth]

Latest update:

All righty, the code giveaway is back on. Right now we're having to limit it to existing Ars accounts only, since many thousands of bots trying to simultaneously register for Ars accounts was killing the site pretty hard. We've got registration temporarily disabled for now, but we'll re-enable it shortly once we have another workaround in place. Who knew that the word "free" could cause so much chaos?

[mirth]

More info:

Lee Hutchinson Senior Technology Editor

OKAY. Things should be a little more stable now and codes should once again be get-able.

Quick notes:

1) We're still limiting this to logged-in users

2) We've temporarily disabled new user registration in order to combat the multiple-thousands-per-second of registration attempts that was making the backend weep (massive simultaneous user registration isn't typically something you design for, and it's a use case that we're not really set up to handle well due to all of the non-cacheable stuff that has to happen)

3) We're working on more ways to smooth this out

4) New user reg will be re-enabled shortly (i.e., at some point in the next few hours as of the timestamp on this message) once we implement some more workarounds

All in all it's been a fun morning.

[Toonces]

Are there really that many people that don't have this?  It's been on sale multiple times for practically pennies hasn't it?

[mirth]

I have the disk version. Be nice to add it to my GOG library.

Anyway, it sounds like the issue for Ars was the number of bots hitting the reg page.

[Toonces]

Yeah, I checked and it's $10 normal price on Steam, so I'm sure it's been discounted down to $5 or less.  I guess free is free, but still.  Not worth having thousands of bots doing whatever they do for whatever reason they'd do it.

I've never even heard of that site that's advertising the game.

[Gusington]

I have an ancient disk copy so I grabbed a code earlier this morning. My copy of Witcher 3 is on GOG so I am hoping I don't have any issues.

[mirth]

Yeah, I checked and it's $10 normal price on Steam, so I'm sure it's been discounted down to $5 or less.  I guess free is free, but still.  Not worth having thousands of bots doing whatever they do for whatever reason they'd do it.

I've never even heard of that site that's advertising the game.

You've never heard of Ars Technica? Nerd card revoked!

[Gusington]

It's either that or he never heard of GOG 💩

[mirth]

It's either that or he never heard of GOG 💩

Lol. That's possible too.

[Toonces]

I was buying games on GoG before you guys were born.  But that Ars site is a new one for me. 

Turns out my Witcher 1 copy is on disk, too, so heck I might just pick up a copy too.

[Gusington]

DO IT

[mirth]

He can't create an account at the moment. So no dice.