If I understand how things work correctly, publishers make contracts with the various stores that they sell their games in and presumably a part of such contracts are often if not always words to the effect that the publisher can't sell their game elsewhere under conditions that are more favourable to some other store. If a publisher has entered into such a contract on Steam for example, and they have regional pricing there, then they would be obligated by the contract they've signed with Steam for example to have the same pricing on any other store they want to sell their game on. If this is the case, their choices are to have the same deal on GOG, or to be unable to sell their game on GOG without violating their contract with Steam. We never got that level of detail a few years ago when Nordic temporarily stopped selling their games here at GOG as such details are really private business matters that are none of our business at the end of the day, but enough was said to read between the lines that something of that sort or similar caused Nordic to have to pull their games temporarily. Presumably their contract ended and when they made a new one they changed the wording or whatever so that they could again sell their games at GOG and not have contractual conflicts between the stores.

What we as customers see however is games come and go, or not come at all with little explanation of why, and the reason there is little explanation is IMHO not because any of these companies have some big secrets to hide, but because they have legal contracts with each other and must act in a professional matter to maintain their trusted relationships with one another, and blathering the low level details of private business deals with the general public is a good way to piss off partners if not to outright violate a legal contract or NDA that was in place as a part of a deal.

We might not get all the details that we'd like to know about things, but lets face it - no matter what information we do get, we'll always want more and it's not reasonable for any end customer to expect a business to share every private detail of their business, contracts, etc. with the general public, at least not IMHO.

Like anyone, I wish we knew more about why a game isn't here, or when it might be coming, what the sales figures are for a particular game or the whole store, or any other number of details. Regardless of our endless quest for knowledge however, at the end of the day we're not entitled to know all of the detailed behind the scenes legal or other business of a given company. Every company including GOG, is not going to publicize something they are under a legally binding contract to not disclose to the public, including any potential business contracts etc., and they're not going to disclose anything to the public that could be advantageous to competitors to know in advance, nor any material insider information that could be valuable to securities traders, nor anything that has potential risk to their business to publicize for any reasons actual or perceived.

Some people might not realize it, but it is possible to be disappointed about not getting more information without being angry or jumping into conspiracy theories or other negative drama. :) At the end of the day, if someone doesn't trust anything bigger than themselves, they'll always look for theories of being repressed in some manner or another. From where I sit, the only thing it's good for though is popcorn sales. :)

No, that's not what I said at all, in fact, I said the exact opposite. Exclude those regions they sold higher/lower in from GOG if it requires regional pricing to sell there or potentially just exclude the areas where they sell for higher and still sell to the regions where they sell lower (physical) but keep non-regional pricing for GOG. Yes, that means GOG is more expensive than physical there.

Do I realize how ridiculous this sounds? Of course I do, because the most common sense thing is to sell in the most places you can sell for the most reasonable price to make profit from. And that is not non-regional pricing. I'm not arguing against regional pricing, I fully understand why it exists. I just don't see the point in trying to get a company to consider re-considering it's stance on regional pricing when they even did it with their own games.

ps: And yes, the fair price package is still a decent compromise, despite it still requiring you to pay non-regional price and it locking the remainder to GOG, it's still better than the competition. That said, a game sold on GOG is still better than a game sold retail, both for profit as well as potential future purchases.

GOG already has been more expensive than physical around here for a long time, at least in all cases I checked.

Hmm... did the two of you attend the same Q&A? ;-P

I'll file this under "no clear answer".

Was any clarification given as to if the standalone installers will remain available for download without the use of the client?


That's not why I asked; they broke basic HTML functionality with their security fix, and given that nobody from GOG acknowledges it in the "What did just break" thread, I wanted to know if we're stuck with this broken mess until the forum software gets replaced or not.


I don't want names, quite the contrary; I'm mostly interested in if GOG shared names with the six of you, as at the time you made your post, nobody had come forward yet.


Anyway, thanks for the thread, though I don't feel that we got any new information besides them adding an option to permanently switch to the Galaxy-free installers in our account.
But at least you all seem to have had a good time, and that's equally important, so thanks for those tidbits and photos.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that GOG shouldn't be selling a game in places where there is a regional pricing or that GOG should be allowed to sell a game ignoring the price it sells in places with regional pricing? Where should those areas be excluded from?


Not necessarily. Depends on how much GOG makes from each game, and whether the fair price comes from GOG's share or GOG's and publisher's share.
For future purchases yes, a GOG copy is usually better than a retail one.
Yes, though with different levels of attention. I'd say Gersen was probably more attentive than I was.

From what I recall, yes, they should remain available.

Some nicknames, yes. Me and MarkoH01 also knew of another one each that couldn't come.

WISHBONE'S TALE: PART FIVE

The community speaks up
This was it. This was the big one. The part we had all been looking forward to, a chance to speak directly to the people in charge of GOG.com, to ask questions, get answers, and generally let them know how we felt about various issues: The Q&A session!

We were back in the big meeting room where we had started the day. There were the 6 of us, JMich, PaterAlf, MarkoH01, Gersen, GR00T and Wishbone, and 6 people from GOG, fables22, elcook, KatyaGOG, Destro, w0rma and iWi. Most of the topics of conversation have been covered extensively in this thread already, so I won't go into detail with those, and instead focus on how the conversation went.

They listened. They really, really listened. It was clear that it was actually very important to them to hear what we had to say. I know, that is not the impression we tend to get on the forum, but it was very much the experience we had when sat face to face with them. They were extremely attentive, they took lots of notes, and regardless of the fact that we did level some pretty hard criticisms at them, they never got aggressively defensive. They also asked a lot of questions in return, to have us clarify some things, and to get our advice on certain issues.

Good News™
There was one particular topic of conversation which we discussed quite in-depth, and which hasn't been covered too well already, namely the topic of how they generally communicate with the community, and their challenges in doing so.

I suppose I was one of the more outspoken participants in said discussion, so when I say things like "we said" and "we told them" in the following, it may have been mostly me doing the saying and the telling. However, I can't remember exactly who said what, so bear with me. Basically, this is the message we gave them:

Back when you started, you talked to us as people talk to people. Openly (or as openly as you can possibly expect from a business), honestly, humourously, and generally down-to-earth. Over the years you have slowly changed to talk to us as corporate PR automatons talk to (what they assume are) clueless customers. We don't think you did this intentionally, but that is the end result, or at least that is how parts of the community perceive it. If you want to improve relations with your community, you need to find your way back to communicating like human beings rather than corporate drones.

This was of course a much longer discussion, and not simply a small prepared speech like the above, but that is what it boiled down to.

They seemed to take this to heart, and additionally seemed quite distressed that we viewed them like that. If nothing else, it certainly gave them something to think about. What will come of it, and what, if anything, will change about the way they talk to us in the future, remains to be seen.

Watch this space for the next exciting installment: Wishbone's Tale: Part Six.

And that is one of the most important things imo I took with me from the meeting. Something that is hard to fake and not easy if not impossible to show in a forum discussion. For me this was the core of everything.

Question, is this all the details you received on the subject, or were you given particular information (about specific titles) that you're not allowed to share?

Answer: Yes.

Personally, I don't recall any specific titles being named by GOG people, but then my memory is not infallible. Regardless, had we been given any information about specific titles, we would most certainly not be allowed to share them, as that could compromise future negotiations.

If GOG's stance = No regional prices but they're selling a game where the publisher is selling for regional prices and they don't want to conflict then:

Country where price = US/Base price = on GOG
Country where price is lower than US/Base price = not on GOG
Country where price is higher than US/Base price = not on GOG

exception could be made for countries where price is lower than US/Base price long as GOG still sells for US/Base price, regardless that physical is lower there. That way there's no regional pricing (on GOG) and no conflict with the publisher.

There's nothing preventing GOG from doing this as far as I know, if regional pricing were actually a main concern. Yeah my bad, I mean the initial cut's always bigger. I have no doubt the fair price comes from GOG's share. But a sale on GOG is good in itself, whether it brings in full profit or not, same reason Steam keys are a good thing even though they're handed free to the developers to sell elsewhere.

Ah, so what GOG should have done was to refuse to sell to specific customers (those whose regions have regional pricing). And that is better than using regional pricing, since it prevents both those that care and those that don't care about regional pricing from getting the game instead of giving the option to choose whether they want the game or not.

I am reminded of Omerta DLCs, when people were claiming that GOG should refuse DLCs for games. But it might just be me that's weird, who knows.

it's not that simple. it's not a case of "it's their game, this solves all the problems". the money to develop the game from a lot of different places. CDP is a public company. there are lots of actors in the videogame industry that were there before W3 released, that occupy a space and do a thing, that don't just become irrelevant or disappear because CDP owns gog while gog releases W3. that CDP made gog and W3 is a simple thing. but all that stuff means that CDP doing things with gog and W3 is not a simple matter.

IMO, this would be a classic example of cutting off one's nose to spite the face.
I recall one game mentioned in particular that they said they're still trying to get, but it's caught in IP rights hell.

*edit* And they provided a bit of detail as to the nature of the issues.