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The DRM-Free Revolution Continues with Big Pre-Orders and Launch Day Releases!

Good news! GOG.com is going to bring you more fantastic launch day releases, preorders, and other exciting new content from some of our favorite developers. We've lined up 3 big titles that we will be bringing to GOG.com in the next couple of months for sale or preorder that we think will be hits with all of our gamers; and we have more equally exciting games coming up soon.

If you've been a member of the site for a long time, you may recall that when we launched sales of The Witcher 2 on GOG.com, we had to add in regional pricing. The game cost different amounts in in the US, the UK, the European Union, and Australia. We're doing something like that once again in order to bring you new titles from fantastic bigger studios. Since we don't accept currencies other than USD on GOG.com right now, we'll be charging the equivalent of the local price in USD for these titles. We wish that we could offer these games at flat prices everywhere in the world, but the decision on pricing is always in our partners' hands, and regional pricing is becoming the standard around the globe. We're doing this because we believe that there's no better way to accomplish our overall goals for DRM-Free gaming and GOG.com. We need more games, devs, and publishers on board to make DRM-Free gaming something that's standard for all of the gaming world!

That brings with it more good news, though! As mentioned, we have three games we're launching soon with regional pricing--two RPGs and a strategy game--and while we can't tell you what they are yet because breaking an NDA has more severe penalties than just getting a noogie, we're confident that you'll be as excited about these games as we are. For a limited time, we will be offering anyone who pre-orders or buys one of them a free game from a selection as a gift from GOG.com, just like we did for The Witcher 2.

If you have any questions, hit us up in the comments below and we'll be happy to answer (to the best of our ability).

EDIT: Since we've answered a lot of the common questions already here (and lest you think that we've ignored you), it may be handy for you to check out the forum thread about this and search for staff answers by clicking this link here. (hat tip to user Eli who reminded us that the feature even exists. :)
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Telika: Not sure. It's not too bad to be warned about it a bit in advance - even though we can't do a thing about it.

"SINCE WHEN DID YOU KNOW ABOUT IT AND NEVER EVER EVEN HINTED AT IT ?"
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Wishbone: That is certainly an issue, but I doubt they would be ignorant of the details right up until the day it launched. If the actual implementation is a month away, they could easily have waited a week if that meant they could actually tell us something useful when they made the announcement.
I assume this *is* the big change to the business model foretold earlier in the year?
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donsanderson: Whatever happened to simple the "Don't like it, don't buy it principle"?

Jeez TET, I hope you got hazard pay, or at least a good bottle of something strong to have to do this. ;/

Folks, the way to approve/disapprove of a companies offerings is with your wallet.
Not by having a fricking riot!
When you use PC MASTER RACE shit on the official social media channels, you should be prepared to have that PC MASTER RACE throw shit at you.
Even though regional pricing is an important issue for me it isn't the most important issue. I for one trust that the people behind GOG have made every effort to avoid this and I don't believe that a company like GOG (or any company for that matter) can survive very long without making compromises and bending their principles a bit.
Some principles can be held steadfast, principles that is at the core of your being and what you stand for, but not every single one.

For me that core principle is NO-DRM. That is just about the only thing they can't be even a little bit flexible about. The rest though I'm convinced they work hard to uphold but sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward. And doing that makes you stronger for the future.
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Niggles: If GOG manages to get them to drop Uplay, it would be one massive coup over Steam (check all the whining about having to deal with Uplay AND Steam drms lol) :D
And oddly it's actually still preferable to get those games on Steam rather than just Uplay, because you need to run Uplay either way, but on Steam Uplay download/install/upload is handled by Steam's download system, whereas if you use just Uplay you often end up having to do several updates requiring client restarts to get uptodate.
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skeletonbow:
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blotunga: Honestly for me on Steam regional pricing is more disturbing than the Steam client/DRM itself.
As for GOG I do like the DRM-Free part, but what sold me was the one price thing.
Really? the fact that retailers are essentially selling for anouther retailer due to there not being consumer choice (due to an 80% control of the market and therefore a lack of options) doesn't disturb you?

The fact that someone can produce a jar of honey and go hey i think i might try to get double the amount of money in this town over here and make sure i don't shoot myself in the foot by offering a bad deal to where i sell 60% of my product and get enough to pay the bills is 'THE' thing that disturbs you?

The fact that their TOS essentially states you agree to having no rights, & that for all intents and purposes you are putting your money into a wood chipper and then burning the remains, doesn't 'disturb you'.
high rated
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Wishbone: Are there any of your so-called "principles" you didn't throw out the window today?
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TheEnigmaticT: I understand that this change...
I have always liked and supported GOG and I can understand, if not appreciate, you willingness to change you principles to make more money by getting bigger release titles at your site. If these changes truly only affect new big publisher games that could not have made it to GOG catalog otherwise, I can definitely live with it and maybe even buy some of them here for the sake of DRM freeness. In that case most of our fears would have proven wrong but can you really answer all these questions now to prove our worries to be unnecessary:

Can you promise that only new, big publisher releases of new games will be affected by regional stuff?

Can you promise that Europeans will not pay 9.99€ for the same old games that Americans pay 9.99$ for. That anyone can pay in whatever currency he/she wants to if the game is not one of these "regionally priced" ones?

Can you promise that you won't start distributing different version of games for different regions, providing certain games only for some regions and region locking gift codes or installers?

Can you promise that every game (big, small, old, new...) from now on won't be released with regional prices and you just raise your hands in the air and tell it's out of your hands?

Can you promise that GOG will never accept any game with any sort of DRM into its catalog for any reason?

If you can give solid promises on these issues without any lawyer/politician-talk, then I promise I will stop worrying about the future of gog and will gladly throw my money at you as I have done for the last four years.

ps. For the sake of mutual respect between you and your customers, don't try to feed us shit and call it candy, even if you honestly think that it's particularly good shit. The message I quoted here was the message you should have posted on the news, not the one about "Good news!" and "more good news!". I don't appreciate it when I'm being talked to like some media-illiterate toddler and I doubt anyone else here does either.
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liamphoenix: Only if they're dropping the UPlay requirement entierly. Somehow I doubt that as they even slide that junk into stuff already locked down to Steam.

As for UPlay required titles on GOG without having it stripped before sale...

That's going full retard.

I love a lot of Ubisoft games, but since dropping consoles in favor of PC I haven't bought a single one, there's no way I'd ever pay to have that disease dropped on my system.
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Niggles: If GOG manages to get them to drop Uplay, it would be one massive coup over Steam (check all the whining about having to deal with Uplay AND Steam drms lol) :D
I'm willing to deal with Steam DRM if it is 80%+ off, I consider it a rental at that price point, but Origin and UPlay will never be installed on my system.

I wonder if Ubisoft realizes that from me alone they've lost ten PC sales, and EA has lost (not so much a fan of what they've been churning out since they started going with Origin exclusive titles) three, for games that I would put up with Steam to play at some of the deeper discounts.

Now they drop them on GOG I'd buy them full price.
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trusteft: I don't know if it is just me, but the people who are not directly "related" to GOG and come here and openly state that they don't see the problem and that they are sure things won't get any worse, remind me of Neville Chamberlain.
I am most definitely not sure whether things will get worse or not, but I think GOG has at least earned a bit of trust on our part, so what I'm saying is to hakuna your tatas, take a chill pill, take a deep breath and wait and see before starting to become prophets of doom.

You're right when you say people can't be sure things will get worse, but they can't be sure things certainly will, as well. It works both ways, and, so far, the vocal majority of people in here seem to be doing just that. "Knowing", for sure, things will end terribly. We can't know that, either. What I know is that GOG has been amazing to me, as a digital distributor, and they deserve at least a bit of trust.
Post edited February 21, 2014 by groze
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saberwolfxm: who do you guys thinkit is?
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Leroux: Deep Silver perhaps? We already know Risen 1 & 2 are coming to GOG, and they are a likely candidate for trying to push something like regional pricing. The Risen games wouldn't be day one launches though, and Saints Row IV is out already; no idea if they have anything upcoming. So maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, if Deep Silver was bringing their games to GOG without insisting on regional pricing, my respect for them would increase. ;)
Then we will perhaps see soon an announcement for "Dead Island", connected with the message: "Not available in Germany." It would fit the policy from Deep Silver, but I don't think they are the culprits in this game, due the news post speaks from upcoming launch day releases. But I'm very curious if we will see a regional pricing for the upcoming release of the Risen series.
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Wishbone: That is certainly an issue, but I doubt they would be ignorant of the details right up until the day it launched. If the actual implementation is a month away, they could easily have waited a week if that meant they could actually tell us something useful when they made the announcement.
My guess is they knew this would cause backlash, so they wanted to get it out of the way now rather than have a topic about a pre-order for a game be 50+ pages of bashing it.
Anyway it's not a big issue. I mean, if it brings games DRM-free, good. Just accept this regional pricing obligation.

And, as you're a polish website we're coming to, just consider that all of us are buying our games from a "polish shop", and politely apply polish regional prices to all your games.

Problem solved. Onto world peace now (this should be even easier).
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jorlin: Sorry TeT, but you've made a huge mistake presenting this news in enthusiastic term as "Good News"
That's what pissed me off so much about eBay back when I used to sell there frequently. They'd roll out some new "favor the buyer and screw the seller" policy, or yet ANOTHER Final Value Fee hike, and announce it as "ZOMFG you guys!!1!! We've just come up with the COOLEST IDEA EVARRRR and we know you're just going to wet yourselves when we tell you!!!"
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jorlin: Sorry TeT, but you've made a huge mistake presenting this news in enthusiastic term as "Good News", even though you admit right here that you knew beforehand that this would conjure up a shit storm. I consider the wording of this initial announcement to be underhanded, a word that is usually not associated with "treating customers better".
A more balanced announcement would be much better received (at least by me, I can't speak for all customers here).
I couldn't agree more with that.

I actually don't mind THAT much the regional pricing, as long as they are confined to the new game release (I would be really disappointed if it were applied to the old game catalog however). However, I'm pretty pissed by the way it have been announced. Come on, presenting that as a good news is preety much the equivalent of taking your public for a bunch a brainless moron and openly mocking them. Do you think we're blind ?

I would have been way less annoyed if you had spoken honestly, saying the things like they are. Like "Ok, folks, I know that sucks, but the only way we have to introduce new AA game is to accept regional price for these one. It's that or nothing. We tried to push the global price but couldn't find an agreement, so that's a "take it or leave it" situation. I know it's not the perfect deal, but that's the only way we could provide you new AAA game without crappy DRM . However price for the other games won't change and will stay a global price because it's one of GOG's core value. Enjoy the new games."

That would have been so much better than trying to make us swallow the cyanide pill by telling us it's sugar. You know, the whole "Great news everyone ! We drop for some game one of the feature that was making gog so much awesome !" thing.

We are customers and fans, we appreciate honest talk, not crappy commercial lies.
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saberwolfxm: who do you guys thinkit is?
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Leroux: Deep Silver perhaps? We already know Risen 1 & 2 are coming to GOG, and they are a likely candidate for trying to push something like regional pricing. The Risen games wouldn't be day one launches though, and Saints Row IV is out already; no idea if they have anything upcoming. So maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, if Deep Silver is actually bringing their games to GOG without insisting on regional pricing, my respect for them will increase. ;)
That would be nice, I'd love to pick up replacement copies of all my old X games, and I'd like to actually buy Rebirth without waiting for it to drop below $5 on Steam.
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TheEnigmaticT: I understand that this change...
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Marcomies: I have always liked and supported GOG and I can understand, if not appreciate, you willingness to change you principles to make more money by getting bigger release titles at your site. If these changes truly only affect new big publisher games that could not have made it to GOG catalog otherwise, I can definitely live with it and maybe even buy some of them here for the sake of DRM freeness. In that case most of our fears would have proven wrong but can you really answer all these questions now to prove our worries to be unnecessary:

Can you promise that only new, big publisher releases of new games will be affected by regional stuff?

Can you promise that Europeans will not pay 9.99€ for the same old games that Americans pay 9.99$ for. That anyone can pay in whatever currency he/she wants to if the game is not one of these "regionally priced" ones?

Can you promise that you won't start distributing different version of games for different regions, providing certain games only for some regions and region locking gift codes or installers?

Can you promise that every game (big, small, old, new...) from now on won't be released with regional prices and you just raise your hands in the air and tell it's out of your hands?

Can you promise that GOG will never accept any game with any sort of DRM into its catalog for any reason?

If you can give solid promises on these issues without any lawyer/politician-talk, then I promise I will stop worrying about the future of gog and will gladly throw my money at you as I have done for the last four years.

ps. For the sake of mutual respect between you and your customers, don't try to feed us shit and call it candy, even if you honestly think that it's particularly good shit. The message I quoted here was the message you should have posted on the news, not the one about "Good news!" and "more good news!". I don't appreciate it when I'm being talked to like some media-illiterate toddler and I doubt anyone else here does either.
Fantastic post! Quoted in full for extra visibility.