Please, please, don't make baby Krugman cry. (Otherwise, plusses all the way.)

It's not that the rouble is weak, it's that the Russians are poor and the Russian economy has always been shit.

This is inflation in the US.
This is inflation in Russia.

Now, a high inflation rate might be better for the disenfranchised, because their debt decreases... except wages don't actually rise. I worked as a custserv manager in 2007 for 24k roubles per month. Guess how much custserv gets paid in 2015?
24k.
So while it took me like three months in 2007 (including 30 days in a row of working 13 hours per day) to pay off my debts and save for a decent PC, it's now more like a year for a custserv worker in 2015. Because community rent / property taxes and food prices have gone up, too. But not wages.

I buy stale food at an illegal market and sometimes stand in the way of Putin's neo-Nazi goons (as they assault Southern workers to goad them into fighting back and getting jailed). I wear sweaters to work despite the dress code because I have no money to repair the apartment's wiring. And that with a median income for Moscow, three times the national amount.

But yes, people who live in cities and are super determined to play modern games can actually tough it out and procure a decent PC, somehow. I could have a W3-capable PC right now if I could plug it in without setting the apartment on fire.

Prices on games don't mean dick. They are entirely uncorrelated to the cost of actually making the game. The first copy costs "all the money" to make, the others cost fractions of cents. Selling copies isn't a charity or a ripoff or whatever: rightsholders basically set arbitrary prices to try to maximize their total take-home amount. Game rightsholders aren't trying to get into Russians' good graces or achieve market penetration, they try to maximize their profits. And it happens that total profits are higher when games in Russia are cheaper (but not so cheap as to have the fucking scammers in QIWI [Putin's monopoly money] swallow the whole payment).

The actual injustice here is twofold. First, some countries are trapped into poverty by bankster treaties their corrupt governments signed and legally can't get a regional discount that'd make games more accessible AND improve devs' profits. Second, some markets are plain ignored for no raisin. So why did Russia luck out?

History lesson!
Russia didn't get special treatment through piracy and poverty alone. They got it mostly because of ignorance. Russians, by and large, can't speak English. As such, in the noughts, publishers could make speshul Russian-only versions and price them relatively low. (That was fucking terrible for people who could speak English and would prefer to play games unbutchered, but they were in the minority and had to resort to piracy. We couldn't import English versions, because banks wouldn't issue affordable payment cards to the general populace until 2007.) So when Steam arrived, they had to stay competitive with the cheapass Russian-only physical copies and the threat of disconnection. Because broadband cost a fuckton and wasn't ubiquitous, and pirated games were disconnect-proof. Russians didn't as much download pirate games for free as BOUGHT bootlegs on CD. The bootleg movie industry is still very much alive. And, fast forward to 2015, now GOG has to stay competitive with Steam. The end.

:)

More succinctly, regional pricing creates a subsidy for richer people in poorer countries and a surcharge on poorer people in richer countries. No wonder these threads get so vicious.

Well political business aside Russia is a beautiful country in summer (especially if you visit such wonderful places like Baikal or Altai). A bit spartan and far from world class resorts but you can hike like no place else if you are into hiking. That is where the real Russia is.

lol :P
I'm stunned, Ciris; didn't expect to see so many awesome releases on this day I knew would come in no time. Hell, you guys are great! :)

так что это означает, что мы русский форум ?

I love this guy. He knows what shit is about, it's all about the moolah.

And Putin riding bears!

If Stephen Colbert ever sees that, he'll have a heart attack!

There's still the Gini index data. The Netherlands' is 30.9, Russia's is 41.7. So while the average income in Russia is seven times lower than in the Netherlands, the average Russian is even more worse off than the average Dutch. And don't even get me started on Ukraine -- they don't have the oil pipe to suck off so their Gini is low (28.2), but they are twenty times poorer.

Йо-хо-хо. Я не понял, что всё это означает, но GOG.com forever! Вы - лучший проект. Я русский и я люблю свободу, я люблю GOG.com.

Don't wanna spoil the fresh russian deals -I'm not even russian and I'm so happy with more and more great russian games- and etc, but we could use the full Gogtastic mode and deliver a Brazilian promo, deals and language; Brazil has great titles, such as:

- Knights of Pen & Paper
- Soul Gambler
- Mr. Bree
- Outlive
- Dungeonland
- Razor2: Hidden Skies
- Qasir Al-Wasat: A Night in-Between
- Chroma Squad
- Oniken
- Out There Somewhere
- Adventurezator
- The ultra cool BAD RATS :P

Friends, fellow goggers, neets, hikkikomoris and shoggoths, can you not see the obvious cause of all this controversy?

In Soviet Russia GAME PRICES YOU!

Brothers, brothers, we should be struggling together! Yes I know we already are. But that's not what I meant. We mustn't fight each other! Surely, we should be united against the common enemy!

No, not the EMACS users! BEARS!

While I'm not entirely in disagreement with you, I think Crimea is probably a poor example as it was a rare occasion of a region actually wanting to be annexed. Although the referendum itself was a sham, you'd be hard-pushed to find many people in Crimea who would have been in favour of remaining part of Ukraine. The staunchly pro-Russian Partia Regioniv has had absolute electoral majorities in Crimea ever since Ukraine has had democracy (by contrast, most other parties don't even scratch the 10% threshold there).

(Interestingly, Partia Regioniv didn't contest the 2014 elections, likely in part due to the issue of Yanukovich's ousting, but I suspect also because there was no voting in Crimea or Donetsk, which means that they didn't have a snowball in hell's chance).

It's less clear cut in places like Donetsk where Russian affiliation is less pronounced. Neo-nazi thugs call the shots and condemnation of Russia for supporting these assholes is more justifiable.

As for Russia itself, the blame for their present situation lies not only in the government's hands but in the populace itself. People like Starmaker are sadly the exception - many people there are otherwise so indoctrinated that they think Putin is the second coming of Jesus Herbert Christ. If you think about how the UKippers in the UK react to Nigel Farage (or, in Germany, how the PEGIDA morons idolise Lutz Bachmann), you have a rough idea of how people think about Yedinaya Rossia.

That being said, we in Europe don't really have much of a right to criticise indoctrination right now. Just like the extreme right has a strong foothold in Russia, so too is it gaining a firm grip on Europe, especially in the UK, France and (mostly East) Germany through media influence.

Ну, я бы так не сказал. Хотя русская часть тут теперь тоже есть (как и немецкая, например).
I wouldn't exactly call us a Russian forum, rather a forum with a Russian part (and also German one, among others).

Sugarcoating bad news with adding a new locale seems to become tradition here :|