I think you missed me pointing out the part in which when £1 was $2 EA charging £10 for a game that costs $10. The price publishers charge per copy in a region has little relation to the cost of the product or exchange rates and is set by what they think they can get away with.

The reason why GOG is suffering is some publishers set prices far higher than currency variation & VAT, not because it costs more but because they think they can get away with it.

I've seen even quite recently Ubisoft offer the same game for £3.99 to the UK store & 3.99 Euros to France (the exchange rate at the time was £1 = 1.3 Euros (France & the UK have the same 20% VAT rate).

Deep Silver were infamous for charging $1 = 1 Euro = £1 even when £1= $1.70+.

The result of pushing up prices is it will cut GOG's revenue, people will buy less games publishers will make less money & people will go back to pirating games or just playing the ones they already own.

The USA doesn't include taxes in the price of goods. They are added on top of the purchase price depending on where you live. Other countries have similar systems like Canada and Japan. The usa doesnt have a country level tax on goods.

VAT in Europe requires that the VAT tax is included in the price.

The USA sales tax is state/province based. So they have little enforcement internationally. However many countries have a country level tax on digital goods. For example Australia has a 10% GST on digital goods that must be remitted. Steam collects and remits these taxes from customers and then sends it to the respective governments. THe USA is probably semi-unique in that its taxes are exclusive, while steams list of countries it collects digital taxes from the tax is inclusive in the price.

Since steam is a US company, its much easier for US states to go after steam and make them collect sales taxes from its users. This is becoming more popular as states pass laws expressly requiring this. These taxes were in state law but were largely ignored because of the 'physical' requirement where you needed a physical presence in a state for taxes to be collected. However the supreme court last year ruled this was no longer necessary and that states could collect sales tax from companies that had no physical presence in their state. States that already had those kinds of laws steam basically started collecting taxes from (they rolled them out in Q4 2018). More states are now passing laws to collect sales taxes from internet sales so i suspect by the end of 2019 all states will have passed such laws (it is after all money)

I didn't miss it, in fact that makes it even worse.
Let's take that same 10 Euro game, but now it's 14.40 Euro where 2.40 Euro is VAT. Now that publisher is getting 8.40, VAT is 2.40, Fair Price is 4.40 in rebates. Now GoG has lost 0.80 Euro.

Those ridiculous regional prices makes it far worse for GoG.

From the UK side at least I can tell you even when GOG say you aren't eligible for a fair pricing the GBP price is often so bad that if I opt to pay in USD and pay the incorporated 4% conversion fees I still save money.

Here is a tangible example A game priced by them at $1.49, they price as £1.19 which is an exchange rate of $1.25, the problem is the exchange rate even with the indept politicians doing their damnest to cause pain an uncertainty has been around £1= $1.31.

What I'm saying is GOG is essentially pocketing an extra 5% just by picking an unrealstically bad exchange rate.

They aren't quite the victims caught on the winds they claim.

You have a keen eye & no doubt spotted the claim they made that the average 'fair price' was abour 12%, most games in the EU don't get fair pricing applied it is usually only if you have an extreme case like those I quoted with companies like Nordic/Deep-Silver charging £1=$1 rates and even then with about 5% pocketed with shifity exchange rates.

If the missing piece of the puzzle was VAT, it wouldn't be 12% it would be much higher, so my hypothesis is the publishers charge a bigger or smaller mark-up depending on wheher the item is sold in a region they have a cost centre they can offset the profits against.

Certainly interpreting the numbers GOG have made public they aren't losing 12% on every NON-US transaction as I said almost all of them don't have 'fair pricing applied'.

If you do want irony though, fair pricing did have to be applied countless times to the witcher 3 sold by CDPR as they were price gouging in Europe.

Which has nothing to do with what I wrote. If Steam charges sales tax (as you said), then the price for games on Steam is effectively more expensive as GOG doesn't charge sales tax (according to you).

Well, the whole thing seems like a waste of time anyway. Glad I don't have to do that.

Because it is the same price. Even buying from GoG I'm legally responsible for paying that sales tax anyway. How does that have "nothing to do with what you wrote"?

You were the one claiming GoG is paying US VAT when there is no such thing. They certainly are not paying U.S. sales taxes either. You just clearly don't know what the heck you are talking about.

Still find it awfully sad that instead of joining together to demand better conditions for the consumers everywhere, based on the best that can be found anywhere and then maybe even improving from that, some consumers look to anti-consumer practices in some areas as the norm and use that to justify worse conditions for others. Heck, I'd support any efforts to make the US include taxes in the price and make them the business' problem and not that of the customer anymore, and at least where the cost of the individual product itself is negligible, digital copies being a perfect example, make varying taxes not affect the end price, but just the profit per item sold of the business, which should take the taxes as the cost of doing business in multiple areas. Would ask where do I sign or send messages or whatever for that, but recall previous times, on other sites too, when I said something should be done about that and got bashed from people from the US, who apparently like to be taken advantage of in such a manner.

*shakes head again*

You just said earlier that Steam charges sales tax while GOG doesn't do that and that you pay an additional 6% on Steam. So how is it effectively not more expensive?

I wrote it "includes" it and cited the relevant section. Sure, maybe the US doesn't have VAT but VAT is still a sales tax, so that doesn't change anything as what I've cited clearly said "sales tax/VAT".
(As an aside, how do you know for sure they aren't paying sales tax if Steam and Amazon have to, despite having no physical presence in all the relevant states?)

Because I still have to pay the exact same 6% sales tax. Are you completely dense? Do you know how to read?
Same price on GoG is the same price on Steam, whether Steam charges me that 6% immediately or I have to submit it as part of my taxes at the end of the year.

You clearly don't understand what is going on here. Sales taxes work differently from VAT. GoG doesn't pay sales taxes for us in the United States because it is not their responsibility, it is ours. While in Europe, they are forced to add VAT to the final price. In some countries in they call their VAT a sales tax but foreign businesses are still required to collect it. It doesn't work the why you think it does. GoG is not paying U.S. sales tax like you think it does. I'm still on the hook for that 6% even buying from GoG.

Then you have Cavalary who thinks GoG should be paying all this taxes for him even if that's 20% of the price. I've got news for you. That 20% discount you've been getting means the rest of us have been overcharged. For you to keep getting rebates to cover your VAT means the prices have to rise for everyone else for your free games so GoG can stay profitable. And you have the gall to *shake your head* at us...

Edit: The individual States in the United States have gone to court to force large companies like Steam and Amazon to collect sales taxes. Individual States have no right to impose anything on a foreign entity, that would require an act of Congress and Federal legislation and trade negotiations.

I‘m sorry that I cannot be such an intelligent person as you and don‘t know the exact numbers as you do.
If I go along with your example than if no one ever buys a game, GOG will have 0 loss. Maybe they should close their store so they don‘t lose money.

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but given that regional pricing came at the behest of certain developers and publishers, why not simply charge a higher margin for those wishing to impose it? (e.g. 10% charge for fair pricing, 15% for regional). That could cover the cost in a less customer-hostile fashion.

As it stands, it seems that GOG is favouring the developers/publishers over its customers (which it did when it dropped the "fair price" pledge originally). Maybe the CEO should consider who it is who ultimately pays GOG's bills.

You said yourself you can pay a flat amount of $50 in use tax (which is not sales tax btw) which is what GOG falls under. How do you effectively not pay more on Steam then if the use tax is limited to such a low amount (just to put your nose directly on the issue since you seem uncapable to do so yourself)? And that is aside from the option of simply not declaring it at all, considering GOG is not an American company. You don't have to pay under your real name either. Also, the one that seems to not be able to read is you, considering you go on about things I know about (since post 781), while ignoring the end results and the words I use. Do you think I put something like "effictively" in there for fun? Certainly not.

Emmm, no.
They can't charge devs additional for regional pricing just because you want cheap games.

You don't have a clue what you are talking about. I'm still responsible for taxes on my online goods. GoG is not paying those taxes. Should I be audited, they certainly can tell what and where money is spent. You clearly are naive when it comes to the laws of my state which gives me an option to pay a flat fee instead of collecting individual receipt for every non-taxed online purchase. GoG doesn't pay any of this, nor is responsible to pay it. It doesn't work the way you think it does and that says a lot about you.

Furthermore, GoG does not collect the necessary data to pay sales taxes in the U.S. They would have to ask everyone for their cities and states and probably have to verify address information through a verified Paypal or Credit Card so they could submit the correct amount to the correct state and city.

But you continuously use that as a smokescreen for the real issue and that issue is that GoG pays 0% VAT on games bought in the United States while they have to pay substantial VAT for games sold in most other countries. Given that even with regional pricing, because they have been paying back the difference in store credit, they are losing a substantial portion of their profits as a result for game sales in higher regionally priced regions.

Hence with the push by developers for a bigger revenue cut, they can no longer afford to supplement your games and pay a substantial portion of the taxes you owe out of their own pockets. Hence why the Fair Price Package is going away. Primarily because it was a deal too good to be true.

That said, I sympathize over developers who are charging for more than can be accounted for by VAT in some regions.
But a lot of regional pricing is completely justified because of the way the EU requires VAT to be included in the advertised price despite those greedy people who think they shouldn't have to pay the additional taxes on it. In order to cut their margins, GoG has to make sure every sale is equally profitable to them to stay in business.

Please review the original post - this situation has arisen because GOG is paying more to developers/publishers which means higher prices anyway.

Besides which, the current games economy is demand-limited with huge quantities of games available at near-perpetual sale prices. If a developer/publisher wants to openly gouge US/EU/Aus/NZ customers (these tend to get the raw deal in regional pricing) then they'll have to accept lower sales.