It's been a long since I read any EU laws, but is there any limitation on price differentiation between various countries? I remember rumours about Steam having split EU in half, but never actually seen cheaper games for second EU zone. At least when I lived there. It didn't stopped Egosoft from charging full EU price of 60€ for their X-Rebirth on people from former USSR's Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, while locking it to be playable in USSR territories only.

So how IS Gifting going to work from now on? Only Russia™ to Russia™ and rest of the world to the rest of the world (including Russia™)?

You can check here and see if there are any Eurozone cases where some EU countries pay a different price than others. None leap out at me at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were certain cases where different prices could be charged within the EU. I cannot say definitively either way, though.

I don't get the problem here. It's about some people paying less, not about some people paying more. What bothers me is if I have to pay more than the standard prices because of 1$ = 1€ conversions. If other people have to pay less because their economy is worse it's not harming me, and it's better for them.

Isn't it time to bring the Nordic games back? =P

What about if people have to pay LESS because their economy is BETTER? For example, Russia, which has a much better economy than practically every country in Africa and most of Asia.

Regional pricing has nothing to do with standard of living.

Initial statement says no limits. But I think that would be unfair to GoG to cut part of their profitsss.

Reason I ask is because I had a conversation with a... distant relative of mine (hell if I know the name of that particular degree we are related), who is now working as lawyer back in Europe, she told me there are some restrictions in issuing price differentiation within EU, that would favour less prosperous countries. Since I don't speak legalese, I didn't make much out of her explanation, plus at that time it was years since we both spoke our first language. :) Oh well. While localized prices may be present, those games usually also has some inner restrictions, like language only, or region lock.

I know there is regional protectionism within the EU regarding, for example, local products (such things used to be referred to as the Wine Lake and the Butter Mountain). Whether this extends to individual items within a category is a different matter. But I would at least expect that different prices would occur when things such as regional variance kick if. For example, games that are censored to match German law but which are fine as-is in the rest of the Union. Which is basically in line with your statement as well.

From one side it could seem unfair, from the other it could be an experiment in trust:
If Gog Allows all pre 2006(?) games to be gifted from Russia™ without restriction, and there will be a surge of those in spite a much lower spike in regular Russian™ purchases then it just might mean people are taking advantage of the Russia™ offer.
Then again, unless Gog is sure the "cheat your local" segment is significant enough to risk profits from regular purchases, why should they care? Maybe some of those poor Africans can only buy these games at the Russia™ prices and as long as the market only grows (and doesn't cannibalize too much of the regular market) they still profit more from low income purchases then from no purchases.

Even in this form, I don't get what exactly your point is.


The problem is that it's done selectively, only for Russia and the ex USSR, thus making it clear that the realities of the market, as GOG put it in their announcement, has nth to do with the practice of regional pricing and the actual price tags.


Some very good comments here, +1s to many of you.

Here is the new thread for pricing updates of all manner:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/good_news_price_updates

I meant generally deciding whether or not to continue supporting GOG, especially those like Sinistar who have built up a large, strong investment here of goodwill and games.

In retrospect, it was a pretty unnecessary thing to write. Imma go ahead and just delete the op.

Bookmarked, ta.

So we need to ask GoG lawyers here, as they, apparently, the only lawyers, capable to speak Common, not Engwithian.

True enough, and, moreover, it is an interesting experiment: while all other stores raise their prices to adjust them to exchange rate between currencies (be the way, if any is using "Russian" Battle.net, there are rumours about Blizzards increasing their prices next months, so buy yer stuff right neow, fewls!) and employ more and more more ridiculous locks on offered goods, GoG, on the other hand, not just dropping prices, but also keeps cross-region gifting, only asking us not to abuse it.
Since GoG clearly has more info that we do, they apparently analysed their profits and customers distribution during recent events of "story of raised prices" before making this decision, that was in discussion for several months, if not years. I wonder what made Steam change their policy, apparently most publishers were fine with games selling in certain regions (Russia was nor is the only one with discounted games in Steam, as some mentioned here, India is now joined same region, I wonder when other BRICS countries will join:)), yet recent changes in currencies exchange rates, caused Steam go all turtling up, so to speak, limiting basically everything, resulting in hilariously excessive amounts of locks for certain games. As example: In addition to activation lock that was imposed all over CIS-segment, they also, apparently, added play lock on all games, to prevent accounts trade, and, some games still have old gift lock and language lock. That's the whole new meaning of excessive redundancy. Guess it was easier to impose global locks than to clean up few individual titles.
Oh well, all hail the GoG, may their life bring them long profitsss. :) Now if you excuse me, one certain Thaos needs kicking in the bollocks.