The basic principle of subsidies is that someone has to pay them. ;) You cannot make something cheaper without getting the money from elsewhere.

GOG is going to subsidize games from vendors with local pricing:
"We will adamantly continue to fight for games with flat worldwide pricing. If that fails and we are required to have regional prices, we will make up the difference for you out of our own pockets. For now it will be with $5.99 and $9.99 game codes."

Now the question is who pays these subsidies? For sure not the GOG staff from their own pockets. :) So the GOG customers have to pay for these subsidies.

So soon every time when I buy a game on GOG, even one from a vendor WITHOUT local pricing, a part of my money goes as subsidy to a vendor which enforces local pricing. In future I will (indirectly) have to support vendors with local pricing every time I buy a game on GOG. This is what I don't like with the new "solution" and what makes me angry.

Without these subsidies everybody could have decided on his own if he wants to support vendors with local pricing by buying games from them or not. This freedom of choice is now gone.

But, on the other side, the vendors must decide if they want to take advantage of the widely respected GOG retail net or not. Vendors are not the only one with bargaining power.

I do not like local pricing. But the only real funtamental thing is DRM-free. If you really want to buy a game which has local pricing you can wait a bit longer until the game is on sale and get it for even less than the US price. If you want to buy a game DRM-free which is only sold with DRM you cannot wait for a sale. At least I haven't heard about such a sale. ;)
The vendors WILL get the localized prices from GOG. GOG will subsidize them with the money they take from all other customers. We do not win anything. In the opposite, the vendors will see their strategy of local prices working and even more vendors may force local pricing in the future.

DRM-free and flat pricing is the only thing that matters?

I personally think the most important thing is good old [classic] games. DRM-free or not, I would never have signed up on this site if it wasn't for classics like Darklands, Might & Magics, Baldur's Gate, Betrayal at Krondor, and so on. You can make a game DRM-free and you can sell it for a fair flat-price, but it's the games themselves that you buy to play.

I think what's been lost in the debate are CLASSIC games, of which there are still, literally, HUNDREDS GOG does not have here. That's what GOG should be striving for. GOG could have a perfect record on DRM-free and pricing, but if they just turn into a Steam-but-without-the-DRM selling indie pixel platformers forever, what's that point?

What does "getting back to our roots" for GOG actually mean?

@eiii:

I'm not really sure that vendors will win this war. It may be, but it may be not. As I see it, local pricing in a global economy is an artifact - that is, it goes against free market laws. It's "artificial", so to speak, an "unnatural" rule (as far as market rules can be deemed "natural"). It's not a true economic need, it's an engineerd manipulation of the market. It's fake. That's why I think that if enough entities (customers, retailers, producers, developers) go against it, it could eventually crumble under the weight of its own inconsistency.

However I'm very weak in the field of economics, so I may be wrong.



@Crosmando:

I think I understand that getting the rights for old games is a little bureaucratic kafkian nightmare. That should be the reason why, in the Good Old Days, there was nothing really like GOG, and instead we got flea markets and abandonware sites, like the sweet, sweet Home of the Underdogs (thank you for everything, Sarinee).

It wasn't really lost in the debate, because TheEnigmaticT did answer questions in the other threads about why some games haven't made their way onto GOG.com yet. One of the big issues is trying to track down who owns the rights to certain games (and components of those games, such as music, video etc.) in order to sign a deal. Licensing rights are apparently an absolute mess for some games (including the Eye Of The Beholder series, which I've wanted to see here for a long time). He also explained that there are some classics they simply cannot get to work properly, even though the rights are available, so they are not offered on the store. I found one of his posts where he mentioned it:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing/post3414

However, I do agree that there are some classic games that are available on other stores (such as Steam), but are still not available on GOG.com, and it would be great to see them here. Part of the reason may be due to regional pricing, and part of the reason may be that those publishers/developers simply don't want to offer those games DRM-Free (no matter the pricing). Also, I don't think Steam does much work to ensure older games work on a modern OS, if any, whereas GOG does try. So there is still an uphill battle to convince those publishers to offer their games here.

In my opinion, I really doubt that Blizzard, Bethesda (Zenimax), Rockstar, Valve and some others would be willing to offer their games on GOG.com, because they either have their own game clients, or they have a history of aggressively protecting their IP. I'm not sure about Lucasarts/Disney.

Edit: added link

You point out one very real problem, but also one that isn't a problem. The problem is that, by still allowing regional pricing, GOG still effectively gave up that part of their battle and publishers have not only no reason to change that business model but actually additional incentive to add regionally priced games on GOG, because they can definitely expect higher sales in regions that usually get fucked over by this.
However, it's not the other customers who necessarily subsidize that because some quick calculations show that GOG may fall just shy of breaking even for sales of regionally priced games in price-hiked regions, but they earn far more from sales elsewhere, in regions where they do not need to compensate users for the difference, so it still makes business sense for them to have such games and you can say that the buyers from regularly-priced regions are the ones subsidizing the compensation for the price-hiked ones, not the people who buy other games. (I still definitely say boycott those games completely though, and not just the games but the publishers in general. And if you are worried about their bottom line and future prospects, that just gives you another reason to avoid buying such a game if you're in a region with a higher price anyway.)

So about what we earned, as a matter of principle we definitely still lost compared to the initial state of affairs, of completely rejecting regional pricing, but we did earn a local pricing system that will be an actual improvement (seeing as making it optional means that nobody will be worse off, so even if only a few will actually gain overall it'll still be a plus). Past that, anybody who does live in a region that gets fucked over by regional pricing can say that they're not actually paying more for the game itself (or will be able to say so as soon as that store credit system will be in place, as codes are far less useful and valuable), and the fact that GOG may take a loss on each sale does seem enough for me to say that they're apologizing enough for continuing to actually betray their principle.
If they'd have had a guaranteed profit from such sales, even if of one cent, I would have been far less appeased by it, but I ran the numbers as well as I could and, at least for EU sales of AoW3 now, they will probably lose when you factor in all taxes, fees and costs (so not just the VAT, they'd still be making a small profit if it'd be just that). And their willingness to go that far, to actually take a loss so we won't have to, does make me feel that the situation is a reasonable compromise at the moment. They won't be regaining my complete confidence or support, at least definitely not until they'll fully go back to standing behind both of their principles to the same extent as before, and depending on how many games will eventually be added with regional pricing and by which publishers I may get back to fully opposing this move yet again in time, but for the moment I'm tentatively all right with it. (And have suggestions about how to improve it.)

(Heh, still find that funny, this argument about GOG not being known for flat pricing. Well, coming from someone in an area where that's not an issue, I can imagine not, but people from areas that get fucked over by pricing everywhere else may well be even more aware of the lack of regional pricing than of the lack of DRM!)

As for me, the regional pricing was not an issue that big as long that you sticked with your DRM-free policy. I hope you won't have problems to convince publishers to add AAA games to your catalogue.

It seems you are the one who don't know what GOG stands for. If you ever checked any of their interviews or videos, they were defining themselves by 2 things:
1) One world, one price
2) DRM free

For some reason as you don't care about regional pricing, you decided that GOG was defined by DRM-free only. With regional pricing, its still you take it or leave it, if you live in Australia or Japan or other affected places. If everyone is using regional pricing, you can't buy your games except over-priced , same as if all DD sells games with DRM, then to play games you have to use DRM. You argument means you decided DRM-free is more important to you which is fine but the wrong part is you are assuming it is same for everyone.

I don't know if that changed and what GOG displayed in the meantime, when they only had DRM free but the current advertisment of GOG for newcomers emphasizes especially fighting against $1=1€. So not for completely worldwide flat prices but more against price excesses.

My guess there is that they want to make money by attracting customers specifically in thehigh prices areas from the competitition, because there they effectively lowered the prices and undercut the compeitition. This usually only pays off if the number of sales is increased accordingly which means that many customers must switch service. A side effect is that they can present themselves as innovative customer friendly company which might help additionally. Or is it the other way around.

In any case I'm already a customer at GOG so I do not really count, but making GOG known to others and making the competitive prices of GOG known which is next to DRM free another good argument is surely something I can do.

And I think that unlike suggested earlier here GOG makes a small positive return from each game sold, so it will be a good thing in any case.

:D Yes

You mean to say I moved all the way to Russia from the UK for nothing?

Thank you for this.
Stay classy GOG :D

Thanks GoG.com, for backing away from this brand-tarnishing decision that would eliminate a good part of the appeal of GoG.com. Thank you for listening to customers. Thank you for continuing to offer excellent service and thank you for provisional arrangements.

I must say this has really strengthened my belief in the GoG leadership and I will be sure to remain a consumer on your fine website.