Dunno if he would, but I personally would and do. Because (long term) when the producers are allowed to artificially divide their customers into categories, the said customers always end up screwed.

Eventually the practice leads to shit like Cenega/Bethesda love story in regards to Skyrim/Fallout. Regional prices => users trying to get around the system => publishers putting pressure to get regional locks/release dates/region-modified versions in an increasingly draconian manner.

But, Gog did decide this. There's well over 600 games here that didn't require regional pricing to get. The games that they're talking about sound like they're newer games that a lot of us didn't want here anyways. I personally refuse to buy new games here if they have a Linux version elsewhere.

It astonishes me a bit that they didn't see this coming. Releasing an announcement about regional pricing with absolutely no meaningful details was never going to go over well. At least with some details there was a possibility that people would accept it.

Some people just looked at how steam does it with screwing europe over and getting away with it so they decided to suck people dry while they still can. That's why stores all over suddenly went "regional pricing".

"everyone else is doing" - exactly! And that's the one of the only two reasons that people were going to GoG instead of others!! These pretty much put GoG to the place it is now! So this is a big problem.

Yeah and this is where many don't see the problem. Very big chances are its going to unfold in a way it won't be only a handful of games. It may be all of the new and probably even more than half of the already selling ones that will get "adequate" prices when the old contracts expire. If some publishers want to artifficialy raise the prices, the others will too, coz jews are gonna jew.

GoG rep basically said they can't even promise the old games wont change price and that their approach is that it's a publisher decision to have regional pricing, so we will see the same regular usage of regional pricing like on Steam.

Hmm... of course I like that gog always had the same price for everyone.. saved me a lot of money... but as long as games stay drm-free and the regional prices are fair I can live with this decision... BUT only when the games have all the language support... I'm not paying german prices if the german language files are missing.

Exactly.

I mean, WTF? Isnt GOG suppoused to compete with other retailers? A lower price is one way of doing it.

Also, early access is suppoused to be more expensive - its about releasing a beta for the most eager of customers, who are willing to support the dev in an additional way (bug testing + paying more).
It is both a privilage to the customer, and a favour to the devs.

The fact that many people are misinterpreting it as a glorified preorder is another thing though.


1$ = 1€ is BS, lets be honest. There is nothing fair about that.

I have a feeling the games that use these regional prices will get slammed in the reviews.

I do think this is just another step towards some form of DRM on some games then gog will be just another steam

I came to gog for 1 reason,DRM free games.I didn't come for old games (i have close to 100 now though lol) I like the fact they sell new and indie games,it gives me a single place to get great games drm free.Selling new AAA games drm free sounds like a great thing to me,price wise people outside the us get screwed but your still getting a drm free product which is the most important thing to me.
I probably won't be able to play any aaa games (poor little laptop....) but if i could i would want them drm free from gog,this seems like a great thing to me.

Let's hope they do. They better suffer poor sales as well. Giving up core principles isn't the way to go, GOG.

I do not understand what is the big deal about release launches and preorders anyways. The core-customers of GOG game here do not really care about those i dare to say.

Trust is funny thing that it can be the hardest most durable thing ever, but it can also evaporate in blink of an eye.

Would be cool to have been in GOG when they had some meetings about deciding to do these things. Someone is so utterly out of touch with GOG's customer base its incredible.

Then again, ive been in bit similar situation twice in my working life - seeing huge decisions made against common sense by "professionals" that i am not really surprised. At both of those times time prooved me right. Again i wish i was wrong about this one, but i unfortunately do not thing i am.

Gog's flexing it's rules again and put the positive pr spin on it. If this is what it takes to get Lucasarts etc onboard I wonder if people would endorse it. Personally I wouldn't because the prices are a joke. I know it's not gog's fault that some regional pricing is a joke but it doesn't make any difference and how is gog going to know what country we're from, will using a proxy avoid it?

I bought The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition new on release cheaper than it cost on the gog website... that's with all the physical extras meaning I didn't have to put up with all the items being digital and having to be printed. That's how all digital download service is in the UK... Sony releases retail games for £60 that cost £40 instore, Steam charges £40>£45 for £30 games....


P.S. This just reminds me of the last indie gala I bought which really screwed me over because it changed the currency from USD to Euro without warning and charged me an extra £1.20 or so in tax.... this just feels like it's going that way. If gog started charging regional currency I highly doubt I'd be buying much anymore.

I keep seeing the “you don’t like the regional pricing for these upcoming three games? Then ignore them/ don’t buy them”. Hmm, I suppose that the “good news” announcement did work as intended/ hoped for after all – at least for some people.
Another thing that seems to be popping up is “I’m being regionally priced almost everywhere”. Maybe that’s what GOG was hoping for/ counting on from the beginning - the numbers of people already accustomed to it to “overshadow” those that would oppose straight up and make the whole issue die off quickly.
Just a quick thought I had right now given how the announcement is all PR talk and such.

The potential outcome that raises concerns and worries derives mostly from the blue text posts.

First off, there’s TET’s reply to Wisborne that seems to hint that the first of these three games to be released with regional pricing is going to be the new “ace” in GOG’s hands during talks with publishers at GDC.
So expect this to spread to all new big titles, if flat pricing was indeed their main blocking issue as TET said in another post. And there’s no insurance it won’t spread over to smaller new titles, older titles, removed games that may return, etc. So no, it’s not just a handful of games that are in jeopardy here. And it’s not going to happen over night either.

Then, there’s TET respond to a series of valid questions asked by Marcomies.
No promises made – wisely at this point, but that exactly is the alarming part of it, everything is open for (re)negotiations and publisher demands met by GOG.
Here we have the first worrisome indication that this regional pricing model may very well spread all over the catalogue, if devs/ pubs decided so in the future. And along with it anything else devs/ pubs may feel is necessary for their game to remain on GOG’s catalogue (means to control & enforce regional pricing, regional locking/ censoring/ blocking, etc.).

As I’ve said before, this is all very worrying to me in regard to how much and into what direction it’ll change GOG; I think it’s not unfair to say that it’s more likely than not that more devs/ pubs would want to enforce their own terms on various levels if and when they’ll get their chance.
The answer to this will now be “but GOG’s going to fight for us and fight hard”. Right now, I’m getting too many mixed messages from what GOG’s PR representative told us so far to be confident enough that this will be enough – it’s all up to the devs/ pubs, nth can be promised/ is off the table, this is a small change but at the same time it’s a big and risky one, they will always push for fair treatment but at the same time their power is restricted to advice and recommendations, their new official mission statement is “To make the world's best games available DRM-Free" but not necessarily to all the world.


Last but not least, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank all US based GOG users who actually took the time to look beyond the content of the announcement and recognise the problematic practice of today’s regional pricing model and the issues that could potentially accompany it, and vocally oppose it, although it won’t affect them.
To the rest that say “it doesn’t affect me, so I don’t care, lol” – carry on, none of the “goodies regional pricing usually brings with it will ever affect you and your sky will never fall, we get it.

It absolutely should be, and I've mentioned it here before too to try to correct those that think this is a good thing because of the differences in average income around the globe. Regional pricing has very little to do with average income or strength of the economy, and in many cases it is the exact opposite, and the richer countries are charged less than poorer ones.

Really, it's just the US and usually Canada that see the lower prices, and Australia sees the worst. The EU countries and the UK have to pay much more too.

Just realised it will be potentially even more expensive than steam etc because of paypal and bank charges for converting a foreign currency, in this case dollars.

(Hope another post so soon is ok, thought it was an important point.)

It would be funny, as an experiment, if gog did a price conversion from euros to dollars, let's say that one of those new games is released for 40€ meaning that it would be 55$ for US (or even better, 40£ and 66$), then i would like to see if those people supporting/dismissing this decision would be also be ok with this...