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General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
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Posted February 21, 2014
The DRM-Free Revolution Continues with Big Pre-Orders and Launch Day Releases!

Good news! GOG.com is going to bring you more fantastic launch day releases, preorders, and other exciting new content from some of our favorite developers. We've lined up 3 big titles that we will be bringing to GOG.com in the next couple of months for sale or preorder that we think will be hits with all of our gamers; and we have more equally exciting games coming up soon.

If you've been a member of the site for a long time, you may recall that when we launched sales of The Witcher 2 on GOG.com, we had to add in regional pricing. The game cost different amounts in in the US, the UK, the European Union, and Australia. We're doing something like that once again in order to bring you new titles from fantastic bigger studios. Since we don't accept currencies other than USD on GOG.com right now, we'll be charging the equivalent of the local price in USD for these titles. We wish that we could offer these games at flat prices everywhere in the world, but the decision on pricing is always in our partners' hands, and regional pricing is becoming the standard around the globe. We're doing this because we believe that there's no better way to accomplish our overall goals for DRM-Free gaming and GOG.com. We need more games, devs, and publishers on board to make DRM-Free gaming something that's standard for all of the gaming world!

That brings with it more good news, though! As mentioned, we have three games we're launching soon with regional pricing--two RPGs and a strategy game--and while we can't tell you what they are yet because breaking an NDA has more severe penalties than just getting a noogie, we're confident that you'll be as excited about these games as we are. For a limited time, we will be offering anyone who pre-orders or buys one of them a free game from a selection as a gift from GOG.com, just like we did for The Witcher 2.

If you have any questions, hit us up in the comments below and we'll be happy to answer (to the best of our ability).

EDIT: Since we've answered a lot of the common questions already here (and lest you think that we've ignored you), it may be handy for you to check out the forum thread about this and search for staff answers by clicking this link here. (hat tip to user Eli who reminded us that the feature even exists. :)
Posted March 01, 2014
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gibbeynator: GOG did a survey around a year ago, asking people about putting limited DRM in games in an attempt to bring in some newer releases. We said no, and they said "we super duper pinkie promise to only sell DRM-filled games if they have some kind of offline mode". Not sure what happened afterwards, but it was surveyed alongside Early Access, and that's supposed to be coming sometime this year.
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TheEnigmaticT: We decided it was a terrible idea, but we wanted to gauge the community interest about it in general. The community actually didn't seem to mind it, which is interesting, but we decided in the end it's not right for us.
Well it wasn't quite worded as "DRM" but having to play online with an offline mode available. For some games, the matchmaking service is online and others are wholly online. See Company of Heroes for matchmaking or Guild Wars 2 for online gameplay. That isn't a bug but a feature. Philosophical difference maybe, but DRM that doesn't let me play the game (Steam version of Two Worlds II for starters) and playing online with dedicated servers and a dedicated matchmaking service are two very different things. Being able to play offline or at a LAN with an RTS is important, I want to play CoH offline with friends without having to go online for that. But hitting play and being matched to someone else around my skill level? And with other games (Counterstrike is a great example) hitting play and playing on a server so it's not P2P? Which in Australia is pretty important given our shoddy politicians, worse telco's, horrific infrastructure, and debilitating commercial environment (too many big businesses trying to control the market).

So when I said yes to online gameplay (matchmaking service, dedicated servers, etc) I wasn't saying yes to DRM. I want my RTS to have an offline mode where I can play it on a LAN (Starcraft 2 for stupid ideas ruining good games), and I want to play P2P if I so choose. But having access to online features and being barred from a game 'cause I swapped video cards are not the same. One gives me extra features when I want them, and the other makes me check out the torrent sites and wonder what kind of release I could put out if I applied my cryptography skills to stupid games. I want the features without the (needless) hassle, so servers and matchmaking sans hardware checks and program scans.
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TheEnigmaticT: I don't see any other digital distributor who's our size trying to sign AAA content DRM-free, do you?
I see plenty on Kickass and Pirate Bay, a few of them are even bundling soundtracks when you guys aren't. :P They consistently even ship millions of units with a diverse portfolio of business interests and have built up enough trust from their customers that they can ship late and still get all the downloaders. No regional availability, regional pricing, DRM, or censoring to be seen.
Post edited March 01, 2014 by FraggingBard
Posted March 01, 2014
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blotunga: As I said before. How can they enforce regional pricing without DRM? Else I can always use a proxy.
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TheEnigmaticT: You're conflating two different things. DRM and regional pricing aren't exactly related.
Last niggle before I go find a soundtrack and chocolate, DRM is Digital Rights Management. Controlling the "IP" related to the product, right? So when you regional price it, and make it regionally available, you're doing what exactly? You're controlling the product, saying you can play it and you can't play it. Which is exactly what those silly programs attached to other games do, you just do it in a roundabout and indirect way which lets you pretend it's different.

It isn't. A game which isn't available in Australia, that costs more in Australia making it more difficult to access, that is only available in a limited form, or that tells me to go away when I change the RAM, it's all the same thing. Simply stupid people making it hard for me to purchase and use their product. Which begs the question as to how they managed to get in charge of distribution. Price matching digital to physical? Really? If you're a digital company and can ship a digital product then why should you price match a physical product with all the physical related expenses? A free market only works when 1) no single company or group controls a large proportion and 2) it's competitive. That's not competitive, that's silly people propping up a failing business model - Remember those CD's and DVD's you could get that had the cool packaging? I bought those. Remember the jewel case CD with just a cover and the CD? I didn't buy that p.o.s. - and it's a nonsensical idea.

Stripped down copy beats "deluxe" model for expenses but loses out as it becomes pointless to buy physical so then digital beats all. Why would you do kill off the advantage you get from being digital to save a bad business model? And by you I'm including both GOG, CD Projekt Red, and every other nut case making it harder for me to throw money at them. Don't mind me though, I'm mostly just angsty that my last refuge has thrown the towel in the same month my colluding PM decided to whack a bunch of tax onto parcels more than 10AUD so now I can't even buy products that aren't available in Aus without propping up companies charging for shipping/products (when they're available) like we still used sail.

EDIT: Language and brackets.
Post edited March 01, 2014 by FraggingBard
Posted March 03, 2014
high rated
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TheEnigmaticT: You're conflating two different things. DRM and regional pricing aren't exactly related.
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FraggingBard: Last niggle before I go find a soundtrack and chocolate, DRM is Digital Rights Management. Controlling the "IP" related to the product, right? So when you regional price it, and make it regionally available, you're doing what exactly? You're controlling the product, saying you can play it and you can't play it. Which is exactly what those silly programs attached to other games do, you just do it in a roundabout and indirect way which lets you pretend it's different.
DRM is explicitly a class of technologies that attempt to control the utility of a digital work after sale. Regional pricing, by the definition of it, is something that clearly works before (or possibly, you could argue, during) sale. Further, once you have purchased the game with regional pricing, you are free to do as many things with it as anyone else in the world is, so we're not attempting to limit your post-sale utility of your files. That's why I say it's not DRM.
Posted March 05, 2014
Yeah I don't know what's the fuss is here about,

Even for Steam games (steam = drm) I sometimes buy in other shops with other currencies to get a Steam key way cheaper.

So regional pricing and DRM are two different things, that can be combined (Steam +Steam shop = a combination) but can also stand alone.
If you want to use a VPN to mask your location to get a better price, then gz for discovering a way that many people have been using for years already.
Posted March 05, 2014
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krokkel: (steam = drm)
Not neccesarily. Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Portal, and Half-Life Source - for some examples - are actually DRM-free. Once downloaded, they can be played perfectly well with ot without an internet eonnection, and with or without Steam on the machine (multiplayer modes excepted, not because DRM, but because Steam technologies are used for eg. matchfinding and lobby).
Posted March 12, 2014
Man, why does Age of Wonders preorder costs 40€ here, while I can buy a steam key for 29€. Or buy the game as box in a shop for 33€ -.-
No fair.
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krokkel: (steam = drm)
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Maighstir: Not neccesarily. Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Portal, and Half-Life Source - for some examples - are actually DRM-free. Once downloaded, they can be played perfectly well with ot without an internet eonnection, and with or without Steam on the machine (multiplayer modes excepted, not because DRM, but because Steam technologies are used for eg. matchfinding and lobby).
Can you sell it again?
Post edited March 12, 2014 by krokkel
Posted March 12, 2014
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krokkel: Can you sell it again?
As far as I understand, that's primarily a licence issue, not a DRM one. But no, you can't move games between accounts (like GOG), and trading the whole account is also against the EULA - but there's nothing actually stopping you from copying the files over to a friend's computer (also like GOG).

However, I believe GreenManGaming uses a DRM system (Capsule) that enables resale.
Post edited March 12, 2014 by Maighstir
Posted March 14, 2014
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krokkel: Can you sell it again?
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Maighstir: As far as I understand, that's primarily a licence issue, not a DRM one. But no, you can't move games between accounts (like GOG), and trading the whole account is also against the EULA - but there's nothing actually stopping you from copying the files over to a friend's computer (also like GOG).

However, I believe GreenManGaming uses a DRM system (Capsule) that enables resale.
As I understand it DRM nowadays is for 2 things:
1. prevent illegal copies (well, let's be honest - all solutions fail; even MMOs do have private servers)
and 2. prevent re-sale.

One may say that the second comes naturally with the first depending on the kind of DRM.
But an online activation and bunddling a game with an account like Steam, Origin or Uplay are obviously against re-sale.
Technically it wouldn't be a problem to have a key deactivated to sell it and activate on another account. But none of the three major DRM clients offers this.

Kalypso uses a launcher too. But they also allow to deactivate a game via support so you can sell it. That's very user-friendly.

I could sell my games bought here in GOG. I haven't yet, but I could.
It seems GOG doesn't think of that, because I just see that there's no possibility to delete a game from my library.
But that would be necessary.
And I don't know how the support would react when I would ask them to remove a game because I sold it elsewhere - lol.
Posted March 14, 2014
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krokkel: I could sell my games bought here in GOG. I haven't yet, but I could.
And in the same sense, you could sell certain games from Steam.

(ie, there is no method of transferring the licence to another account, but there's also nothing stopping you from copying the files to another computer and running the game there.)
Posted March 15, 2014
Frankly I don't like local pricing. But my first priority is no DRM, anything else comes later. That's why I'm on GOG.

I can live with local pricing as long as it's done transparently. So I have the freedom to decide on my own if I want to support it by buying something or not. And vendors can see when customers don't support their local pricing and boycot it.

Marcin "iWi" Iwinski & Guillaume "TheFrenchMonk" Rambourg:
"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."

What you want to do now is bad in two ways:

1. You force all your customers to pay for the local pricing, whether they want to support it or not. It's not you who pay the difference out of your own pocket, it's all your customers who pay the difference in the end (by buying games from you), even when they do not buy a single locally priced game.

2. Local pricing is not really transparent to the customers this way. You can effectively buy a game for a lower than the local price and others pay the difference for you. So locally priced games sell as good as if they would not be locally priced. This sends the completely wrong signal to the vendors. They see their strategy of local pricing confirmed and even more vendors may force local pricing in the future.

No, when you have to accept local pricing from any vendor please make it transparent to the customers and let them decide if they want to support it or not. Do not force all your customers to (indirectly) support local pricing!
Posted March 17, 2014
if we can receive gifts form different regions,and the editions r same,that will be okay...just okay.as a gamer,i prefer no regional price,that's obviousily.
but it REALLY makes gog like other ordinary websites such as origin or steam......idk if it's good for gog.
on and as the buddy above me,i agree with him:i chose gog for DRM-free :D
Post edited March 17, 2014 by HappyNerd
Posted March 21, 2014
Ignorant haters are going to hate...

Personally I prefer the fact that there will be another option than Steam or other companies to buy new games... That will also be "DRM free" (this is very important feature)...

Can someone convince EA to sell to more than just on Origin?.

I don't know about regional exclusives... I hate the fact that sometimes some countries get certain DLC, or extras that aren't offered in other countries in some form. Maybe make it 'free' for Europe, and extra cost in America might be one option.... But I'd like to have access to those 'gifts' in some form...

Seriously dislike that I always have to go to steam for new releases, or most complete games. I.E. Assassin's Creed series often comes with all bonus DLC from all stores and regions combined, so I don't have to decide which store to buy it from in the first place (to decide on which piece of DLC I want from Day 1. Yes, often, but not always, the DLC get released later. I do like the option of being able to obtain all of it from day 1.
Posted March 21, 2014
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Baggins: Can someone convince EA to sell to more than just on Origin?.
You'd need to give them a good reason why.

From their point of view, they get 100% of the sale price (okay, minus taxes and other sundries) when it sells through Origin. Every additional avenue they open for sales risks more people using that avenue instead of Origin. Potentially, if enough people use something other than Origin, they could possibly end up selling more copies for less overall profit.

So for any new sales channel they open, you'd have to convince them the overall gain in new customers would far outweigh existing Origin customers switching to that channel. If that channel is DRM-Free, you're likely looking at a mass exodus of Origin customers (I mean, given the choice who would choose to buy the DRM version?), and probably an overall drop in profit.

To understand the math, look at it this way (I'm intentionally using oversimplified silly numbers here. Add lots of extra zeroes to look more realistic :) )

100% of 200 customers is 200. That's Origin.

Now lets say they add GoG. This gains them 75 customers, but 100 of their Origin customers also choose to switch to GoG.

100% of 100 customers, plus 50% of 150 customers is 175. More customers, but less of the income because you're sharing the 150 customers.

For it to make sense to use GoG, there needs to be an overall raise in predicted profits for EA, taking into account all the knock-on effects of such a move. That's assuming they're even on board with the DRM-free idea in the first place, chances are someone in EA management is likely arguing that the above scenario results in 50 Origin customers, 10 GoG customers, and 2000 pirated copies.

tl;dr: It's unlikely, IMO.
Posted March 21, 2014
Last I heard EA keeps hemoraging... Having losses, not making money.
Posted March 22, 2014
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Baggins: Last I heard EA keeps hemoraging... Having losses, not making money.
Probably another reason why someone in power there is arguing not to sell things outside Origin. Last thing they want is to lose even more. Again, not the way I see it, but likely the way someone is selling the idea of keeping digital sales in-house.

Personally, I'd put any issues that have things going that badly for them more at the door of sales dropping because of nasty practices like the latest Sim City being online-only (the fact they're doing a 180 on that would indicate it didn't sell as well as they hoped, rather than someone at EA just deciding to be charitable to gamers and listen to their concerns)
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Community
General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
(4041 posts)