TheEnigmaticT: The phrasing may have been a little bit inelegant. It was that we could either sign these games and bring them DRM-free (I don't see any other digital distributor who's our size trying to sign AAA content DRM-free, do you?), or else stay with flat regional pricing and then not have the games.
GOG.com will remain DRM-Free, certainly. The games that we're bringing you guys? If they're not DRM-free here, I don't see them being DRM-Free anywhere.
wpegg: I have some kind of questions TET, but they're kind of rambling thoughts. Whatever they are, I'd be interested in your views on them. All of these questions come from what I believe is a valid assumption, which is that you believe fully that this is the right thing to do both for GOG and its users.
I've probably been here longer than most here nowadays, certainly long enough to remember the beta days, and the early GOG press anouncements and quotes like "When it comes to games, we like it cheap and unprotected". There were many announcements back then about how you guys believed in keeping the cost down, and believed in one price for everyone. With this announcement, as well as the previous abandonment of your low prices, do you regret having these goals in the first place? I mean, your credibility with us right now is looking pretty poor, you've sold out on all but one policy.
I don't think you do regret having the goals, I suspect your answer will be along the lines of "We'd love to meet all of these, but this is necessary for GOGs future". I'll continue on this assumption. If so, then I suppose it makes me wonder if you feel you would have been better off not trying for these other things in the first place? DRM-free was always your top dog, do you feel you could have moved faster, grown faster, and brought more games to us faster if you'd only run with that policy, and caved on the others earlier, or never even had them?
This brings me to wonder, if you feel that the policies were never particularly valuable, do you feel GOG has marketted itself badly? Which I suppose would fall squarely at your door. There were many people who were swayed by these "side policies" into supporting GOG, and energetically prompting others to do so, have you mis-sold to them in terms of brand loyalty?
Perhaps you feel that these things were necessary then, but as GOG grows they're not. If that's the case, have you "used" those of us that do consider these things to be a reason we supported you so fully? I can believe many supporters of these other "side policies" would feel like stepping stones right now, there to get you through the quiet days and shout your name across the net, but no longer appreciated now you've got the presence.
I'd appreciate your, and everyone elses (constructive) thoughts on this.
It can be problematic to make bold statements. "Flat pricing worldwide" was definitely a bold one, and you can see it's gotten us into some trouble today. :)
The problem for us is looking at the future of GOG.com and DRM-free gaming. We could, I suppose, settle into our niche as "that place that sells old games", and let it be.
We have bigger dreams than that. We started by selling new games DRM-free with The Witcher 2, and when that experiment worked out well for us--well in this case meaning "we earned money" we realized that we were on to something. The fact that we can routinely pull in a decent percentage of Steam's revenue for new titles--despite the face that we're a small fraction of their size means that we're doing something special. Now, GOG.com is a special place, so that's not incredibly shocking to me. Since almost all of these games that we are selling so well are sold at the same price everywhere in the world, it's not our pricing that's making a difference.
This makes sense to us, because we believe that DRM-free is different and important. So then the question becomes, if we're looking to grow, to be more than we are, and to make things different not just for us but also for other games around the world, how can we advance the DRM-Free Revolution? The best way we could think of to do that is to bring AAA games that are being released on their launch day to GOG.com, and to show that these games will sell well without DRM. That they won't be pirated any more than a game will because it's the Internet.
This is a risky call. I think big decisions are always risky. It may even be it's the wrong call. We'll find that out as we move forward. But this is us saying that we believe in the DRM-Free Revolution enough that we think it's the plan for us going forward. We think that making GOG.com the premier place to get games without DRM is what's most important for us.
It was a hard call, because it is a big change and it does involve us changing something that's been a part of us since we launched. Without making this call, the kind of transformative change that we think is important to keep GOG.com growing and to bring DRM-Free gaming to more people simply won't happen. So many new games are tied up in legal requirements thanks to retail partnerships that mandate regional pricing that anything almost every quality new release would be inaccessible to us.
We hope that this is the right move for us. We hope that you guys, the people who've brought us to where we are, will agree with this choice once you get the chance to see it in action. Time will tell, and we'll be listening to as we go. This is new territory for both you and us, and we're looking forward to exploring it together.