The regional pricing for GOG has been annoying to deal with as an expatriate. I move around countries every few years, but home is the U.S.

With Steam you set your region when you first sign up and you stick to your country's pricing wherever you go and no matter what your IP address is. You keep the capability to buy games from that region and everything. All I had to do was show proof of my country of residence with a driver's license (I hid some of my personal details like my face and such, but Steam was fine with it).

With GOG, every time I go to a new region I have to deal with the local currency or if I try to change it back to USD, I get some b.s price hike.

Does GOG not have a proper region setting? I'm not trying to buy stuff not sold in my home country or get a price cheaper than my home country...I just want the same feature as Steam is all.

No, they don’t. I also have the issue. It’s ridiculous, the website randomly pulls up you up and changes languages and settings as well. For instance if I buy something when I visit my partner, I get higher prices and then charged by my bank for a foreign transaction. So I just don’t bother unless I can get a working vpn or something.

One could just as easily argue, rather, that you are normally getting BS discounts that are totally unfair to others who have to pay much higher prices solely due to where they happen to live.

So that's actually a form of discrimination, even though almost no one publicly calls it out as such.

"Regional pricing" is a scam.

Well, as much as I'm not a fan of regional pricing I think GOG's implementation is better in this case.

I don't see why you should get regional prices based on your nationality rather than your current location. You don't get special American prices in Japanese shops, so why should you get special American prices if you're visiting GOG from Japan?

The whole purpose of regional pricing, as much as I dislike it, is to make the online prices conform to local prices. If you're in a place where games are more expensive in the stores then the regional prices on the internet will also be expensive. If you're in somewhere like Brazil where games are a lot cheaper then the regional price will be cheaper.

GOG's implementation is right, it's just that regional pricing sometimes sucks.

It’s different though. A digital product is the same regardless of where you buy it. If I buy game xyz as I am in Belgium for the weekend, and am only going to download it when I am back in the uk, then why should I be charged more and then pay banking charges on top of that? Or should the reverse be true, if I buy a game in the uk on Friday, but download on a Saturday in Belgium, should I then pay the difference and the banking charges just to level it out? It’s nonsense. If your domiciled in a country, pay tax in that country, then you should use digital commerce based on that country, not where you are currently located.
If of course your domiciled in another country then that is different.

Hmm, when I lived in Eastern Europe for a year or so Steam showed me their Steam store, not the U.S. version (which I was pretty happy about honestly, as everything was cheaper).

Which is an argument against regional pricing in general. I did say I wasn't actually in favour of regional pricing. Why buy it when you're in Belgium if you don't intend to download it until you're home? Similarly, why buy anything in Belgium that you don't intend to use while you're there if it costs more? Again, if you accept regional pricing of digital goods then basing it on current location is the correct way of doing it. Regional pricing is intended to mimic the fact that different markets have different prices.

Let me reiterate that I don't like regional pricing.

It doesn't matter whether I like it or not though, price being dependent on your location is regional pricing functioning as intended.
You pay the price that that item costs in the location that you are when you make the purchase which is how buying physical goods works and this is what regional pricing is meant to mimic.

GOG likes regional pricing, GOG has implemented it correctly.
Don't get at GOG for the way they've implemented regional pricing, get at them for supporting regional pricing.

Well, the reason I might buy abroad is if there is a sale that weekend that I am away. I have missed several sales this way.

My point is, I am domiciled and pay tax in country a, therefore I should pay the relevant price in country a.

Also, the whole IP checking process they do is a real pain in the neck, I had the page stuck on German throughout some time in Switzerland recently, even though my language was set to English, and it was redirecting me to the German forum, and showing prices in francs or dollars depending on how it felt that day.
Essentially what this means is, don’t use the website at all if not in your home country, which isn’t right.

Have you tried that approach on a corner shop in Belgium yet? I bet they'd love you for that. Well that's just bad luck. I missed a sale in my local supermarket when I was last on holiday so I know how it feels. I didn't say their programming was good, just that their location based approach is sound in principle. Again, I don't like regional pricing, but basing it on location rather than nationality is how it's supposed to work.

Shame that there isn't a feature similar to Steam. I get the sentiment of folks in favor of the method like GOG themselves as it better supports them financially, but it just feels lame to be locked out of certain games or getting weird prices when the internet is so open and other solutions exist/work well globally.

No worries though as there are legit ways around it (not talking about VPNs and stuff against GOG policy) and sometimes the pricing works in my favor so there is that.

OK...joking aside...let's have a look at the real world:

Let's take a pack of cigarettes as an example (because cigs are an addiction, meaning: people think they can't live without them...almost exactly as some people apparently think about games).

A 20-pack of the brand with the cowboy costs €6,50 here in Germany
The same 20-pack, but bought in France, costs €10,00
If bought in Norway, it costs €11,83
In the UK, it costs €12,27
Oh, and in Belgium, it costs €6,70

Now, I don't know if you're a smoker...but let's say you are:
While in Belgium over the weekend, would you ever buy a pack of cigs there, and then insist to the Belgian shop owner on paying the price you'd have to pay at home in the UK?

No? Well, that's funny...because you, as a resident and taxpayer in country A (here: UK), have just declared, that the price that you have to pay in country B (here: Belgium), should be the same price that you'd have to pay in your home country. So,...

And that goes for everything. Some things are cheaper abroad, some things are cheaper at home.
If you don't want to pay abroad's prices, don't buy abroad. So, on the one hand you complain about having to pay more abroad than at home...but on the other hand you buy during sales, despite knowing that
A) the price you have to pay here is higher than it would be at home, and
B) despite knowing that sales are a regular thing, so there's no real need to buy now?

Sorry, but that sounds pretty inconsistent to me.
Btw: if you pay less than the normal price during your stay abroad, it's still a discount...just not quite as high as it could be, were you at home.

Case in point there. If you are in Strasbourg, the. It’s a few euro to go across the border to Germany to get things cheaper. This proving that regional pricing is total nonsense in the first place.

Note the sales were just an example, whilst I am abroad which is quite often I just don’t buy things, so lost sales due to this. I can’t even use the website most of the time because the ip checking randomly assigns me to currencies and languages. One setting for your home country and be done with it, far simpler, we are still all in the eurozone at least for a few more days :o) maybe that’s the answer, not regional maybe continent pricing.