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Hey, GOGgers,

We're not perfect, we're exploring new frontiers, and we make mistakes. We thought DRM-Free was so important that you'd prefer we bring you more DRM-Free games and Fair Price was less critical and that it could be sacrificed in some cases. The last two week's worth of comments in our forums (nearly 10k!), show that's not the case. We didn’t listen and we let you down. We shouldn't sacrifice one of our core values in an attempt to advance another. We feel bad about that, and we're sorry. Us being sorry is not of much use to you, so let’s talk about how we will fix it.

One: DRM-free forever. Abandoning fixed regional pricing means it will probably take longer to get some games, but you've made it clear that sacrificing fair pricing for more DRM-free games isn't acceptable.

Two: 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. In a couple of months, once we have such functionality implemented, we will give you store credit instead, which then you will be able to use towards any purchase and cover the price of it in full or partially. Effectively gamers from all around the world will be able to benefit from the US prices.

This will apply to every single game where we do not have flat pricing, such as Age of Wonders 3 (full details here), Divinity: Original Sin, and The Witcher 3. If you remember the Fair Price Package for The Witcher 2, this will be exactly the same.

Three: We still intend to introduce the pricing in local currencies. Let us explain why we want to do it and how we want to make it fair for everyone. From the very beginning our intention was to make things easier for users whose credit cards/payment systems are not natively in USD. The advantages are simple because the price is more understandable and easier to relate to. There would be no exchange rates involved, no transaction fees, and no other hidden charges. However after reading your comments, we realized we have taken an important element away: the choice. In order to fix this, we'll offer the option of paying in the local currency or the equivalent in USD. This way, how you pay is always your choice.

Four: You are what matters, and we will be sure to involve you all more in what we're doing and why we're doing it. Let's start by meeting you at GDC - we’d like to invite you to meet us face-to-face Monday the 17th at GDC. Obviously, not all of you can come to San Francisco, so we want to invite all of you to an online event with us early in April to ask us whatever you would like. More details soon.

The bottom line is simple: there may be companies that won't work with us (although we will work hard to convince the most stubborn ones ;). Yes, it means we might miss out on some games, but at the same time GOG.com will remain true to its values and will keep on offering you the best of DRM-free gaming with Fair Prices.

Once again thank you for caring so much about GOG.com. We will work hard not to disappoint you again.

--Marcin "iWi" Iwinski & Guillaume "TheFrenchMonk" Rambourg
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iWi: It relates to the classics as follows - if you choose USD you pay the USD price i.e. $5.99 as per your example. If you go for the local price you will pay a fixed price in given currency - for example €4.49. You are free to choose whatever works best for you at a given time and yes - currencies will fluctuate, so sometimes the USD price will be a better deal and sometimes the local price, but the differences should not be big.
Thank you for the clarification on this. In my opinion this is the best way you could have handled local vs USD pricing, so kudos for going this route.
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SirPrimalform: Well I must say this is extremely welcome! Thank you for listening eventually (I get that it takes time to agree on a U turn like this).

I hope someone can be more specific about how this relates to the classic games though. You talk about the choice to pay in local currency or the equivalent in USD... so does this mean € users can pay $5.99 for a $5.99 classic if they choose USD or does that mean the USD equivalent of €4.49, which is $6.22? The difference is not huge but it's still a question I'm interested in the answer to.
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iWi: It relates to the classics as follows - if you choose USD you pay the USD price i.e. $5.99 as per your example. If you go for the local price you will pay a fixed price in given currency - for example €4.49. You are free to choose whatever works best for you at a given time and yes - currencies will fluctuate, so sometimes the USD price will be a better deal and sometimes the local price, but the differences should not be big.
This, sir, is an OUTRAGE!

Wait...that sounds perfectly reasonable. :)
Great decision. Even though I was gonna pay the same price as US, it just wasnt fair to other people. They get shafted on Steam and it was gonna be the same here too. Since I am not from US, I have been through this a lot and thus shared their concerns. Glad that it is not a concern anymore for now. Just happy to be a customer again and seeing that things are back to normal :)
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GameBlazer: I've been a part of this site since you first launched, and haven't felt the need to post anything, until now, so please understand how strongly I feel when I say honestly, i think you've made a HUGE mistake.

GOG, to me, has always been first and foremost about Good Old Games. DRM-free is a bonus, but honestly? I go to this website for one reason alone. Because I want to legitimately purchase the forgotten gems of the past, and have them run easily on my machine.

The fact that you're caving because of a bunch of whining brats on a message board, and costing me the experience of playing classic gems from the past, is pathetic. I'm sure we'll never know what business partnerships you lost because of that flip-flopping, but if even ONE game from the past is now inaccessible because of your decision, then it wasn't worth it.

This is really, terribly disappointing. I thought that with your acquisition of the rights to sell System Shock 2, and hinting at a partnership with one of the last holdout corporations, that things were about to get amazing. But instead, there's been a severe drought of interesting releases, and honestly, the latest and greatest "indie" titles just don't cut it.

Get it together, GOG.
They haven't dropped regional pricing. Nothing changes on the publisher side.
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GameBlazer: I've been a part of this site since you first launched, and haven't felt the need to post anything, until now, so please understand how strongly I feel when I say honestly, i think you've made a HUGE mistake.

GOG, to me, has always been first and foremost about Good Old Games. DRM-free is a bonus, but honestly? I go to this website for one reason alone. Because I want to legitimately purchase the forgotten gems of the past, and have them run easily on my machine.

The fact that you're caving because of a bunch of whining brats on a message board, and costing me the experience of playing classic gems from the past, is pathetic. I'm sure we'll never know what business partnerships you lost because of that flip-flopping, but if even ONE game from the past is now inaccessible because of your decision, then it wasn't worth it.

This is really, terribly disappointing. I thought that with your acquisition of the rights to sell System Shock 2, and hinting at a partnership with one of the last holdout corporations, that things were about to get amazing. But instead, there's been a severe drought of interesting releases, and honestly, the latest and greatest "indie" titles just don't cut it.

Get it together, GOG.
That's kinda how I feel too. I stayed out of the whole regional pricing debacle because all I care about is getting classics, and DRM doesn't bother me TOO much (I like Steam and GOG equally), so long as you aren't required to type in a serial code EVERY TIME you start a game up, and in my experience with Steam, if at all it only happens the first time you download it on a fresh install of Windows. Anyways, I'm going off track, my point is that for me, if for example GOG got LucasArts on board (my #1 desired publisher to come here), but the only way was to employ regional pricing, I would hate it if since they've decided not to do that, the deal went south. It would piss me off more that we would still have to pay absurd prices on eBay and Amazon for them than if they were available digitally and possibly more expensive in my country than the US (I live in Australia, so it's bound to affect me). I would really hate it if GOG had just let go of their last chance to get one of the most stubborn companies in the game industry to co-operate.
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OzzieMonkey: That's kinda how I feel too. I stayed out of the whole regional pricing debacle because all I care about is getting classics, and DRM doesn't bother me TOO much (I like Steam and GOG equally), so long as you aren't required to type in a serial code EVERY TIME you start a game up, and in my experience with Steam, if at all it only happens the first time you download it on a fresh install of Windows. Anyways, I'm going off track, my point is that for me, if for example GOG got LucasArts on board (my #1 desired publisher to come here), but the only way was to employ regional pricing, I would hate it if since they've decided not to do that, the deal went south. It would piss me off more that we would still have to pay absurd prices on eBay and Amazon for them than if they were available digitally and possibly more expensive in my country than the US (I live in Australia, so it's bound to affect me). I would really hate it if GOG had just let go of their last chance to get one of the most stubborn companies in the game industry to co-operate.
Have you even read the announcement?

They. Haven't. Dropped. Regional. Pricing. All they're doing is offsetting the price difference out of their own pocket by providing vouchers for their customers. Nothing has changed for publishers. If they want regional pricing and all the advantages it entails for them, they can still get it.
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GameBlazer: I've been a part of this site since you first launched, and haven't felt the need to post anything, until now, so please understand how strongly I feel when I say honestly, i think you've made a HUGE mistake.

GOG, to me, has always been first and foremost about Good Old Games. DRM-free is a bonus, but honestly? I go to this website for one reason alone. Because I want to legitimately purchase the forgotten gems of the past, and have them run easily on my machine.

The fact that you're caving because of a bunch of whining brats on a message board, and costing me the experience of playing classic gems from the past, is pathetic. I'm sure we'll never know what business partnerships you lost because of that flip-flopping, but if even ONE game from the past is now inaccessible because of your decision, then it wasn't worth it.

This is really, terribly disappointing. I thought that with your acquisition of the rights to sell System Shock 2, and hinting at a partnership with one of the last holdout corporations, that things were about to get amazing. But instead, there's been a severe drought of interesting releases, and honestly, the latest and greatest "indie" titles just don't cut it.

Get it together, GOG.
Dude, they aren't losing any deals to sell classics because of this development. The reason they can sell so many classics DRM free is the publishers don't see that as a risk - without GOG, they wouldn't be selling these games anyway. If anything, we'll now lose access to newer games.
All I got to say is that GOG.com are truly heroes in the gaming industry. They brought the classics first with the best support for Windows Gaming ( and others too, from my limiting understanding), they allowed me to use my purchased content as I see fit with zero hassle downloads, no sign ins that require internet access all the time, and gave me all sorts of great FREE extras like soundtracks, manuals, desktop backgrounds.

This sort of action above takes BALLS in a business setting and a serious UNITY in business thinking. GOG.com is an aggressive business with everything that I admire and want in a gaming platform. I buy all of my games from them first instead of steam because they show they really really really care about their customers.

TLDR - There is no better cloud/game retailer than GOG.com at this point for their ability to get the games that matter, at the price we need, with the very best customer support/purchase policies.
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OzzieMonkey: That's kinda how I feel too. I stayed out of the whole regional pricing debacle because all I care about is getting classics, and DRM doesn't bother me TOO much (I like Steam and GOG equally), so long as you aren't required to type in a serial code EVERY TIME you start a game up, and in my experience with Steam, if at all it only happens the first time you download it on a fresh install of Windows. Anyways, I'm going off track, my point is that for me, if for example GOG got LucasArts on board (my #1 desired publisher to come here), but the only way was to employ regional pricing, I would hate it if since they've decided not to do that, the deal went south. It would piss me off more that we would still have to pay absurd prices on eBay and Amazon for them than if they were available digitally and possibly more expensive in my country than the US (I live in Australia, so it's bound to affect me). I would really hate it if GOG had just let go of their last chance to get one of the most stubborn companies in the game industry to co-operate.
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Randalator: Have you even read the announcement?

They. Haven't. Dropped. Regional. Pricing. All they're doing is offsetting the price difference out of their own pocket by providing vouchers for their customers. Nothing has changed for publishers. If they want regional pricing and all the advantages it entails for them, they can still get it.
I did read it, but I thought the whole point they were trying to make was that they would continue to fight against regional pricing and only go through with it as a last resort., with the aforementioned vouchers for those affected by it. I guess technically that means they haven't dropped it, but I got the sense that they were dropping the long term plans for it that got people so irked in the first place.

On a side note, I know you've probably dealt with a lot more ignorant posts than mine who didn't read the announcement properly and I'm sorry if I got on your nerves personally, your post seemed slightly annoyed and I assure you it was not my intention to bug anyone, so I'm sorry for that, next time I'll make myself more informed :)
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OldFatGuy: I mean I get it, you completely disagree with the very concept of one world, one price. That's cool. So why buy here then?? If DRM free is enough of a draw then I suppose you'd be willing to pay for it???
Questioning why i'm here doesn't add anything to the discussion. I'm just pointing out that setting the prices higher to eliminate regional pricing, like you suggested, can be just as unfair as regional pricing (which isn't always unfair). It's that simple.
I like those decisions.
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OldFatGuy: So why rip off some countries a big deal instead of just spreading the pain around so everyone gets a little?
Because of what i have already said. It's pretty naive to think that the world is homogeneous and that everyone can pay the same price anywhere. And if you read my post carefully, you'll see that i have never said that i was ok with some countries getting ripped off by regional pricing. Don't pull a strawman on me.
Post edited March 12, 2014 by Neobr10
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OldFatGuy: I mean I get it, you completely disagree with the very concept of one world, one price. That's cool. So why buy here then?? If DRM free is enough of a draw then I suppose you'd be willing to pay for it???
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Neobr10: Questioning why i'm here doesn't add anything to the discussion. I'm just pointing out that setting the prices higher to eliminate regional pricing, like you suggested, can be just as unfair as regional pricing (which isn't always unfair). It's that simple.
Well , you cant say that regional pricing have been handled well by any store so in that regard wordwide flat pricing is better even if somone gets its unfair.
The point is, you are at least sure that no one gets treated unfairly on purpose since the price is alike for evryone.

If regional pricing shoud have worked then poor contrys woud have had low prices and rich contrys high but this isnt the case.
Post edited March 12, 2014 by Lodium
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Lodium: Well , you cant say that regional pricing have been handled well by any store so in that regard wordwide flat pricing is better even if somone gets its unfair.
Are you sure about that? In my opinion Steam does have some good examples of regional pricing done right (Russia and Brazil).
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OldFatGuy: So why rip off some countries a big deal instead of just spreading the pain around so everyone gets a little?
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Neobr10: Because of what i have already said. It's pretty naive to think that the world is homogeneous and that everyone can pay the same price anywhere. And if you read my post carefully, you'll see that i have never said that i was ok with some countries getting ripped off by regional pricing. Don't pull a strawman on me.
Agreed, it's not. But how is jacking up the the price higher than our 'Murican prices going to to help countries with less disposable income?