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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
I don't speak English

Thank you GOG and I hope for further development
Commendable move, thank you GOG for reconsidering and sticking with your principles. And ignore the ones still complaining, I suppose they just don't get the whole picture.
wait, what happened?
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Weclock: wait, what happened?
Somebody set us up the bomb!
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JudasIscariot: Oh, we got a community pulse on this. Part of my job is giving community feedback in a concise and unedited manner (meaning good or bad, the feedback must flow!) so I, and those of us who interact with the community on a regular basis, made sure that the community's misgivings were made known :) Just wanted to get that out there :)

Feel free to ask questions and we will answer to the best of our ability :)
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WhiteElk: But how big, and how representative could the sampling population been? i have no doubt of your engagement here. But i know that the forum posters are few in relation to your customers. And i am certain that not all the forum goers wished to engage in a forum brawl over this.

Part of what troubles me here over the decision, is that people with agenda can recruit others to troll a thread to their purpose. i've seen it before, gaming clans being asked to vote up a mod for competition, calls going out on a gaming forum to help beat someone up over global warming debate, etc. This is minor concern to me (in this instance), but decisions made over who whine loudest and longest is ridiculous.
I am not privy to all the numbers but part of it is really more than just "Oh OK, we'll make more money if we do X instead of Y". I am not sure how much I can reveal about this whole change of direction, sorry, just my innate NDA paranoia here :).

Also, I don't know about you but I couldn't possibly imagine someone being able to get a significant number of people to troll or falsely complain about something. This is dependent on how we define "significant" :)
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WhiteElk: ... maybe sales significantly dropped. But i can't imagine it realistically being so.
Why not? Maybe there are a lot more customers than myself. I didn't complain very loudly in the other threads (wrote down my opinion once in each I think), but I was totally not fine with the change. I never planned to completely leave GOG, but I was very disappointed with them.

When the latest weekend promos showed up (I normally buy at least two games a week), I looked at them and thought: "Well, some nice ones there, but nothing that I really need" and bought nothing. The same with the gem promos and with launch promos. Impulse buying which normally works great on me for games under $10 was completely gone (only exception was Harvester).

Today after they returned to their core priciples, I instantly bought games for $20, just because I was happy and I'm sure I will buy from the promos again to support a great company.

If only a small part of the disappointed customers did something similar, it could easily have had an effect on their sales.
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JudasIscariot: Oh, we got a community pulse on this. Part of my job is giving community feedback in a concise and unedited manner (meaning good or bad, the feedback must flow!) so I, and those of us who interact with the community on a regular basis, made sure that the community's misgivings were made known :) Just wanted to get that out there :)

Feel free to ask questions and we will answer to the best of our ability :)
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CharlesGrey: Here's hoping that GOG will be going strong for a long time to come, regardless of how this whole pricing policy mess turns out, for the sake of its customers as well as its staff.

And hopefully you guys will still be able to secure many good game releases, even without regional pricing to convince publishers. ( Today's games looked pretty good, by the way -- This year has seen many good releases here on GOG already, for that matter. )
And here's hoping you, the community, will stick with us for the long haul as I believe the ride is going to get very interesting, in a manner of speaking :D
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Weclock: wait, what happened?
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CharlesGrey: Somebody set us up the bomb!
I think.. I think I figured it out. Selling new games, introduced regional pricing?
Good.... good for you guys!
Enjoy not having regional pricing, I guess.

That's very important to some people.
not to me, but hey, it's nice to know GOG will treat it's consumers as fairly as possible, even if that means taking a hit.

Still not gonna buy Age of Wonders.
Probably won't buy The Witcher 3.

Not that I think that they're bad games, they just aren't my kinda games.
But yeah! this thing that doesn't effect me in anyway is really good, for you guys who it does effect.
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CharlesGrey: Here's hoping that GOG will be going strong for a long time to come, regardless of how this whole pricing policy mess turns out, for the sake of its customers as well as its staff.

And hopefully you guys will still be able to secure many good game releases, even without regional pricing to convince publishers. ( Today's games looked pretty good, by the way -- This year has seen many good releases here on GOG already, for that matter. )
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JudasIscariot: And here's hoping you, the community, will stick with us for the long haul as I believe the ride is going to get very interesting, in a manner of speaking :D
Need more games. Only have enough for half a lifetime. Not leaving til there's enough for 2 to 3 full ones, at least.
If only all companies actually listened to the customers.
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JudasIscariot: And here's hoping you, the community, will stick with us for the long haul as I believe the ride is going to get very interesting, in a manner of speaking :D
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CarrionCrow: Need more games. Only have enough for half a lifetime. Not leaving til there's enough for 2 to 3 full ones, at least.
You'll get them :)
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WhiteElk: i still can't get the minor thought out of my head that this was ploy to foster fan love. i think that unlikely, but i also think it unlikely that GOG got a true community pulse on this issue. Perhaps site visits went way down, maybe sales significantly dropped. But i can't imagine it realistically being so. Other doubts arise from my search of understanding. That sucks. What a mess.
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JudasIscariot: Oh, we got a community pulse on this. Part of my job is giving community feedback in a concise and unedited manner (meaning good or bad, the feedback must flow!) so I, and those of us who interact with the community on a regular basis, made sure that the community's misgivings were made known :) Just wanted to get that out there :)
But how big, and how representative could the sampling population been? i have no doubt of your dedicated engagement here. i see it! i dig that, the engagement of GOG staff with users. But i know that the forum posters are significantly few in relation to GOGs total users. And i am certain that not all the forum goers who had an opinion over this, wished to engage in a forum brawl over it. Particularly those who were for it. Why should they campaign for something they liked, and thought already done? Only those against would be uber-motivated to reverse the course. Not a good base to determine what the community wants (even if the community is only defined as being active forum users).

i still got love for GOG, but something has changed, at least until i learn something more, or think of this differently.


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JudasIscariot: Feel free to ask questions and we will answer to the best of our ability :)
Did site visits drop significantly? Did sales notably drop? Did a large percentage of customers send hate mail? Was there anything beyond forum postings, that aided GOG in making this decision?
This is a dumb decision, to be honest. If you scare off publishers/developers because of regional pricing, you're not doing anything but driving them to Steam.

Someone in europe may have good reason to complain about regional pricing, but then again they have no choice. They can take regional pricing AND DRM with steam, or they can take regional pricing without DRM with GOG. There really are no other options, other than the occasional humble sale, but I'm just going to note that half the titles on humble sales require steam, and that's yet more DRM.

So good for you, complainers, standing up for integrity by ensuring that very few new titles are even going to bother coming to GoG. Gabe Newell thanks you for his increasingly fat wallet.
So... I'll be able to pay for gogs in BRL? That would be nice, actually. :) I hate IOF (read stupid Brazillian tax) and cambial variations.
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JudasIscariot:
Oy, Judas, good man, could You clarify this here thingamajig, or do we need TETs thingamabob for that?