This somehow sounds a bit odd. I would guess that lower price would work everywhere all the time and it's a given, no need to check. The question is rather if higher prices would work too or not?

And there I don't know if they really tried higher prices in Russia like they try high prices in Poland now? One indication would be for example if GOG would plot the relative proportions of buyers from regions over time after release of a game. That should be possible to do with the data GOG has. If Russians buy relatively early after release while Polish customers buy much later it might be an indication that prices in Russia could be set higher or prices in Poland could be set lower.

In the end it all looks like a big puzzle to me. My guess is that there is a lot of guesswork or random decisions involved. After all Poland and Russia kind of are comparable and quite similar in their economic properties so a price difference of more than 20-30% seems out of proportion.

to "combat rampant russian PC videogames piracy"

Because Russians aren't willing to pay enough and others are willing to pay way too much, at least that's what the publishers/devs seem to think. This will continue as long as people play along.
It has absolutely nothing to do with income and is just about what people will pay.
For this ridiculous price you could at least expect a Linux port, a Mac port, probably an Android port, WinXP support, it should be perfectly optimized to run well even on low-end systems and you should get physical goodies that come with it in a nice box.
It doesn't even seem to support all graphics cards from what I've read and needs 8GB of RAM minimum and is just digital distribution for current Windows systems with the right hardware setup. oO

The pre-order bonus bullshit adds icing to the crapcake.

I refuse.

The really bad thing about this is, that GoG staff will probably keep claiming that it's about income.
Well, good to know that Polish people earn 5 times as much as Russians, maybe I should clean the floors and empty the waste bins at GoG-hq in Warsow, I could make a fortune with that!

Italy has even a longer history with piracy, but no price discount.
This is why I am against buying game on release dates/ They are priced too much.

I can happily forget about a game, to discover it again 10 years later and pay 1£ for a new copy (Dead Space come to mind... bought last weekend for 1£).

that % of people in china that can afford the price tag would actually be considerable considering the size of the population (every one knows the chinese economy keeps going up and up --- hell bound to burst at some point -- now that would be funny to see...sorry off topic). I couldnt say the same for the other three countries though...

^Correct-0-mundo.

Old data is old. It's now like three times less. Also, median income is a factor. (Minimum wage is $80/month, and skilled professionals don't fare better -- we just hired a paralegal for $300/month, in Moscow [think "homophobic San Fran"]).
Still no reason for so rickoculous a discount for an AAA game -- people who have PCs capable of running it, generally speaking, can pay the US price with pocket money.

This. I stopped using Steam before they implemented regional pricing, and I bought most of my GOG collection in flat price times, so every -75% sale is a laugh riot. Premium games such as Deponia go for $0.40. A sip of coffee costs more.

---
As for historical reasons of the Russian Discount, I think the language might be a factor. Most Russians can't English, and the poorer one is, the less likely they are to understand* English (and, as a bonus, the less likely they are to know how to pirate games, although the correlation isn't as sharp as it used to be). Another factor is of course the Iron Curtain. Historically, Russian gamers were kids. For a localization to be commercially viable, it should sell a lot to lower-class kids. As a bonus, Russian-only physical discs were practically useless for cross-regional resale. When Steam swallowed up retail sales, it got poisoned by regional pricing.

*To illustrate: EA Origin hadn't been offering the English interface for Russia for at least 5 years. Now it does, but the currency changes from Russian roubles to Swedish kronor.

Also, "piracy" without explanation is just wrong -- these days we understand piracy as getting something for free on the internets. People -- kids -- didn't have internets ($150/month outside of metropolitan areas) to download games or game cracks, and CD-RW drives were expensive. There was a thriving bootleg industry, and gamers bought bootleg discs from local "publishers" without knowing the difference.

Just as importantly this costs £40 in UK, for a pre-order. Now I realise we live in a world where free credit is the norm, but seriously, how can anyone think this is a good deal? Even the $13.49 in Russia seems a bit pricey to me.

This is a very good question especially when I think of all those recent threads from canadians complaining about overpaying 2$ because GOG dosen't use CAD (or Steam uses better exchange rate) :-P

So we get it here the cheapest after Russia? $56.50
Finally everyone admits that living standards here in the UK are worse than in Poland :)

Regional pricing

Because currency strength, living standards and their paycheck number sizes.
Vlad from Togliatti (a random guy a friend of mine knows who works in the automobile factory/zavod) is happy to earn 200€ currently (I am whining about getting a salary 6-7times higher). Their paychecks have lowered after Russian aventures and European blockades and so on.

Shows 53,59€ for me

Update: it's now a somewhat more respectable $25.69 in Russia. I guess that's one reason to preorder digital products right there.

Nonsense. This is what we call a "Milchmädchenrechnung" in Germany.

Here's reality for example:
If you have to pay 440€ just for the very basics (29m² flat, energy, internet, water, minimum amount of heating, public transit) and food is quite expensive too, suddenly a wage of say 560€ doesn't seem to be as much as it seems elsewhere, right?
It's about what you have after covering basic costs.

Polish people don't earn 5 times as much as Russians and neither do I and they certainly have more expenses than average Russians. (Reminder: This is all just about averages and discriminating people for nationalities anyway regardless of their actual money which may be significantly less if the wage gap inside of a country is huge).

Regional pricing has nothing/nada/niente/zip to do with income, it's about guessing how much the people will be willing to pay.

But the reality is that their costs-of-livings are pretty high actually. Some prices are similar to Estonian prices and they get wayyyyy less paid.
I know, you meant that maybe their tavar they sell in shops is cheaper than our and rent and electricity is cheaper, relative to their wages.

For me for example:
Man, rent (loan payment to bank) by itself is 390€ (for a 3 room hrustsovka apartment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka )+ electricity, water, internet+tv, car etc.