Everyone who served in military does that on subconsciousness level, even been awakened in the middle of the night, in pitch-black darkness, in heavy rain, waist-up in cold river, upside down, with fish in his mouth.

I already wrote a bit on that. Until we have utopian future, where everyone's income and expenses are flat, regardless of occupation, place of living, and what not, idea of worldwide flat "just" price has no sense, as some people will still be paying for someone else. The only condition where flat just price is working, is that one research from Endless Space, one that grands eternal vacation to population: since nobody doing anything productive, flat price is meaningful. Otherwise, there still be discrimination, one way or another, as many things are not equal.

Oh, please, don't give the marketing specialists ideas! They could use it now, forcing people with less income to pay more, simply via pressing them with this "discrimination".

Many countries already employ differentiated taxation system, where people with higher income pay more. I'm not saying it's 100% fair.

He-he-he, judging by Guild 2 (sorry, don't remember Guild 1 that much, but IIRC, it had similar system), you can - some political payments (bribes) were tied to your total accumulated wealth, not fixed amount (like in Oblivion, where robbers dressed in mithril and daedric were asking for 100 coins).
So to an extent, tying payments to flat percentage values, could be somewhat more just. Doesn't matter how big your salary is, car worth 25% of it, film, cinema ticket, music album, book, game, bottle of alcohol (as Andrzej Sapkowsk said, it should be matter of choice) should be, say, 0.5% of income, and so on. This way nobody will feel "offended" to start another offendedgate. However, this utopian option has downside - motivation, or lack thereof. Some people need to be commended, noted, and promoted to feel fine, they may stop working at all, without seeing any point earning more. So, regulating this would require much thought. Yet judging how some people are happy by having some "diplomas" telling them they are worker of month", "supervisor" and "vice-somebody", this may not be a problem at all. Just look at those achievement hunters.

I may be wrong, but I think some localized versions of games are cheaper, for some people it's more than enough to have game being localized on their native language, they don't care for foreign ones. So I don't think it's about competition.

To be honest, I really want to look at numbers and see, whether localizations (language, price, both) helps sales or not. Reducing prices on some market is the only way to sell something there, so it's not exactly increasing profits, it's generating profits against not generating them. Yes, in some way that's increase, sure. :)

Nope. It's still be discriminating for those who can't afford it, as high price would effectively take away the opportunity to purchase something.
Look at "physical" goods market, some things, with an exception of cases where country has extremely high protective import taxes (or greedy retail setting high margin), cost approximately the same worldwide. Fluctuations are minimal, and in percentage, regarding MSRP, are not that big. Yet we still have a lot of people who can't afford those goods. What's so "least discriminating" here? Can you afford, I don't know, what's in trends now in automotive market nowadays? Oh hell, let it be Rolls-Royce. How many people can afford it? Yet price is flat for all of them. I don't mean everyone needs a Rolls-Royce, that's only example, maybe extreme one (okay, maybe private jumbo-jet is extreme one:D).

Because in relative value, some regions will still be paying more than the others. And the alternative is to just to agree, that some regions will have permanent discounts and live with that. Certain things are much cheaper in US than in Europe, even with shipping (even first rate express airmail) and paying import taxes. And I mean relatively expensive things, with price tag of several thousands dollars, not 60 bucks, and there is no Steam, or black friday with 75% discount. You got 5% discount and you're happy. US citizens have many internal discounts and accumulative bonuses that are simply not applicable to outsiders. There are free giveaways and similar promotion activity, where citizens of many areas are not eligible. Go check Sapphire Select Club, for example, and try to win a GPU if you're from not eligible country, how just is that?

And thank you for them, it was quite interesting to think about them.

Okay, just for the record: I´m replying to this post from another thread!
1st: But what did the old pricing actually resulted in? Okay, everybody pays the same. Benefits rich people from rich countries, course they got no problem with prices in general, all of GOGs prices are peanuts to them!
2nd: As far as I understand you, you agree on that 1$ still not equals one € on GOG and that nobody (who isn´t a one-time consumer) has to pay more at the end of the day. Fine. Course anything else would have been quite strange, that part is maths and maths doesn´t feature opinions in general!
3rd: Nobody has to pay MORE with the new pricing, (deduced from #2) only some selected are paying less! Actually your (and my) problem with the new pricing is that not ENOUGH folks/ ENOUGH countries are allowed paying less.
4th: And now the first time that it gots ideologic, the first time that there isn´t facts, but opinions:
Which of these two pricing methods is a step further to a REAL good pricement?
In my eyes the new method is on a good way---you can easily extend it to make it a real good pricement. Certain issues, like an american CEO who emigrates into russia and who´ll be able to pay less by this action are of course only made possible by this change! But this isn´t something to be changed by GOG, is it?

A rich country doesnt't mean rich people.
Besides your poor assumptions, I really leave the word "fair" out of the equation.

Regional prices has nothing to do with fairness, but more with profit.

Sorry, but did you really read what PaterAlf has written before?
Cause of course I tried to shorten certain points! (and this was mainly meant to give Pater and me a new place to discuss the whole stuff)

Anyways, where did I write rich country ->rich people?! I explicit wrote " rich people from rich countries" which has NOTHING to do with what you accuse me to have written! (I chose "accuse", course that stuff would have been completely bullshit!
BTW: My post did´t mention "fair" a single time, of course that one is implied, but I didn´t mention it! :D :D :D

No, in fact I don't completely agree here. We pay more, the fact that GOG gives us the difference back in store credit doesn't really change that (even if it's nice by GOG). In the end some euros in store credit here are some euros that I don't have on my bank account (or in my wallet) and that I can't spent on something that I might need or want. It might not matter that much to me and you, but there are lots of people out there (even in the so-called rich countries) that have to think twice about every euro they spend.
And let's not lose the sense of reality: The hardcore forum user that has hundreds of games in his or her backlog isn't the norm. There are lots of customers that only buy a game once or once in a while. And for some of them the store credit is lost (because it expends after a year)

See my answer to 2nd to find out why I don't completely agree. Besides that at least GOG has to pay more, because of the pricing model and I'm not sure that's the way it should be.
But yes, in general I agree: More regions should get a discount, but no country should pay more than the base price + VAT (making a general price difference between USA, Australia, Germany, Great Britain and Switzerland is simply stupid).

Well, I would say that they are both flawed, but at least flat pricing doesn't make a silly assumption of your wealth just because of the country you live in. As I said in the other thread: There are lots of poor people in rich countries and rich people in poor countries as well and even within countries (not to speak abot whole regions like the Eurozone) the income and the general living conditions are by far not the same.

But yes, I could live with a regional pricing that tries to make it halfway fair by giving a discount to poorer regions. Don't think that's possible and you would need hundreds of different zones, but let's assume they try it: I would be happy and I would happily pay the difference!

But that's not what's going on: The regional pricing model we have at the moment, is only an instrument to give the publishers as much money as possible. They don't care if it's fair!

Why do you think it is Russia that gets the discount? It's not, because theyare so poor, it's because it is a pretty big market and one that has notoriously high piracy rates. So they don't give them a discount to make it fair, but because they want to enter the market and make at least some money. Africa on the other hand is not such a big market (because many people are really poor and can't afford decent gaming computers or games) and so the publishers don't care for the people there. They more or less tell them they can fuck off, because they are not important to them. In my eyes that's the opposite of "fair".

So for me the actual regional pricing isn't a step in the right direction. It's just an instrument for greedy publishers to maximize their profits and I won't support it, just because they do stupid PR stunts and try to brainwash the customers by telling them that it's fair over and over again.
You want to make it fair? Fine, do it and you have my applause and my support. But don't tell me that it's fair when it's the exact opposite.

Hmm... hmm... hmmm...where to start...
...folks that have to think twice about every Euro/ Dollar/ Whatever they spend should only buy on heavy sales. Well, I can always hardly believe that these folks are having INet-Connection and a PC at all,but that´s nothing to discuss about right now! If they are doing this, they shouldn´t end up that bad, should they? One buy every half year or so and these store credits will never expend!

About GOG themselfs having to pay more: GOG benefits mostly from long-time stuff and coverage. I´m sure it pays off having these games on here instead of not having them on here!

About the "marketing stuff":
Marketing for Flat Pricing was "No Ripoff", Marketing for FairPricePackage is still "Because $1 is not €1" and I think that part was totally honest.The "OneWorldPricing"-Stuff and now the "Everyone should be treated fairly and not overpay for purchases just because they reside in a different part of the world." was never the most honest part of GOGs marketing...
...but giving a rating which one of them was more honest/ less honest I couldn´t do! And neither can you. They are both bullshit...

What I can do is telling you the following: Members of the GUS-states where sometimes popping up and asking why they have to pay so much more then on other services back in the day. We could always tell them "well, you get something you cannot buy anywhere else, except of HumbleStore, where you have to pay the same!" But then HumbleBundle dropped flat pricement. What should GOG have done? Keeping up flat pricement would have been neither honest nor competitive...
...their first attemt to bring in regional pricement was terrible, I think near to everybody around will agree.
The second one was a way to keep that familiar slogan and improved the situation for the relation between "USA, Australia, Germany, Great Britain and Switzerland" pricing.

So yes, I have to agree: Neither one of them is "fair", but is one of them more "unfair"?
The "African-fuckoff" is a problem, right. Nearly everything is a problem. But so was flat pricing.

So: What reason would you have to boycott Regional pricement? Flat Pricing is shit as after your definitions!

But the games will be still regional priced during promos (even if they are cheaper). And couldn't you say the same to people from "poor countries"? If they can't afford the games right away, they could wait for heavy sales.

I completely agree here. It's only about being competitive. At least their statement about "market realities" they made when it came to Russian discount for the whole catalogue was halfway honest.

For me the reason is that I don't want to support publishers that only want to maximize their profit (which is fine, they are a business after all), but come up with a lot of lame excuses instead (fairness, VAT, etc.). Flat pricing was the same for everyone at least : If you can't afford a game, you have to wait for a heavy sale or for it to appear in a bundle.

What I would like to see is a kind of compromise on GOG: Release the games with improved regional pricing here (more regions, discounts for more areas) and change it to flat pricing (or at least no-one-pays-more-than-base-price) after some years (or when the games show up in a PWYW bundle for the first time). That way the classic part of their games would stay flat-priced and they would partly stick to the principles they once had. People from poor countries would be able to afford the games at release (or in early promos) and everybody else could decide if they want to pay the higher regional price at release or wait for it to drop regional pricing.

Would still not be perfect, but in my eyes better than the stupid regional pricing we have now.

Publishers wanting to maximize their profits is one of the reasons why we have so many games on GOG right now!
Several folks around have been contacting publishers FOR YEARS bringing up the argument that a rerelease of their games on GOG is effordless profit, in other terms: Necessary to maximize profits!
And what do they present to the outside? Care about franchise, didn´t want to have that game being abandoned, wanna have a test run for new games, blablabla!

Marketing bullshit!

And if they think discounting their games in a few countries (without a real rational reasoning HOW to select these countries) brings them a lot of profit, I can only tell them: Yes, do so! Maybe one day you´ll realize that you can further enhance that stuff...

...but yes, the current regional pricing IS stupid! But it´s the best one we got... (and flat pricing would be featuring equality, but certainly no equity!)

and the Regional pricing war goes on..

Putting everything else aside - it's the only regional pricing model we got; doesn't make it the best.

No, other sides are using a model that is worse... (course it doesn´t feature FPP)
...anyways, I got an additional idea: What would you have said if it were the other way around and it was first regional priced (like it is right now, aka kind of unfair) and later on changed to flat pricing?
I BELIEVE that the reactions would have been quite similar, course YES: They both don´t make any sense!

Depends. But if GOG told us for years that flat pricing is unfair and that regional pricing is one of their core values (and then suddenly changed to flat pricing), then the reaction probably would have been pretty much the same

Its quite bizarre and something that I have ignored as being near impossible to change, but dang it, it rankles me that another customer gets the same title 5 bucks cheaper than me ...just because. Its like the worst auto garages boosting their price cuz you look like you can afford it. In that instance you can just go to another garage after getting burned, but its becoming increasingly impossible to do that with online purchasing, that is if you are even aware of the practice, which often is hard to find out. thank you data aggregate mining!

And this is the point where I´m off!

One might even say that GOG fooled us over these years, selling us flat pricing as something adorable, something fair.
And it worked; did we ever question this? At least I don´t remember many thread accusing GOG as liars for running their "OneWorldPricing-Stuff", although folks were complaining about literally everything at any time! :D
But I don´t believe they did this on purpose. I believe that they never really investigated what they were actually proposing!
And we didn´t either! Why? Because most around had to pay the same as on other services (e.g. US-Guys) or even less! (European guys, due to exchange rates!)

So, in the end this comes much down to the point whether we like to punsish GOG for that stuff and stop buying games here entirely. Would this be clever? At least for me I´ve got to say NO!
GOG is still the company that stands for DRM-free gaming. It supplies me with tons of games for little (well, sort of) money. So no, this is no option for DRM-Opponents.
Boykotting flat priced games?! Well, one could do this as a responce for that year-long fooling---but as I said, it´s not sure whether it happend on purpose!
Boykotting regional priced games?! Makes no sense either, course flat pricing and regional pricing are both unfair and you are definitely not causing anything good by doing so!

-> the way to go for DRM-Opponents is simple: Continue! The way to go for everybody else?! Well, buy what you want...

Well, what I do is boycotting regional priced games that are higher-priced in at least one region than the base price. I don't care that much if there is a discount for some regions (even if I don't agree on the regions that get the discount at the moment). But charging more, because publishers assume that everybody that lives in a certain country is rich, is something that I won't support.