It's not that much of a sacrifice for Disney, seeing that for those titles that are also on Steam, it just means that everyone is now paying the same high EUR prices. So the flat prices aren't any cheaper for Europeans than regional pricing, they're just more expensive for US Americans.

Disney is not a good example of flat prices. They're artificially flat priced, and it basically translates to:
- everyone pays the higher EUR price;
- no one gets store credit;
- both Disney and GOG are making more dough.

The same way SimCity 4 was released here.

How unfortunate customers do not learn as fast. They can go away with it, so why wouldn't they go that way...

Unfortunate and frustrating, on both accounts. :(

Hi there, I'm the dev for this game.
This seems to be a touchy issue around here. Not something I expected, to be honest.

I'm curious about why you feel so strongly about this. It seems like you feel that regional pricing is unfair. I'm willing to listen.

It's discrimination. Period.
Don't try to say discrimination is nice, it isn't.

Not even accounting for, that countries without any or a low minimum wage and high living costs have to pay more than others, which is flatout ridiculous. Don't expect many East German and Eastern European customers.

Well, buying the game from their site costs just a tad less than €16 for me (they actually do include VAT on the final price), thus, I'm not personally so surprised by that.

The problem is that regional pricing is not fair at all. Of course one price for everyone might also not be fair in regards to what people actually have available money. But in my opinion the regional pricing schemes are even more unfair, stuffing just all Europeans in a "you have to pay more" category while US normally gets cheaper prices and then there are of course also the Australians who have to pay a really high regional price normally.

And let me add that a while ago gog.com was all about one world one price. This was changed and a huge uproar happened. Now they are offering the fair pricing package, paying it out of there own pockets and you have to wonder if they can really do this on long term since there are more and more regional priced games. And also there are still a lot of people who wish that gog had not changed their stance on this pricing scheme in general and will not buy regional priced games. Of course we might actually be the minority, but yeah.. we are vocal ;-)

Another thing is, that it was often said that it was not the developers fault, that the big publisher were pressing for regional pricing but it becomes more and more obvious that this is not true.

I see it as unfair because it discriminates certain people (for better or worse) simply based on their geographical location, which is entirely immaterial for a product that does not involve shipping.

Maybe I don't understand how GOG works, but wouldn't everyone just have to pay the US price if the regional pricing was off? How does that help someone from Eastern Europe?

What does the game cost in Eastern Europe right now? I don't know what price GOG uses in that case, since there's only a specific price in Rubles. Is it the Euro price or the US price?

People in Russia can actually buy the game for cheaper than US - you don't think that it's fair for a country where most people don't earn as much?

Might be fair for Russia but not for all the other European countries where there are low wages etc since they pay the high euro price. And it does not matter if you change to paying in dollars, you will just pay a higher dollar price.
So paying the original US price would help everyone but Russia...

Thanks for being willing to discuss this issue. It's a fairly contentious issue on GOG, and there are various reasons as to why it pertains to each member.

I don't know how familiar you are with GOG, but until recently they had a flat price policy (One World Pricing). Everything was the same price everywhere, and all prices were in USD. Then GOG switched to allowing people to make purchases in their own currency, and this opened the floodgates to Regional Pricing. We actually lost a couple publishers because they and GOG could not reach an accord on how to reprice their games (even though they were willing to sell them at a different market price when it was only listed in USD).

So, some people object to regional pricing because it is a change to the way they knew GOG, and a change that has brought few benefits so far, and numerous downsides. Others object because it is prejudicial pricing, ostensibly based on the fair market price in each country, but actually based on largely arbitrary metrics instead. For example, Russia gets the best prices, not because of the weakness of their currency, but because of the massive piracy rate in that nation. At the same time Australia often gets charged out the didgeridoo for games, presumably because they have a lot of spiders or whatever.

Most of us would accept a fair regional pricing scheme, but so far we've not seen one. So the general consensus is that publishers push regional pricing because it equals free money. And when we see a developer like yourself who is also the publisher follow that route, it gives many of us an unfavourable opinion of you. You may think you're just following the market normatives, but to those of us who have investigated the issue, it more often comes across as simple greed.

I hope this has provided some clarification as to why this is an issue here.

EDIT: Took me so long to write this that other folks already posted similar points. But there you go.

The reason that I asked GOG to match Steam prices was because of VAT. European governments have decided that all good and services should cost 20% more. I think that's rather high, living in Canada - we pay about 13% here. That said, people in Europe seem to have better social services.

My understanding is that GOG doesn't include VAT in the price. You don't have to pay it, but the developer and GOG still have to send the 20% to the government. That 20% has to come from somewhere.

If I could, I'd just ask GOG to charge the appropriate VAT amount on top of the game price. I don't think their system supports that, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the EU price for Infested Planet should be the same as USD + VAT.

There are different views I guess.

As far as I am concerned, I'm always deeply disappointed when independent devs stert behaving like the big publishers. I EUR = 1 USD for European countries has been enforced on us, as customers, for too long. Now, for the big names, many customers have learned that the option is waiting for deep sales. Those big publishers are anyway not creating , just milting the cow. But sometimes the same customers would actually prefer to support those who actually bring value, but if these adopt exactly the same policies, then sorry, we express our frustration
So, what's your price for Russia ? USD price + Russian VAT ?

Let's look at the Infested Planet price on GOG. This is what I sent GOG when they asked me for prices:

North America + ROTW (USD): 14.99
UK (GBP): 10.99
Europe 1 (EUR): 14.99
Australia+New Zealand (AUD): 16.99
Russia+CIS (RUB): 349.00

Ok, what if we just took the US price and converted it to the currencies. I also added VAT to UK and Europe:

North America + ROTW (USD): 14.99
UK (GBP) + 20% VAT: 11.32
Europe 1 (EUR) + 20% VAT: 14.47
Australia+New Zealand (AUD): 17.46
Russia+CIS (RUB): 695.78

I did the currency conversion via Google.
Does this look unfair to you? The only one that stands out to me is Russia, which is getting a really good deal.