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Trilarion: Why not? Are there large conversion fees between $ and Yuan?
Conversion fees isn't the only problem. Another significant one is that GOG would have to constantly adjust the USD price to match Steam's Yuan price each time the currency fluctuates, (or face complains that they are more expensive than Steam, so they would be back to square one). No such issues with introducing Yuan support; the price would be the same, no matter how the currency fluctuates.
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Grargar: ...Another significant one is that GOG would have to constantly adjust the USD price to match Steam's Yuan price each time the currency fluctuates ...
I see. I agree with you although the USD - Yuan conversion rate is not very volatile (thanks for currency manipulations maybe), the largest variation over five years is just 15% (http://www.xe.com/de/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CNY&view=5Y). If GOG would adjust the USD prices for their games in China only every month, they would probably track the Steam price already very well, sometimes even be below it. It may be inconvenient for GOG but does not sound totally impractical.
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Trilarion: I see. I agree with you although the USD - Yuan conversion rate is not very volatile (thanks for currency manipulations maybe), the largest variation over five years is just 15% (http://www.xe.com/de/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CNY&view=5Y). If GOG would adjust the USD prices for their games in China only every month, they would probably track the Steam price already very well, sometimes even be below it. It may be inconvenient for GOG but does not sound totally impractical.
Having to adjust the price on 2000s of items/month on a specific region does sound highly impractical to me (and carries the risk of errors/bugs when you are dealing with such a large volume of items) and would consume resources/workforce needed elsewhere like the website (I know, I know). At any rate, given GOG's behaviour over regions with regionally-priced items but without a localized currency, they would just set a specific price for a game once and wouldn't bother with this whole adjustment thing. Hence why there were complaints that GOG's Brazilian prices were pretty bad, till support for the Brazilian Real was introduced.
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LoGDuo: suppot
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timppu: You mistyped "suppolt".
Shots fired.Shots fired !!! ;p.Cheers
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ilovelctr: ...
I know regional pricing has been controversial and any suggestion bespeaking support to it may very likely spark a forum war. But since GOG offers great discount for Russian gamers, I wonder whether or not this can happen for China. If it does, I believe lots of Chinese gamers will embrace GOG rather than Steam because of the better service and experience that GOG has to offer, such as more additional goodies, soundtracks in higher fidelity (FLAC instead of mp3) and the riddance of annoying DRM.
Greetings!!
1. It's up to GOG whether and when they will do it.
2. You have pointed out the benefits of using GOG over Steam yourself. Here you actually get the game you are paying for.
3. In my region too there is a big difference in price between the two services, steam being way cheaper. Still, even steam introduced regional pricing very recently.
4. For now waiting for sales might be a good idea. With all these weekly sales, special sales and those mega sales all year round, there is always something quite affordable. :)
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Grargar: ...
Having to adjust the price on 2000s of items/month on a specific region does sound highly impractical to me (and carries the risk of errors/bugs when you are dealing with such a large volume of items) and would consume resources/workforce ...
I didn't think about doing that manually. An automated script would probably scale with the maintenance resources needed quite favorably so that it doesn't matter for how many items you need to do it. Anything less than automated would indeed be impractical. But if they do, they could even automatically display the equivalent amount in your local currency next to the USD price (the price that they will charge).

I don't want to say GOG should not support more regional currencies.

Just look at amazon how often they change prices for the millions of the products that they offer. Surely, they are not doing that manually. There are algorithms at work probably with some feedback loop including sales information and the effort to let them run is almost zero compared to the total effort of amazon.

I use https://camelcamelcamel.com/ to check if a product I want to buy is currently high priced or low priced.
Post edited May 24, 2017 by Trilarion
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Trilarion: I didn't think about doing that manually. An automated script would probably scale with the maintenance resources needed quite favorably so that it doesn't matter for how many items you need to do it. Anything less than automated would indeed be impractical. But if they do, they could even automatically display the equivalent amount in your local currency next to the USD price (the price that they will charge).

I don't want to say GOG should not support more regional currencies.

Just look at amazon how often they change prices for the millions of the products that they offer. Surely, they are not doing that manually. There are algorithms at work probably with some feedback loop including sales information and the effort to let them run is almost zero compared to the total effort of amazon.

I use https://camelcamelcamel.com/ to check if a product I want to buy is currently high priced or low priced.
There are quite a few things that I suspect GOG does manually. I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of them. As for displaying a real-time local equivalent, it would still have to be implemented and ensured that it wouldn't break the site in some way (as all changes/introductions GOG have a tendency of doing so), effort that it could instead be used in supporting more currencies.

Amazon is a much, much bigger organization with more than 300000 employees, compared to GOG's meager 200. They can't be directly compared. Also, Amazon has a lot of localized webstores, something that can't be said for GOG.
Post edited May 24, 2017 by Grargar
i.m.h.o regional pricing on gog. I dont think thats going to ever happen.

Steam is partnering with lots of local retail merchants everywhere around the world, means for example i can buy steam vouchers at convenience store like 7-11 or i can buy online through online shop with bank transfer without having ever pay it with credit cards/ paypal.
you can't do this with GOG. you can only pay your game on GoG with paypal / credit cards. Steam can do these regional pricing and making the games on their platform is cheap is not that because they are biggest platform (ok they are!), but the distribution channel on purchasing steam voucher is soo easy and less hassle.

But GoG would make exception though, if their total revenue, like 65% or 70% of games revenue coming from China.

Me. I just use both platform. there are game which are available only on steam and few games exclusive only on Gog. but i still prefer steam though, 'cos i trade cards there like a whore! (hahaha *evil laugh)