Okay, I give up. Why do you have to buy anything? I admit I realize that today's consumers had pretty much given away all of their personal power by being fans of instead of demanding consumers of business, but I had no idea it had gotten so bad that they were now feeling forced to buy. I would love to hear this explanation. Thanks.

Bit I am anally organised as well, hence I don't even look at the shelves, its only thee to provide me a mechanism to download the games and keep them backed up offline. I really don't see what the problem is, I have games that are rubbish and I will never play, they are still on my games room, its not a problem.

I don't know, but it's actually a good deal if you do want the rest. The other stores (Steam, Ubisoft) only sell the titles separately, and they're $10 each for a total of $30. Here you get them all for $20.

He doesn't. He wants to buy Tribes of the East, but on GOG he can only buy that particular item if he pays twice the price (that he would pay for the item alone on another store) and gets other stuff he doesn't want. So yes, he has to buy that extra stuff if he wants to buy that particular title. It's something that GOG forces him to do, and other stores don't. Things are clearer now for you?

Nope, not at all. Not any clearer at all.

Ah, okay. Let me try telepathy.

Clearer now?

Folks, don't focus on his exact wording. He just wants to buy one standalone expansion and can only do it by buying extra stuff he does not need at a higher price. At some point I can understand him and I also prefer to have more options in general, but in my eyes thanks the options to hide games and having sales the issue isn't so big that GOG really needs to fix it. On the other hand GOG is doing it exactly I want it, so it's maybe a little bit unfair and biased from me to judge it that way.

No, but I'm definitely getting something.... probably deserved since I was being quite anal.

Look, I get what he (or she) was saying, I just don't like the way it was phrased. No consumer is forced to buy anything, anywhere, ever. Well... ahm... err, at least that was the case here in US forever and ever until Obamacare came along and for the first time in US history people were "forced" to purchase a commodity (health insurance) from for-profit business or face a fine, something that is still no way constitutional no matter 5 idiots wearing robes say.

To me, it would have been better worded from a point of strength (I demand) rather than the standard one of weakness (why am I forced). Something like this... "Often I do not want to buy all games that come in a bundle, and would prefer to have the option to buy just one. Therefore, if GOG is interested in my business, I demand the option to buy games individually rather than only in bundles."

I know it's just nit picking (and being anal) but to me the two just come from completely different points of view despite saying almost the same thing. We're consumers, and we're the ones that should be making the demands. I've stated on multiple times here that I demand all games come with a manual, and if they don't, I won't buy. It just would not have "felt" right to me to say "Why is gog forcing me to buy games without manuals?" Do you see the difference?

LOL! Homm...

Jesus fucking Christ.

Because of credit card processing fees as much as anything. If they sold LoL as individual pieces, they'd probably be charging $2 a pop, but depending upon how their credit card processor charges, that could mean a substantial increase in the money they give to the processor.

Bundling 3 cheap games together means more profit and in most cases people are going to want all 3 of them anyways. Now, if they were bundling Shadow Run all together without the option of buying separately, that would be much less reasonable.
Now there's an image for you.

When I look at the HoMM games in my library at least for me the unbundling of the games has created the mess.
So what's a mess and what not obviously is a question of personal taste.

I understand what you're saying, I think it's all semantics. Your way of saying things won't go well with everyone. I prefer this version:

"I want to buy a game on GOG, but I can only buy it in a bundle. On other online stores I can buy the individual game, and that costs half the price of the GOG bundle. So even though I want to buy on GOG the pricing structure discourages me from doing it."

That's the factual statement, it doesn't blame or makes demands, it just presents the situation, and as such I feel it's superior. As a single consumer you have no power and therefore making demands sounds stupid. It's needlessly confrontational.

Yeah, a single customer has no power. But more people have more buying power, and maybe I'm not the only one who is unhappy about the bundle packaging with higher price tags, or re-buying titles you already possess.

Back to Lands of Lore, I also wonder about the bundling of LOL1+2. They are totally different games. LOL2+3 play much more similar and are even the same engine. Doesn't make much sense.
Besides, I have just seen that there are already "series discounts" for games... so it would make more sense to sell all LOLs separately and then offer a series discount to acquire all 3 parts together. This way most people can be served. ... But not package 2 of them in a bundle and then make the third separate.

But yeah, as some have already said, this bundling might have come from the time GOG first made the deals with EA or Ubisoft. I don't know what's the effort to make deals with these companies, but I thought when GOG has the license to sell games, it can make its own price tags and discounts. Hence, even Amazon says that when you want to sell Apps on their platform they claim the right to change the price tag whenever they wish for a certain time. So I doubt that GOG must ask EA or Ubisoft each time how they sell a game and whenever they change the price tag.

That's of course true. I was only talking about phrasing things as a demand, which sounds rather stupid. I mean, if someone went to buy an iPhone and said "I demand to buy this for $200 or I'll go and buy an Android phone", they'd obviously sound like a delusional idiot, while saying "this is too expensive for me, I think that a $200 Android phone provides similar features and will go for that" sounds reasonable, and conveys the same message.

I think that much of it comes from GOG's decision to have $6 as the lowest price point. If GOG feels that some games aren't worth that price separately, it will bundle them.

That is however not the case with the HoMM V bundle, which I imagine does have something to do with Ubisoft.

Because the game publisher decided to package all of the games into one package for one low price. That could be because they felt it would sell better that way or for any other number of reasons that you'd have to contact them to find out. Games come in boxes that way too, or they used to at least. It's up to the publisher how they market their games. If a game is for sale individually on some other store and only in a collection here then either the publisher or GOG decided to not offer the individual game. Contact the publisher to find out, and if you want to see such games here individually if they're sold elsewhere like that - file a request in the GOG community wishlist at:

http://www.gog.com/wishlist

If enough people vote for your request then it will indicate to GOG and the publisher that there is a big enough market for it, otherwise it might not be worth their while to bother.