skeletonbow: GOG believes that people will buy DRM-free games here instead of pirating them because they offer a good value proposition with what they provide, the bonus goodies, the support, etc. and they believe that people will now buy from them for those very same reasons and they wont need to worry about having to try and prevent people from abusing the system. If people do abuse the system however I believe it is simple A+B=C math that something will be done to prevent it which makes things less favourable for people. They could ban gift codes from being redeemable across region boundaries for example, or the other things I said above.
Why do things to make matters worse?
nadenitza: Can we blame people wanting to buy games cheaper, how are they making matters worse? From what you say i get the impression DRM exists only to make you pay more, for no apparent reason...
Tru russians or not the money gets to gog either way... if the problem is that is not enough, you can't blame the people for that, blame the prices. The only way to stop that is to block the gift codes redeeming in other regions, witch is a restriction a la steam, witch makes anyone outside of russia pay more, witch brings us to my previous point - DRM makes you pay more for no apparent reason...
No, I wouldn't blame someone for wanting to buy something cheaper, but the fact is that if people abuse the system it's not like it is invisible to GOG. They know what country the purchasing computer is in via geolocation on the IP address, as do they know the country of the customer from the database and probably keep records of previous entries if someone changes it, and they'll know the same information from customers redeeming the codes. So if people abuse the system either a lot individually, or trying to profiteer from it by buying lots of copies of things from a region with favourable pricing such as Russia only to turn around and resell them for a profit, game companies aren't going to be "ok" with that and I imagine neither is GOG. Neither company is just going to sit idly by and watch people rip their "honour system" off. They'll simply look at the situation and if the abuse is significant enough they'll come up with a solution to end the problem or reduce its impact to the point where it has more negligible impact.
That could mean that they raise the prices in the region that profiteering is happening, or that they block people found to be abusing the system from being able to make repeat purchases or even purchase at all, ban accounts, or they could stop selling a game in a particular region entirely. One way or another if people abuse the system - regardless of why they're abusing the system - the system will change to attempt to prevent the problem by putting some kind of additional restrictions in place relative to the open trust of the system now. It's the same with anything in life really, when people are given freedom with few limitations and restrictions with something and turn around and abuse it, a few bad apples spoil it for the whole bunch and the "fun times" are over for everyone as locks get put on doors and things get reigned in and controls put in place.
In fact DRM is one of the things that is used in the business to help prevent this very sort of thing (regardless of whether it's effective or not). Now GOG wouldn't go to that extreme, but in the worst case scenario I can think of if people abused the system enough that GOG and publishers could not contain the problem to a negligible state through simple means that don't interfere with the software itself and had no other means to control the problem, chances are they'd simply consider DRM-free distribution a failure for the given game and pull it from GOG and simply sell it only on Steam or other DRM-rich places.
People can play blame games all they want, but blame is irrelevant. People's actions are what are relevant because it is people's actions - and not the rationalization of those actions - which will ultimately decide what actions might be taken by publishers and/or GOG to combat problems they perceive to be a threat.
Having said that though, all it takes is a small few people who simply don't give a shit either way and will attempt to game the system regardless of the consequences so long as they have the ability to do so and just cash in while the getting is good and that will ensure that what I suggest above does happen. Sadly, with the number of people in the world as it is, and the number of people willing to take advantage of a situation like this I actually expect someone to abuse the hell out of it until it is at a problematic level for publishers/GOG to take some form of action. I just hope we don't end up seeing awesome AAA games hit the catalogue and get bootlegged via Russia for a month or two then yanked from the catalogue just as fast.
Now I could fake my own IP or country as being Russia and bonus out too, but I wont do that and I'll tell you it is not out of any moral or ethical reason towards GOG or some game publisher, but rather a more selfish reason. I wont rip off GOG or a game publisher in this manner because I believe doing so ultimately will result in game publishers fearing DRM-free distribution and not wanting to even think of embracing it, and that will result in less DRM-free games being available for me in the future. It's all about me. I want more DRM-free games that I'm able to legitimately obtain if possible, and so if GOG offers me a gentleman's honour arrangement to do business with them, I'm going to be a gentleman about it and if the price I see on a game offered to me is worth paying I might buy it, and if I perceive the price too high I'll hold off until it's cheaper sometime down the road.
