Thank you, tons!

Thank you for the incredibly detailed answer, MarkoH01!

I just noticed I am low rated for making fun of Gabe Newell in this thread. :P

How this place has fallen.

A few years ago I would have praised. XD

The kicker is, I bet a lot of the people who negged it are the same people in this very same thread bitching and moaning about how GOG is becoming too much like Steam. :P

There's something I'm a bit confused about:
Why was regional pricing even discussed? Isn't that a bit of an old and dead point by now?

Yes, but still a very important point and for many users the beginning of the "downfall" of GOG, because it was the first of their principles that they threw away.

You make it sound like the Roman Empire. :P

Now write "Gogani ite domum" a hundred times!

Well, maybe it's just me, but if that is the worst that can happen, frankly, if I was that CEO, I wouldn't want to risk the off-chance of being the first guy this happened to on his vacation. ;)

I don't like this anymore than you do, but I don't expect someone to take all the risk for his personal life and business and play Robin Hood for me, just so I can get my games uncensored. I'd rather resort to piracy myself in that case.

Not sure if this is the case but please don't forget that GOG also has legal contracts with all of their publishers and it might be that they want GOG to play it safe so they won't get in any trouble. Of course that is just an assumption. I will see if I can find out anything more about the issue that I can tell you. Like said before I can just reassure you that they are actively trying to make the situation better and I was told a few details about the "how" I unfortunately are not allowed to disclose. This is not over for me as well since I hate censorship with a pasion.

I am here with you as well regarding the "principles" part. How can I believe somebody who is dropping one principle after another? However there are (like usually) two sides of the medal. If you stick to all of your principles but in the end are losing what was the base of those principles (meaning the busness itself) what use are these principles then? GOG never wanted to drop any of those principles and they assured us several times that DRM-free will never fall. If you think a bit about it a bit more the second principle "no regional pricing" is also still kind of intact since at least they are offering store credit for the difference (which is much more Steam ever did). I still don't like it but it seems as if there's no real way around it when it comes to newer games if you take into consideration that every publisher could go Steam only instead to have regional prices assured. According to GOG most classic games still don't have regional prices. The last principle according to the front page is "Money back guarantee" and I never had any difficulties with that.

This imo depends on the definition of DRM (and this was discussed as well when we were there) which seems to be a bit different for everyone. In case you are saying that DRM-free is meaning not to be online at all real MP is out of the question. As long as the game however has a working SP mode it still can be played offline therefore I would consider it still DRM-free (It's still the same game there are just a few features that requires me to be online but I don't have to use them to enjoy the game the same). Is it possible for you to give me DRM-free MP examples? What do you consider being "DRM-free" exactly?

I have no counter argument for this at this moment.

"We" also cannot tell anybody what actualy WILL happen we can only tell what they told us (or at least part of this) and hopefully we can do a bit more than simply saying "we cannot tell you anything but we are aware" which often is GOGs reply. If however GOG would WANT to leave the customers in the dark there would not be a reason for this whole Q&A at all. If they only had wanted our input we could have skipped to the point where they were asking US questions and they also could simply have sent us an e-mail or sth. Hovewer before it came to that point it was the other way around and we were asking them (with discussions of course). Of course you just cannot be sure about any of this before they finally changed the things. When they have done the things they told us when we have gone from talking to doing ... before that nothing is a guarantee. I completely understand that what we are doing here is nothing more than trying to shed a bit more light on the whole situation.

*sigh* You know you're tired when you read that as "violated".

Doggie and Kitty friendly office?

I do it four times a year in a Kinko's (or what was Kinko's) office. That's why they stick a fax machine in there. :)

some would say how it has grown. this place was always a bubble of Valve disapproval that skewed into irrational territory. but it seems that sweet sweet Gaben is getting his due here now as well.

Must have missed those comments.

Haven't seen any cats, but there were some dogs and nobody seemed to care.

I know you said you don't have any porn. You know you don't have to prove it now, right?

Yes. I did see a dog sleeping place along with a bowl of water and another for food, and I did ask. They said that people can (and occasionally do) bring their pets to the office.