Not really flat priced, because they still have regional discounts for some regions. But yes, at least there are no higher price points than the base price for most of the classics. Some still have higher price points though (which might or might not change in the future), because the situation is indeed "complicated". ;)

Your skill in "Enigmatism" is too low in order to perform the action.

Whoa, I hadn't even noticed that! You're right, that is almost impossible to read. But cool nonetheless :-)

Hey, thanks for the post JMich, and congrats to all who went there!

Yes, I think in the end there no real secret explanation but basic logic; Steam is the leader in market share and nowadays anybody can release anything (be it old games, new games, indies, asset flips, etc...) on Steam for whatever price they want so other online shop don't really have that much choice but to offer the same.

i am not even opposed to regional pricing in principle, but the way it is implemented is just way too often totally illogical and destroys any arguments you could bring up in favor of regional pricing.

Yeah, the thing about regional pricing is that it's not meant to be fair, it's all about maximizing profits. The countries who get the discounts don't get them because that's fair, but because they would not buy the products otherwise. Apparantly in the countries with higher prices, there are still enough customers willing to pay them that it's profitable for the companies to set the price points like that. Or the market of these countries just isn't interesting enough for publishers to care (e.g. African countries that get the same high regional prices as Western Europe, or smaller countries in Eastern Europe who have to pay much more than people in Russia, despite not actually being richer).

I have to say though that I really didn't expect GOG to keep up the fair pricing policy this long. Even as someone who didn't like the change, I have to admit it's impressive that they always pay the difference out of their own "pocket" so to speak. It still sucks for a one time purchase or the sticklers for principles who don't want to show any kind of indirect support for these business practices, but for me as a quite regular GOG customer it always evens out so that I don't have to pay extra in the long run.

I don't really keep an eye on it.

That said though, given that the Witcher 3 has regional pricing, is there really any merit in discussing regional pricing anymore? What does it matter that it's "complicated" when even their own games are using it.

1) It's not their games. It's CD Projekt's game.
2) CD Projekt is not the only publisher of the game. Selling something in a territory where there's a different publisher with a different price scheme may be viewed as a hostile practice. If you recall, Nordic Games were removed due to that reason when regional pricing was introduced.

They talked about that when Witcher 3 was originally released, basically they (CDPR) are tied to the retail price; to be able to sell in retail the digital version must have the same price than the retail one (at least at the beginning).

So if the retail version uses regional pricing (and it's something decided by the distributor not them) then the digital one must follows. That's the same for all publishers and, at lest for AAA games, retail is still too important for them to be able to go digital only.

Please, it's a convenient division to make but nothing more, they're essentially the same company, just different divisions. The point is, this was as uncomplicated as it could have been, and they still didn't end up doing it.

Is there any point after that in expecting them to hold or push for a different standard for companies they aren't even directly related to? It's hypocrisy at best.

The publisher matter was entirely in the company's control. And yes, I do not make that distinction. They clearly used GOG as a main point of sale and GOG let them. Of course they did, it's their own company. So at this point, either they are forced to comply with standards they don't agree with by their affiliates, meaning any standards people expect from them are simply beholden to another party and easily forfeited when it suits them, or GOG changed their stance on it on their own volition and decided to go with what was best for the company as well as likely for the future of GOG, despite grumblings of the fanbase.

This is understandable, though still a result of their own choices when selecting a publisher. And I realize a game as grand as Witcher 3 is big enough to have to deal with the physical retail as well and the annoyances like regional pricing that come with it, but that does not mean GOG has to roll over and join that. They could have excluded the regionally higher priced regions for instance, or kept the (same) price for regions that had lower region pricing in physical retail.

"Complicated" amounts to profitability. There were choices available, but most of them would lead to a loss in profit. Of course, profitability is why we have regional pricing to begin with.

It's not like they are really thousands of different publishers to chose from that can handle a AAA game distribution in several territories (IMHO you can probably count them on your fingers maybe even on those of a single hand), and it's not like they work differently from each other, heck they even ended up reusing Bandai to distribute W3 in Europe despite having had legal disputes with them for W2, so I doubt they really had that many choices.

So [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAT#/media/File:Leon1.jpg]this[/url] is a Bugatti? Both Seat and Bugatti are subsidiaries of the same group, so it's just a convenient division, nothing more. Right?

Yes. CD Projekt (unsure if RED or Group) needed publishers who could handle the retail and console copies. No matter how big CD Projekt is (either RED or Group), they are still not large enough to be able to dictate terms.

So you are basically saying that GOG should be price slashing the competition, right? Ignore that a publisher has a deal to sell a game for €X, sell it for less.
Yeah, that wouldn't work.

Indeed. That is why we have the fair price package. Because it makes GOG's revenue be bigger than if they weren't offering it. Oh, wait.

Thanks the Six for sharing such interesting details and thanks GOG for inviting them. Even more thanks for photos and elaborate explanations. That was a nice move from GOG and I'm glad that you were able to accept, come and share with us.