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General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
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Posted February 21, 2014
The DRM-Free Revolution Continues with Big Pre-Orders and Launch Day Releases!

Good news! GOG.com is going to bring you more fantastic launch day releases, preorders, and other exciting new content from some of our favorite developers. We've lined up 3 big titles that we will be bringing to GOG.com in the next couple of months for sale or preorder that we think will be hits with all of our gamers; and we have more equally exciting games coming up soon.

If you've been a member of the site for a long time, you may recall that when we launched sales of The Witcher 2 on GOG.com, we had to add in regional pricing. The game cost different amounts in in the US, the UK, the European Union, and Australia. We're doing something like that once again in order to bring you new titles from fantastic bigger studios. Since we don't accept currencies other than USD on GOG.com right now, we'll be charging the equivalent of the local price in USD for these titles. We wish that we could offer these games at flat prices everywhere in the world, but the decision on pricing is always in our partners' hands, and regional pricing is becoming the standard around the globe. We're doing this because we believe that there's no better way to accomplish our overall goals for DRM-Free gaming and GOG.com. We need more games, devs, and publishers on board to make DRM-Free gaming something that's standard for all of the gaming world!

That brings with it more good news, though! As mentioned, we have three games we're launching soon with regional pricing--two RPGs and a strategy game--and while we can't tell you what they are yet because breaking an NDA has more severe penalties than just getting a noogie, we're confident that you'll be as excited about these games as we are. For a limited time, we will be offering anyone who pre-orders or buys one of them a free game from a selection as a gift from GOG.com, just like we did for The Witcher 2.

If you have any questions, hit us up in the comments below and we'll be happy to answer (to the best of our ability).

EDIT: Since we've answered a lot of the common questions already here (and lest you think that we've ignored you), it may be handy for you to check out the forum thread about this and search for staff answers by clicking this link here. (hat tip to user Eli who reminded us that the feature even exists. :)
Posted February 22, 2014
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Doesn't affect me, but I don't like it, and I definitely don't respect it. Wayback machine from 2011:

"8. Same game, same price, no matter where you're from! We believe that all gamers around the world should be treated equally. Therefore GOG.com is available to everyone, everywhere, and we offer the same prices to gamers from all countries. Getting the worldwide rights to the games takes some extra effort on our part, but we think it's worth the reward of opening up our site to the world."

I love DRM-free, but I also liked the idea of fair worldwide pricing. Things like that aren't really principles if you throw them under the bus, even if it's in the pursuit of furthering other principles. Point is, the appeal of GOG was that it didn't make compromises like this, and it's not really doing anyone any favors when this site is the one flexing to accommodate publishers rather than the other way around.
Posted February 22, 2014
I used to buy a lot of games from GOG. Last year I bought 2.
Posted February 22, 2014
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Leroux: snip

It will still send the message that games can be DRM-free on release, but along with the message that gamers will swallow regional pricing and that GOG can be convinced to give up its high principles. :/

And to me this is about more than just spending a couple of euros more. Franky, I find it very alarming that GOG won't promise a definite "no" to censored and region locked games, should publishers demand it.
And this is what folks that post "it doesn't affect me, so I don't care" don't get that worries us to the point it makes us so vocal.

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Melhelix: Tried to post this earlier and my internet up and died, so I'm posting it now. Living in the wilderness definitely has its downsides.

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What bothers me is that this really was a foundational support for GOG. This is chipping away at GOG's platform and not adding to it. Adding modern games made sense, it expanded the platform. Adding Mac games made sense, adding Linux games would make sense, adding being the key method. Enhancing, embellishing. Not destroying, removing. This opens a door to new games, yes, but at the cost that GOG removes a serious portion of what made GOG, well, GOG. GOG has a fair bit of weight to their name, by standing firm they made the other digital distributors look foolish. They offered an option, an alternative, and proved it was viable.

For posterity's sake: [url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-UJAfwyDvy0J:www.gog.com/welcome?pp%253Dd06b6c54863ac33d12419dd04f7acb85c696f722+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]Source[/url]

---- Source

GOG has done customer surveys before to see where the audience stands. Was one ever done for "Would you be okay with regional pricing for day one games?" If the survey was conducted, what were the results? If not, why was it not done?
Thanks for the sources, saved for reminiscing moments.

And to answer your question - to the best of my knowledge, no survey asked this prickly question.
Posted February 22, 2014
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vulchor: What is ridiculous about real values and market fairness? Are you trolling?
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StingingVelvet: Incomes, average wages and general economies are very different. One price worldwide is not realistic or fair.
Sweet, so, where can we buy games for 10 cents?

EDIT: Oh wait, we're still doing the 1$ = 1 EUR party!
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Elenarie
Posted February 22, 2014
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HypersomniacLive: And to answer your question - to the best of my knowledge, no survey asked this prickly question.
And to be honest, I don't exactly recall getting a survey either. I might have missed it entirely. Or perhaps I filled it out and it had so little impact that I totally forgot it. I don't recall such a question either.
Posted February 22, 2014
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vulchor: What is ridiculous about real values and market fairness? Are you trolling?
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StingingVelvet: Incomes, average wages and general economies are very different. One price worldwide is not realistic or fair.
All of these have nothing to do with regional pricing. In fact, many times its quite the opposite, and the weakest economies have the highest prices. Also, would you expect a physical copy sold online to have different prices by region? So if I'm selling from ebay, you would expect me to charge you more money because you live in Slovakia or Australia, and not the US?
Posted February 22, 2014
So, saying that the game "costs" a different amount in each region is false. The *sale price* is different, the cost of distributing the game digitally is almost exactly the same (give or take a cent for ESRB license and bandwidth/energy/cooling costs). Discretionary costs (like marketing) are, of course, different in different regions, and that's how they try to justify it, by bundling the costs of all there North American and European executives into the "cost" of the games there. And of course, that's ridiculous.

There is absolutely no reason to have regional pricing for identical products except to gouge the people that are able to pay more.

Regional pricing *is* smart if the products offered are different. In lower income countries, offering single-serve products, or products without lifetime warranties, for lower prices is effective and ethical (lower cost for lower non-essential value).

If GOG is going to do regional pricing, at least drop the façade. It is what it is, and you can't be the good guys and still do it.
Posted February 22, 2014
high rated
This sets a negative precedent that GOG is willing to erode it's unique brand of being fair to the consumer in exchange for expanding it's business. I would honestly rather GOG pushed for fixed-point pricing or did not sell the games at all.

I hope the outcry on this subject will alert GOG that this is damaging to their brand and I will certainly be more reluctant to support them in future. GOG should be very careful about exchanging customer goodwill for cash - there are good ways and there are bad ways. This is definitely not a good way.

If you're going to go ahead and do this - which it's clear you are - at least offer a warning that the price may vary per region so we can avoid paying artificially inflated prices.

And please, in future negotiations refer back to this and warn publishers who push for this kind of practice that we are thoroughly against it and if you need our help to push back just ask - use your customer goodwill to reinforce your position don't sell it for a quick buck.

Much love GOG, all the best for the future.
Posted February 22, 2014
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Darvond: And to be honest, I don't exactly recall getting a survey either. I might have missed it entirely. Or perhaps I filled it out and it had so little impact that I totally forgot it. I don't recall such a question either.
Here is a thread discussing the results of the survey: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/new_gaming_options_survey_results

and a breakdown of the responses for each question: http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/19169133?rel=0

It doesn't appear that there were any questions about regional pricing (which would have likely been strongly opposed). I'm not sure if there were other surveys, though - can't quite remember.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by mondo84
Posted February 22, 2014
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mondo84: Here is a thread discussing the results of the survey: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/new_gaming_options_survey_results

and a breakdown of the responses for each question: http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/19169133?rel=0

It doesn't appear that there were any questions about regional pricing (which would have likely been strongly opposed). I'm not sure if there were other surveys, though - can't quite remember.
That's strange. People clearly are wanting episodic games, but GOG clearly rejected one.
Posted February 22, 2014
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TheGreenFairy: but please don't allow that abysmal retroactive region locking that Steam did recently. That thing is essentially a scam;
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Pheace: As far as I know this was undone for most of the affected games shortly after it was set, it might have been a mistake.
That is true for Ubisoft games, they were really fair about it. Gearbox can't say the same about the 2-days-before-launch Borderlands 2 locks that have been applied to all russian buys though, as far as I know, and then there are these new(ish) releases that may or may not be correcting this unfair "mistake", like Thief, Rust, 7 Days To Die, South Park and either Banished or The Banner Saga (sorry, can't remember which).

Best one from there is Thief. Been on sale for half a year, and now 2 days ago they locked all those copies down. There's going to be a LOT of people pissed about that, seeing that Assassin's Creed 4's two week period created such an uproar.
Posted February 22, 2014
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sneakyraccoon: I for one agree with this from a business point of view. It seems fairly obvious, to me, that at some point GOG was going to need to support more day 1 releases if they are to stay relevant. I am willing to bet the vast majority of today's GOG users are here because of nostalgia for the games they grew up on. Games, I may mention, that were not on Steam for a day 1 release because there was no Steam at the time. Time is not on GOG's side if they are going to focus mainly on pre-Steam, 2003 if I recall correctly, releases. I have to wonder how much harder it is for GOG to get a game that was originally released on Steam and how much lower, in quantity of sales, they experience for said game if it has already been available for digital distribution for x number of years before coming to GOG. Good Old Games was able to identify a market opportunity that was not being met at the time and created something wonderful for me and my fellow "old" gamers but my kid's generation will not have the same affinity for these classics (in my case I hold all of Sierra's games close to heart) that we do. To not bite the bullet and change one of their core competencies to support new releases would mean serving an ever shrinking niche market.

Please do not misunderstand me, I think it sucks for all of those in geographies that will be impacted by this but I have to believe that GOG truly did examine all of their options and complete their due diligence in making this decision. I am sure they were fully aware at how this was going to ruffle up feathers and I am fairly sure the forum moderators knew today was not going to be their most favorite day at work. ;-)
Attempting to change their core competency isn't just that easy. They're going from a blue ocean strategy, to a red ocean strategy. Day 1 releases will put them in direct competition with gamestop, steam, etc. If you think their "niche" market for classic games is shrinking, their relative market share for new games is almost non-existent. Aaaaand, most of their day 1 releases are probably sold to people here for the classic games. If they alienate their niche market, they will have no loyal customer base from which to launch any sort of strategy (people will usually just buy new games where they are cheapest if all other things are equal).
Posted February 22, 2014
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sneakyraccoon: -snip
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sivartwoa: Attempting to change their core competency isn't just that easy. They're going from a blue ocean strategy, to a red ocean strategy. Day 1 releases will put them in direct competition with gamestop, steam, etc. If you think their "niche" market for classic games is shrinking, their relative market share for new games is almost non-existent. Aaaaand, most of their day 1 releases are probably sold to people here for the classic games. If they alienate their niche market, they will have no loyal customer base from which to launch any sort of strategy (people will usually just buy new games where they are cheapest if all other things are equal).
So...lose/lose? Also, I'm still wondering who was asking for day one releases?
Posted February 22, 2014
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Might as well throw my two cents in with everyone else's.

As an Australian, regional pricing sucks pretty badly. I've never bought a full-priced game from a big publisher on Steam because of it. It's actually much cheaper for me to buy from overseas stores (either importing physical copies or buying Steam/other keys).

Recent example of Metro: Last Light:
- Price upon launch on Steam: USD $69.99 (note that we pay in USD, so currency conversion costs are on top of that)
- Price I paid a UK retailer on release day: AUD $32.99
- Price on Steam today (8 months later): USD $54.99 in the franchise pack (for some reason the franchise pack is cheaper than just Last Light)

That's closer to the norm than just a one-off, unfortunately. The Call of Duty series is the worst, with old games like MW2 and Black Ops 1 and 2 still selling for USD $89.99 today when I could have imported them for half that upon release.

Still, it's a nice win for the Americans to be able to get access to DRM-free copies of new games on release day, for presumably the same price as DRM-full options.
Posted February 22, 2014
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mangamuscle: After 20+ pages of this thread I must say that GOG needs better public relations. No matter how good the intentions are, if your press release does not appease fears that gog.com has plans to turn into another steam them someone did not do his/her homework. Steve Jobs is a prime example, no matter what frightening new path Apple took, customers kept eating whatever he fed them.
Perhaps TET will consider wearing black turtlenecks for future announcements and enigmatic hints? :p

In all seriousness, it might be worthwhile to put together a summary of the pertinent questions/answers from TET.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
(4041 posts)