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General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
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
One of the reasons I purchase games in GOG, better than on Steam or whatever, is that I hate the $=€ pricing politics that Steam and other dealers use in their stores. If GOG is gonna go that way, apart from being unable to bring more real GOGs, then I'll have no real reasons to buy here, even if I really liked this site so much.
Posted February 22, 2014
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deonast: I hope not, I kickstarted that, I would hope to think more highly of the developers, even though it wouldn't impact me personally this time around I had two digital copies in my reward one for steam and one hopefully for GOG.
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althrian: Isn't Wasteland 2 one of these games which are predestined for a platform like GOG? Why do they start with Steam!? As far as I saw there was an option to choose a DRM-free copy?!?
I think they started with steam because of the early access program they have.
GoG doesnt have that yet only preorder.
Posted February 22, 2014
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Niggles: I have a question
Why is censorship in germany so heavy handed in regards with games? . I know our own ****ers of goverment are tossbags themselves.....
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Novotnus: I believe that's because some douche bureaucrat believes that if you pretend nazi times never happened people won't get stupid ideas about nazi ideology being good.
Criticism where it's necessary, but I think this is a quite unfair one that's far off the mark. Maybe there's some truth to the latter part, but you can't claim that Germany is trying to pretend nazi times never happened. There's a lot of accounting for the past in this regard, maybe more than in any other country. TV and literature are full of fiction and documentation about nazi crimes, critical discussion of the Third Reich and World War II is a major part of history lessons in school. The topic is very present over here in school, media and politics, so much that quite a few people (unjustly) feel it's oppressive, making them feel guilty all the time and hampering their "national pride".

Can't say what's the real reasoning behind banning the swastika though, I'd have to read up on that.

EDIT: According to Wikipedia, this law was initiated by the Allied Control Council in order to ban the NSDAP and its symbols, and was then inherited by the young German government to guard against anti-constitutional aspirations and a resurgence of nazi propaganda. Excluded are propaganda and symbols used in a critical context to enlighten the populace about nazi crimes, and also in science, history and art. As someone recently pointed out here, it seems the problem with videogames is that they are not deemed artistic enough and are often seen as children's toys.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Leroux
Posted February 22, 2014
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Grargar: Are you sure that Doom is not available on Steam? Didn't Bethesda remove the Nazi references in Doom II's secret levels included in Doom 3 BFG Edition, to make it universally accepted?
That's actually the funny thing and can pretty much be chalked up to Valve's incompetence and/or ignorance. Doom 1 and 2 are still unavailable on their own in the Steam store, but are actually included in every release of Doom 3 BFG. See, originally, Doom 1 and 2 were blacklisted and they would have been even without the secret levels based on Wolfenstein, since the games were considered to be "too violent" and "endangering to youth" (not surprising, since they also blacklisted games like 1942 or Commando back in the 80s). However, they were both de-listed in 2011 and received "USK 16" ratings, meaning that they can be sold anywhere now without any restrictions (except the versions of Doom 2 that contain the Wolf3D levels, that's a different, complicated issue altogether), but Valve never bothered to make it available to German IPs.
That very same thing happened with Quake 1 and the original Max Payne and they're still hidden in the German Steam store.

Games like Hexen and Prey were never even blacklisted and they aren't available, either (this was even before Prey's publisher ran out of serial-keys for the game, leading to its removal from the store everywhere).

Hell, Valve has actually censored Half-Life 2 retroactively, for no reason whatsoever. The version you find in the German Orange Box is censored, even though the original stand-alone release was completely uncut AND got a rating by the USK, meaning that it was completely untouchable as far as blacklisting goes.
That's how much they care.

Hilariously, some games that are still blacklisted, such as Star Wars - Dark Forces (yes, that was considered "too violent" in the 90s) can be purchased without problem.
Posted February 22, 2014
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althrian: Isn't Wasteland 2 one of these games which are predestined for a platform like GOG? Why do they start with Steam!? As far as I saw there was an option to choose a DRM-free copy?!?
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Lodium: I think they started with steam because of the early access program they have.
GoG doesnt have that yet only preorder.
Early access that is what I was thinking of couldn't think of what it was called
Posted February 22, 2014
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Leroux: Criticism where it's necessary, but I think this is a quite unfair one that's far off the mark. Maybe there's some truth to the latter part, but you can't claim that Germany is trying to pretend nazi times never happened. There's a lot of accounting for the past in this regard, maybe more than in any other country. TV and literature are full of fiction and documentation about nazi crimes, critical discussion of the Third Reich and World War II is a major part of history lessons in school. The topic is very present over here in school, media and politics, so much that quite a few people (unjustly) feel it's oppressive, making them feel guilty all the time and hampering their "national pride".
I'm not saying German people are like that and I know it's present in German art where people try to deal with this national trauma (same thing is going on here, with both nazism and communism - Poland has some dark pages in history too).
I blame political forces, not common people.
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Leroux: Can't say what's the real reasoning behind banning the swastika though, I'd have to read up on that.
I believe reasoning is:
Games = toys.
No swastikas on toys.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Novotnus
Posted February 22, 2014
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Wishbone: Are there any of your so-called "principles" you didn't throw out the window today?
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TheEnigmaticT: Here we have said, "This is a big change, and it's one that we know will worry you. We're excited about the games that will be coming to GOG.com, and we're promising that we will do everything that we can to keep our regional pricing fair for everyone." At some point, doesn't the fact that we've been fighting the good fight for 5 years give us any earned trust on the part of our community? We will do what we can to make regional pricing as fair as possible. Trust us, for the moment, and see what happens.

Over the last 5 years, I believe that we have shown ourselves to be a company that is relentlessly focussed on treating our customers better than anyone else in the industry does. We think this change can be something that's good for you, because you'll find great games DRM-free on GOG.com that wouldn't be DRM-free without this. These games are going to be the same price everywhere in the world, except GOG.com will be giving something for you guys out of our pockets to help make up the difference between regional prices.

I understand that the lack of clarity for our policy is bringing confusion, and confusion brings a certain amount of fear with it. I ask that you--and the rest of the guys in the thread--think about our track record of how we treat our gamers with respect. What you're feeling is understandable, and I've found myself in the same situation before. I've found that the track record of the organization that's making promises is worth keeping in mind in circumstances like this, and I think our established history speaks for itself in that regard.
I do trust GOG. I do believe in your track record. But please don't pretend that you announced this as: "This is a big change, and it's one that we know will worry you".

Your announcement reminds me of a letter I got from my superannuation provider recently. Returns had been low, they said, but the company was doing well. My investment was in the best hands, they said. To better reflect their forecasts for the future, they were renaming my superannuation option the "Growth" option. That filled all of the first page. Anyone who made it through the cheer and hype discovered (on page 2) that they were also doubling the fees they were charging. Since I'm 100% sure they don't give a damn about their customers, the "pull the wool over their eyes" approach didn't surprise me.

But, as you say, GOG has a reputation for caring about its customers.

As a customer, when I see a new item labelled "Big Pre-Orders And Launch Day Releases" I shouldn't have to wonder what disagreeable policy change you may have snuck into the middle paragraph. That should be under an announcement titled "Major Policy Changes" explaining that you've chosen to make a break from one of your main principles to further another. You clearly made this change for reasons you believe are good, and for reasons many of your customers would find reasonable. Why didn't you pay us the respect to tell us outright , instead of sneaking it in under a "Yay! New Games!" banner?

Concealing the unpleasant truth in the hope that less people will notice is a sign of contempt, not care. As a retailer who respected its customers, and was making a change which would be unfavourable to many of them, you owed us better than this shonky announcement.
Posted February 22, 2014
Fuck regional pricing. I just lost some respect for gog.
Posted February 22, 2014
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Vainamoinen: I see. Such instances should be seldom though. Markets like Germany are too big to not make a censored version as well, and as soon as that butchered game exists, it wouldn't make sense not to offer it in less lucrative markets as well.
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Grargar: bansama feared that Japan might get a bit blocking-happy. And there might be quite a few banned games on Australia.
For Japan it has nothing to do with censoring games. And everything to do with the rights holders simply not wanting to sell the games on PC. This is especially true of the Japanese publishers.

GreenManGaming is a wonderful example of this. When they first started they proudly proclaimed they would not have regional restrictions. Now over half of their catalogue is restricted here; including many that weren't restricted in the past. They even go so far as to restrict games that are available on Steam here. GameFly isn't even worth looking at. Finding non-restricted games is like finding a needle in a haystack at times over there.

And now Valve fully intend to force Japanese yen pricing on us later this year. That will see more restrictions and higher prices (some likely 400% higher than in the US, despite many of us earning significantly less than those in the US).

So when GOG say "If it ever comes up in the future where someone can't find the rights for, I dunno, Mauritania or Turkey, yeah. I can see us doing that." and "There's no plans to do treat with Japan differently than the rest of the world at the moment." I know it's only a matter of time before GOG becomes like every over digital distributor and tells me my money is no longer accepted.
Posted February 22, 2014
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Lodium: There is another reason why i dont quite understand this move.
Acording to some internet searches i did, GoG.Com is the second biggest Digital Game store only beaten by Steam and thats nothing to sneeze at and quite an acomplishment.
Now why have GoG become this big?
Well one can argue that its because of DRM free games a great community and worldwide flat prices and probably some other reasons ive forgotten about.

Now, if gog is the second biggest one why do they need to follow what the rest of the world does since
one of the principles have gotten them where they are today.
Woudnt it instead be smarter to demand of anyone that want to publish here that they follow the principles to be more liked?.
Lets say EA wants to publish here and to do so they agree to the principles by gog meaning EA getting more liked in the process.
This is exactly how it should have been! GoG has very very loyal fanbase and they shouldn't be bending because of publishers whining they want anti-consumer artifficial raising of price!
You are winning few publishers, but loosing huge ammount of loyalty and enthusiasm of your fans.
Why are you throwing away one of the main reasons people are coming to GoG over other digital distributions???
Also this will surely affect many of the older games, whos publishers will suddenly want to have jewish regional pricing too! Its no way around it! I feel this is really bad decision to make GoG. This is really sad.

This is horrible news for whole state of gaming industry! You were the only and you are solding yourself and us too...

Also wont there have to be some DRM measures to enforce this regional pricing?!?

Good old times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRdfYwvGTos...
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Posted February 22, 2014
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InfraSuperman: snip
I wonder. If EA ends up bringing the Command & Conquer games on GOG, will the Germans have the "luxury" of receiving those hilariously bad robotic conversions?
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bansama: snip
Censorship or not, it still sucks.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Grargar
Posted February 22, 2014
I am not particularly happy about this. Sure, I understand the decision but I was under the impression that the principles on the GOG front page (one fair price everywhere being one of them) were set in stone.

The main strength of GOG has always been the fact that you've differentiated yourself from the rest of the market. You do a different thing from other retailers and that's what makes you so successful. I'm just afraid that if you keep compromising on your policies just to put yourself in the position where you actually have to compete with the likes of Steam on their own ground might not be best for you.

Look, I like GOG a lot. But I like it for very different reasons that I like Steam. Being able to get games that are not available anywhere else anymore and knowing that the price I'm paying is fixed and fair is one of them. Buying recent releases, then quickly downloading them through a convenient client then playing straight away without having to worry about installation files is steam's forte.

Another thing I wanted to talk about are pre-orders. Now I have nothing against pre-orders myself but they are a controversial topic and there has been a lot of debate surrounding them in the aftermath of the Aliens: Colonial Marines disaster. Are you sure that including them is a good idea, considering that you kind of need to keep up the consumer-friendly image that you based your entire marketing on?
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Johny_X2
Posted February 22, 2014
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StickOfPlywood: Hold a community vote
In addition, no, I don't think "vote with your wallet" is a truly democratic notion. Yes, the clients have a choice in purchasing the products offered, but not necessarily any say in what kinds of products will be offered and in what form.

In the nonprofit sector, the client often has no choice but to accept the products which are available by the moment, with no stock guarantees. That is by necessity, due to a lack of resources inherent to the philosophies of the nonprofit platform. The profit sector, however, with it's relative abundance of available resources, is more capable of taking risks. Therefore, one advantage of the profit sector is the opportunity to go beyond "vote with your wallet".
Post edited February 22, 2014 by StickOfPlywood
Posted February 22, 2014
So GOG, you want my opinion after decision was already made, so here is my, but I can't be nice and polite today: it's your worst decision you could have made! I can't call it "revolution" - it is just ass-licking!

New games are usually released here later than everywhere else, with very few bonuses included, missing linux version, patching system is pain in the ass and always late... And now it will be with regional pricing...
Why you think somebody wants to buy the game here anymore? What is great about it? That it's lacking achievements and multiplayer? Yeah...
But it will be still DRM-free, with that last and only publisher's unwanted bonus... Why not to add some kind of GOG-client with DRM and you can start to release all that new shitty & greedy AAA titles here!
Glory to future of GOG!!! Not!!!
Posted February 22, 2014
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Novotnus: I believe reasoning is:
Games = toys.
No swastikas on toys.
That's exactly the reason. There was some talk, though, that Games have been recognized as art recently, though I am not sure about that. Swastikas are also not allowed in things such as public advertisements, because the symbol is actually considered to be against the German constitution. This caused the Inglourious Basterds posters to be censored, even though there was no problem with the movie itself showing it, just like pretty much any film. I think it has to do with the fact that politicians are afraid it might be misunderstood as pro-nazi propaganda and thus the depiction of it outside anything that's considered to be "art" or educational is illegal.

This led to bizarre situations, such as some moron trying to ban a teaser poster for "Maus", Art Spiegelman's comic about the holocaust, because it showed the symbol or the ban of T-shirts depicting a fist smashing a swastika, with the words "AGAINST NAZIS" underneath it.
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Community
General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
(4041 posts)