If like me you think this regional pricing is unfair and you are disturbed by gog abandoning one of their core principles then consider telling the people in the internet communities you visit.

For my part I have made posts on imgur and steam:

http://imgur.com/gallery/d5Q8R/new

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=35358189

I m here for the drm free only, regional pricing means nothing to me. I d happily pay double for the 3 or 4 AAA games coming out this year drm free that i am interested in, but may never get to play as i know they will be steam exclusives.

When the game is 50% off for you it will be 50% off a smaller base price in other countries. You can't escape the unfair rip-offness of regional pricing.

edit: and calling it "unfair" and "rip-off" are gog's own words, not mine.

Nope they pretend to listen then completely forget why they were voted in after they get in office, look how many promises the last lot of governments broke, forgot about or hoped we forgot about.

The Labor government had that community forum crap. Being the naive civic minded person I was I left work early (out of my own time and money) went to the forum to talk to the Finance minister, which I did unlike others I wasn't asking for money to fund things I was telling them ideas on how to reduce waste in government departments (I had a history of working in government). I had five concepts that could be adapted to most departments, basically they said oh it is too hard and never heard back from them again. One of those concepts (probably independently arrived at) was part of a later review by a UK expert. Similar to mine the departments could hold onto some of the money they don't spend out of their budget for a year for longer term projects. What did the government do, after a year or two they ripped all that funding back, destroying the incentive for departments not to waste their left over funding at the end of a given year.

So I am completely disillusioned by the whole democratic process. I know we don't have anything better, but they only listen when it suits them just before an election and forget even faster.

I would rather see GOG.com not stocking games with regional pricing, then trying to convince us that it's good for all of us.

Regional pricing is almost just as bad as DRM and it should not be acceptable.

There's several stores I've stopped using purely based on the fact that they've added regional pricing, humble store being the latest.

You are sadly mistaken on many fronts.

However, since this is a thread about regional pricing, I'm not sure why you keep going on here. Perhaps visit reddit or some other site if you wish to express these views.

GOG, your pro-consumer policies have earned you a lot of good will from the gaming community. I'm not one of the people who's immediately jumping on the boycott bandwagon over this regional pricing deal, but I'm definitely disappointed that you have abandoned one of your core principles. What good is having a principle if you're just going to cast it aside?

Seeing the backlash that this is causing, maybe you should reconsider this policy change. You could have refused to sell those 3 games. How do these companies not realize that this type of BS directly contributes to piracy?

edit: principals vs principles... doh!

Even though this is not going to affect me in negative way, i'm not gonna pretend to be pleased with this decision. Four core principles are simply sound better than just 3, beside the other two which are: Extra bonus goodies & Free games are kinda weak for selling points. However this is not going to stop me buying from GOG.com, although I have to admit I rarely buy stuff from here anymore due to the lack of newer titles. Gamers Gate is now my prime store for buying games, with Steam the last (after allegedly spying on their customer +1001 other stunts, but unsurprisingly always given free pass).

It's just the goodwill of GOG and its community that keep me coming down here. I'll give 'em benefit of the doubt this time due to outstanding track record. I ain't seeing the can of worms yet, and i'll believe it until I see it. That being said any goodwill isn't going to last forever.

Do the places where you buy newer titles also support regional pricing?

Will it be possible for the user to tell which products have regional pricing from the user interface? Perhaps a big red banner would do the trick.

Only if it flashes and plays an audio warning in 560 languages.

There can be benefits to regional pricing (not that I support it; few actually use it for a consumer benefit).

Notably when you are dealing with a region where the local currency has a lower value than USD; trying to sell a game for $50 USD in Mexico would be an insane price.

This sounds like a unfortunate concession to get some higher caliber titles on GOG and while it isn't a good thing, it is better than GOG starting to sell Steam keys.

This whole thread is a reason why speaking in absolutes will end up shooting you in the foot later down the line, and businesses should not be so quick to make long-term promises they ought to know better that they can't keep, since the future is unpredictable and financial stability is a real wild card to maintain, and when it comes back to bite you in the ass, your options suddenly become very limited. You either stagnate and slowly die off, or bite the bullet and make a major compromise to keep yourselves going that may very well alienate nearly all of your core consumer base (which it clearly shows it has done).

I think though everyone would be less harsh about this matter had there been better communication between them and the community.

First problem: they never did any kind of community poll on matters of regional pricing as far as I'm aware. Which is odd since there was that community poll from a while back that asked our opinions for just about everything else, including DLC, early access, and CD-key activations for multiplayer titles.

Second: I'm sure they were aware that nobody would take this news very well and so tried (unsuccessfully) to spin it in a positive way. A more down-to-earth communication with the community on this would worked so much better. Sure it wouldn't oust all the negative replies completely but it would probably not end up being nearly as bad as it has turned out now, and again, the communication aspect, that's what many people here were asking for, and so far it seems most of the main GOG heads have barricaded themselves away from the pitchforks and battering rams coming at their door, and what little communication has been offered has been unsatisfactory in seriously looking at the issue from the perspectives of those who will be screwed over the most by this choice.

Third: there is so little information given here other than "there will be three exciting games" and "regional pricing." Without anyone being able to know what these games even are and if they're even worth this trouble, and without even being able to answer highly pertinent questions (as TET has stated several times he has not a clue what all the particular rules and changes that will occur even are), ones such as "exactly how MUCH higher will I have to pay?" (assuming it hasn't already been confirmed it's gonna be one of those "1 USD = 1 EUR" kind of crap deals). Because to me, regional pricing isn't in of itself a bad thing, especially when it comes to countries with much lower income brackets, it can actually be a huge benefit to people in those parts of the world, the problem is how badly publishers have exploited this to screw over European and Australian customers with exorbitant prices, and to a lesser extent how some people from same lower-income countries have exploited it to sell games for higher prices in countries with higher income levels (though maybe this will be less of a concern seeing how GOG sells everything exclusively at their storefront, unlike Steam which has allowed a number of third-party sites to sell Steam keys). If the prices were only slightly raised above their currency value (like, I dunno, a $9.99 game being 7.99 EUR, or the same being 11.50 AUS, that's slightly higher than the currency conversion calculators I've checked resulted in, but not by much), that's one thing, but publishers have really gone overboard. And then there are other good questions like "will this game be censored in my region?," "will I even be able to BUY this game in my region?," "can I gift this game to people in other regions?," "how will this affect other games in the catalog/will it affect every future game to come to the catalog/will this give publishers who otherwise were compliant with the one-world price rule extra leverage in pushing GOG into pricing their games the regional way?" and so on. GOG should have realized these would be major concerns on everyone's minds and announcing this without being able to answer these things definitively if at all or trying to get a word from whoever the publisher is about these things, this announcement being so premature was a bad move on their part.

And trying so discretely to remove their "one world, one price" logo on their site and making the videos on that now-abandoned principle private hoping nobody would notice (yet everyone did anyway) wasn't a very tactful move either.

All in all, I am HIGHLY curious to know who this publisher is and what these games are. It mentions "preorders" so I would assume newer titles. These games must REALLY be fucking huge for them to erase a third of their identity for them, but if these are the kind of AAA games that will be widely available on places like Steam and consoles anyway when they come out then it's a terrible move on their part in all honesty. The only games really I care about coming on to GOG are ones that are still unavailable to buy anywhere (all the classic games you WON'T find on Steam or anywhere else save eBay, thrift shops and abandonware/torrent sites, stuck in legal limbo or otherwise being held back for no reason by miserly publishers). If this move somehow gets LucasFarts/Disney and 2K Games on board and to let their back catalog to see the light of day once again then that would be great but I have my doubts about that.

I think the other problem is, GOG has very little negotiating power. Of course they are a relatively small business trying to convince monoliths to ride aboard the DRM-free train and have had their successes but they still have a ways to go. Many people were convinced of GOG's inability to negotiate and deal with legal tangles properly when a company like Night Dive was able to get System Shock 2 legally released in almost no time at all compared to the years GOG has been trying to get that game on here. It would seem this is a similar situation here. People like GOG for their principles and community-friendliness (and selection of games of course) compared to other stores and being forced to compromise like this is very sad for them indeed as all the angry replies here would indicate.

Every GOG staffer now I'm sure is pretty damn well aware they've caused a major upset and should be concerned what it may cost them. I think it's time for them to REALLY think about this and think about how to handle this. I mean, not the wishy-washy responses some GOG staff have given here, but really address this directly and candidly. Toward the community, toward the publisher(s) of these three "exciting" games, toward everyone responsible for negotiating these deals, this is really something you need to reflect on. GOG have had their gaffes, some bigger than others, in the past, but this may be the first truly big mistake they have made. The "GOG is shutting down" prank may have been a bad attempt at marketing and caused everyone needless panic, but it was temporary, they realized what a bad idea it was, and never would do something like that again. This decision though will have a major effect on how GOG operates and may not be for the better either. I should expect of GOG over the following week to seriously and publicly communicate and address this issue to everyone and go back to the negotiation tables with whichever responsible publisher(s) for this. It's OK to give a publisher some leeway, but only so much in a case like this, GOG needs to consult whatever genius negotiators they have at Night Dive and force the publisher to compromise in some ways too.

But once again, I am most curious as to WHAT these games are. This is one case where breaking the NDA would be a good idea. If one of the games is something like the first Diablo (likely not, but who knows), cool. If it's something like South Park: The Stick of Truth, who fucking cares, you're wasting your time and driving away your consumer base, I have no problems buying games on Steam, I can just get that game there, as can everyone else who also uses Steam or owns a modern game console. There is nothing remotely "exciting" about games like that, assuming that's the kind of game they plan to announce.

What if it is Dark Souls 2?