Advancement through the Information Age. It has its drawbacks. :/

It sure does, but I see big advantages as well. When talking about books, let's consider the books students need which are continually updated. Almost every year a new edition of a school book comes out, making the previous version instantly worthless, wasting all that paper on just one year of actual use. If that were a digital version, the only thing you would need, would be a small patch file and you are fully up to date, ready to follow along with the teacher's notes mentioning specific pages.

It will also save students from carrying ridiculous loads, although something can be said for the argument that all that toil contributes to a character of perseverance. Something all students will need once they get a job.

There is no "necessity", no "have to", about it. They have chosen to accept it. Now, you might call that a Hobson's choice because the alternative was being able to release certain games at all, and maybe that's true (though, I would remark, we still don't know what particular games, if any, this surrender was needed for, let alone whether they will make such a monumental difference to GOG's market share as seems to be hoped). But in that case, as I've already said, GOG should have refused to sell them with price discrimination.

Why? Because this will fatally undermine GOG's unique selling point. The reason GOG was able to become the second-biggest online games vendor in the world is that a large number (a minority, but a significant one) of gamers were so fed up with the unfair practices of its competitors such as Steam, particular DRM and international price discrimination, that they wouldn't buy from them or at least would much rather buy from GOG, and that number was and is growing - slowly, but still growing. By not letting their games be sold here because they insisted upon DRM and/or regional pricing, publishers were missing out on a large amount of money. The way for GOG to get them to release their games on consumer-friendly terms was to hold out, refuse to abandon their principles and wait for more and more publishers to get fed up with not being able to sell their games at all to a large and growing number of gamers, so they decided they'd rather sell them on terms they don't like (i.e. fair, ethical ones) than not at all.

Now GOG has made that much less likely to happen. You know that Regional Rip-Off video, the old "fair price" bit on the site banner, the old news announcement where GOG declares it will have failed if it ever abandons any of its principles including the "one world, one price" policy, and all the other embarrassing reminders that people keep posting in this thread? Well, we, the customers, aren't the only ones to remember all that - publishers do so too. And now they've seen that GOG is willing to abandon at least one of those hitherto inviolable principles. After this decision - even if GOG does attract more publishers and more games by allowing regional pricing - in future, if someone says, "You can sell this game, but only with [some sort of DRM, probably one of the less awful ones like a one-time verification - at least the first time]", and GOG says, "Never - DRM-free and that's not negotiable," do you think the publisher will take them seriously now that they've already given up on one 'core value'?

Retail is usually considerably cheaper than digital, given that physical retailers aren't forced to sell for the recommended price like digital distributors are. e.g. the pricing of South Park: The Stick of Truth here in the UK:

RRP: £39.99
Steam/digital store price: £39.99
Retail price: £27.99 (registers on Steam)


I have no figures to give you, but what's true for the US isn't true for the rest of the world. Even within the US, what's true for one region of the US isn't necessarily going to be true for other regions of the US. Retail is still quite big in other countries, and even though physical retail stores here in the UK rarely carry PC games it's still cheaper to buy retail copies online from places like Game, ShopTo and Amazon than it is to buy digitally most of the time. As I understand it GOG needed to do this in order to bring brand new, big name/AAA releases here. Releases that are tied up with retail distribution agreements that make a worldwide price impossible or impractical. Releases that previously would have been locked down with DRM and that publishers would be extremely reluctant to even consider releasing DRM-free.

I very much doubt they did this just for money.

I'm sure it was a difficult decision, but ultimately they decided that it would be better to accept regional pricing but start getting big name titles released DRM-free than to continue as they were and just maintain the status quo with older titles and indies.

A decision I personally agree with. GOG has never been about price for me - I could often get games cheaper elsewhere - and my decision to buy here has always been about encouraging DRM-free releases. It's for this reason that I've re-bought many games here that I already had at retail or on Steam, without even waiting for a discount.

If we can start getting AAA titles released DRM-free here it will mark a big shift in the industry's attitudes towards DRM and will overall be a change for the better IMO, possibly even leading to DRM-free being the standard for future releases.


Because outside of sales, retail is usually cheaper than digital. At least it is here in the UK, but I'm sure the same is true of many other countries as well. Even during sales I've sometimes seen retail games priced more cheaply at retail here!

Do you know why abandonware is called that? It's because the software has been completely abandoned by its owners, i.e. you couldn't buy it from any source that benefits the IP owners even if you really wanted. Your theft analogy is crap: nobody loses anything when an abandonware title is copied. It's more akin to visiting an Atari game cartridge dump and instead of taking an abandoned game with you, you duplicate one with a scifi device. Oh shit, but it's theft and piracy according to CarrionCrow: police to the rescue!

The new releases better actually be AAA. New releases by EA, Activision, Take Two, Ubisoft, WB Games or Square Enix qualify. Age of Wonders 3 doesn't qualify, kickstarted games don't qualify.

It has it's strengths too, no doubt. Speaking of school books and publishers, that's a racket that they have going over here. They make a few changes and print a new "edition" that is required, keeping the used books in circulation low and forcing you to often pay for a brand new book when it's not necessary.

Around here the "local" digital distribution portals seem to be just beginning to take speed, I think Muve Digital was the first in 2011, cdp.pl came in late 2012, early 2013. The more savy use the international services obviously, and the trend is there, but Tech and Media stores still have shelves upon shelves of PC and console games (at least where I live).

I think this just about sums it up. GOG had no reason to accept regional pricing. No reason at all. Customers understand that there are certain companies who won't comply with GOG's former stance on pricing (among other things) and accepted a more limited choice because of it. I have not seen any posts in the past from customers asking for this policy to be dropped to get more games on to GOG, so customer demand can't be a reason. I also find it very hard to believe that GOG are struggling financially; digital distribution is popular among companies because the costs are small and the profit mergins are significant. So why GOG thinks it can dress this up as 'Good news' (as indicated in their announcement) is beyond me. This is simple greed on GOG's part.

I used to buy my games exclusively on GOG. Now it is just another digital distribution retailer and will be treated as such.

... but then, I took an arrow in the knee.



I'm sorry, I could not help myself :D

Hoy many regular customers/users have GOG?

About region locked prices, www.bigfishgames.es prices are region locked (I think) and I am allowed to pay with AR$...

Note that the price in AR$ IS NOT TIED to the exchange rate between the ARgentinian Pe$o and the U$Dollar (That's way I think that the prices are region locked)... If BigfishGames can do that (accept payments in my currency), then why not GOG?

What I don't like is the region locked game availability... Some times, when I try to view some game page on Steam, I can't do it .. I see some message that says something like this "oops, that game is not available in your region"

At this moment, Humble Store has everything better than you. Ok, they are not always DRM free, but usually they have more different formats than you as well. Linux or android versions for the price of one.

Good luck, GOG. I hardly bought anything frmo you lately anyway...

EDIT: one more thing. IF you're offering regional pricing, you should really up your game with localizing games. There are dozens of games here that shoul have Polish language avaible and they don't.

I heard that before whenever they decided to bring newer games here and that GOG no longer officially stood for "Good Old Games". There was a lot of prognosticating about GOG's grim future because of this. They seem to be doing ok so far, though.

People still come in here and complain about it even though classics are added to the catalog every month.

Don't get me wrong. I purchased hundreds of games from GOG. But I will consider my future purchases if they won't stick their principles. And I still not get how they don't ask such radical changed to its costumers.