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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 24, 2014
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amok: at the beginning, only 3 games will be regionally priced. But this is a pilot to get more publishers on board, who previously balked against flat price.
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blotunga: And when publishers will push for DRM? Who's to say what's next? Once you're ready to give up "core values" you have no more values.
The excuse of GOG (so we could get more games) is really not sufficient. Instead they should have told the full truth. Obviously there are core values and core values. Worldwide flat pricing wasn't such a big core value. They decided it wasn't so important. Basically they only have DRM free left as a single core value, which also might be dropped in the future.

If this happens I move to Steam and for the next six months I won't buy anything here to see how it develops.
Post edited February 24, 2014 by Trilarion
Posted February 24, 2014
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HypersomniacLive: Three AAA games are signed up under the regional pricing model. Regional pricing is not received well, what can be done - "vote with your wallet, don't buy them". Ok then, lets do this.
The games don't sell well, how will the failure be interpreted? As a rejection of regional pricing? Or as the niche DRM-free market at GOG not being viable?
I'm inclined to think that it will be blamed on the latter, which brings up the next issue - vote with your wallet against regional pricing and it'd be interpreted as voting against DRM-free for Day-1 AAA games; protect and encourage more "DRM-free Day-1 AAA games" by abstaining from voting with your wallet against regional pricing and it'd be seen as everyone being ok with it.
Since other many DRM-free games are selling well on gog (otherwise gog wouldnt be so successful as it is today) you cannot blame that some games aren't selling well because of drm-free. So you would have to look at what really is the difference between them and you'll see regional pricing being the culprit.

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Chacranajxy: Yes. "I don't like the price, so it's okay to steal it."
That works well.
What he means is piracy as a form of protest against regional pricing unfairness (rip-off).

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Lodium: The thing is, they migth include regional restriction
and since regional restriction is some kind of DRM then the road isnt long to regional lockout
and since they have both those why not just include a online client that checks if you have bougth it in the correct region
and suddenly the circle is complete and we migth as well abolish no-drm
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Chacranajxy: Slippery slope fallacy.
Lets take it logical, with common sense:

- It was already stated by gog that regional prices arent in their hands but in the publisher hands. Do you really think that the publishers will adopt/implement here on gog a fair regional pricing consisting of 1$ = 0.75€ = 0.6£ while on steam and all the rest they have 1$ = 1€ = 1£ ???
So its safe to say gog will have too an unfair regional pricing scheme (rip-off).
And when you take into consideration all the third world Eastern European countries (see bulgaria, see romania, etc) paying the same as a rich EU country this rip-off is downright grotesque. Same for all other third world countries in the world.
And while aussies have incomes pretty much the same as americans and all rich EU countries, why the fak should they pay double?

- So, we already establish that gog will have too unfair regional prices consisting of 1$ = 1€ = 1£
History repeats itself and it'll be a matter of time (sooner i'd say, not later) until people will start rightfully abusing this and we'll see disguised "gifting"procedures. Do you really think that those publishers that wanted regional pricing so bad (only because of their pure greed) will stay blindly and allow people to use vpns/gifting/whatever to circumvent their pure greed? No, what will happen is the same as it was already happened elsewhere, meaning regional blocks/locks/interdictions, discrimination, censorship etc all the (very) bad things. In fact a drm-like process, despite outside of the games per se.

I'm not saying this will lead to drm-games on gog but i'm terribly frightened about all the extremely bad things that regional pricing is bringing to the table (oh and by the way it is also a matter of time, not if but when, until most of the existing and future game catalogue on gog will become regional priced too).
Post edited February 24, 2014 by mobutu
Posted February 24, 2014
Well I hope You know what You're doing. One of the most annoying things with Steam is that they use 1$=1€ conversion - it is ridiculous. I also think that it is unfair for a richer countries to pay more but I just hope that You stick to reasonable pricing...I hope the new games will be worthy of sacrificing the low prices in some regions.
Anyway I am very against and it is not a good news at all..
Post edited February 24, 2014 by dimon55
Posted February 24, 2014
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wormholewizards: GOG just added another Dangerous Dave game to the Dangerous Dave Pack, just like they did to Pinball Gold Pack. Bet you won't find any other vendors do the same. But no, GOG is evil. They just want our money.
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Rusty_Gunn: they're not evil, they're just falling in with a bad crowd "publishers" while trying to be the "Cool kids" & forgot that's what they were already.

it's like high Scool all over again
That sounds odd for a high school. i mean it has no monsters. No crazy tainted beings to fight to stop the world from becoming good or something. No finding out you are secretly the son of the devil. No finding out you are part of a order of grim reapers and have to keep the balance between life and death in order or things will go nuts. yeah that sounds like a very odd high school.
Posted February 24, 2014
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Impaler26: It's sad to see regional pricing coming to GOG! :(

I hope the games from those "big publishers" are worth it (somewhat at least)...
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TheEnigmaticT: Divinity: Original Sin is an example of the kind of game we're talking about; it's already launched on Steam for early access with regional pricing, and it wouldn't be very fair of Larian to give our EU and UK users a better value for the game if they buy it from GOG.com later as opposed to Steam now.
Don't understand that. Why would it be unfair of Larian to give GOG customers better conditions. You could have also said: While it may not been fair that Larian gives bad conditions for the EU users (UK belongs to EU already) on Steam, at least it is fair to not do so for the GOG EU users. Or you say that it is no reason. Just remember the video where GOG explained how unfair regional pricing can be. Somebody always gets ripped off.
Posted February 24, 2014
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blotunga: And when publishers will push for DRM? Who's to say what's next? Once you're ready to give up "core values" you have no more values.
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Trilarion: The excuse of GOG (so we could get more games) is really not sufficient. Instead they should have told the full truth. Obviously there are core values and core values. Worldwide flat pricing wasn't such a big core value. They decided it wasn't so important. Basically they only have DRM free left as a single core value, which also might be dropped in the future.

If this happens I move to Steam and for the next six months I won't buy anything here to see how it develops.
I can buy absolutely every game GOG sells on a bootleg DVD here in Bangkok. I haven't done as I've loved supporting a site that sticks to its principles no matter what.

Now that it's obvious GOG doesn't have principles, and are trying to whitewash the truth by telling us all how "wonderful" it is that we'll be getting these three big games (whatever!) with regional pricing, there's not really much incentive to buy here anymore now is there.

I'll be downloading all my games over the next few weeks and then ......pretty much done here. Just like I became 'done' with GamersGate last year. Haven't bought a game there since.
Posted February 24, 2014
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RS1978: Here you can compare the regional price differences on Steam: http://www.steamprices.com/de
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silentbob1138: Thanks, that's a useful site, but my question was about how Steam prices are determined. Is every price there determined by the publisher or is $24,99=€22,99 a standard price set by Steam and publishers can opt for higher prices.
Of course the publisher ultimately sets the price for all regions. Everything else would be impractical. The interesting thing is how these publishers decide in practice usually. And usually its $1 = 1€ which is a 30-40% rip off on european customers.

I followed this on GamersGate where I saw that EU game prices are often 30-50% more espensive when converted to dollar, less often only about 20% more expensive and rarely they were equally expensive. I don't want GOG to go to such a regime but it might come.
Posted February 24, 2014
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HypersomniacLive: Three AAA games are signed up under the regional pricing model. Regional pricing is not received well, what can be done - "vote with your wallet, don't buy them". Ok then, lets do this.
The games don't sell well, how will the failure be interpreted? As a rejection of regional pricing? Or as the niche DRM-free market at GOG not being viable?
I'm inclined to think that it will be blamed on the latter, which brings up the next issue - vote with your wallet against regional pricing and it'd be interpreted as voting against DRM-free for Day-1 AAA games; protect and encourage more "DRM-free Day-1 AAA games" by abstaining from voting with your wallet against regional pricing and it'd be seen as everyone being ok with it.
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mobutu: Since other many DRM-free games are selling well on gog (otherwise gog wouldnt be so successful as it is today) you cannot blame that some games aren't selling well because of drm-free. So you would have to look at what really is the difference between them and you'll see regional pricing being the culprit.
The others games aren't Day One releases of AAA games though and are most probably bought at much cheaper prices, so a boycott of these titles could be interpreted as (a) GOG's customer base not being interested in new AAA games all that much and preferring old games and indies, (b) GOG's customer base not being interested in buying games for more than ~ $20 (with the exception of The Witcher), therefor not supporting Day One releases of AAA games and preferring to wait for sales or offers like $9.99 or $5.99 games, both of which could lead to the assessment that GOG isn't the right place for these releases and that it's not worth it to go DRM-free for such a small and particular customer base.
Post edited February 24, 2014 by Leroux
Posted February 24, 2014
Many people here disagree with this change and partially so do I, but I really have to ask, do any of you buy games on Steam or GamersGate?
Posted February 24, 2014
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Ganni1987: Many people here disagree with this change and partially so do I, but I really have to ask, do any of you buy games on Steam or GamersGate?
Nope, never.

And now I won't be buying on GOG either :)
Posted February 24, 2014
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Ganni1987: Many people here disagree with this change and partially so do I, but I really have to ask, do any of you buy games on Steam or GamersGate?
There are probably a lot of users here, me included, that also buy games on other sites.
Posted February 24, 2014
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silentbob1138: Thanks, that's a useful site, but my question was about how Steam prices are determined. Is every price there determined by the publisher or is $24,99=€22,99 a standard price set by Steam and publishers can opt for higher prices.
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Trilarion: Of course the publisher ultimately sets the price for all regions. Everything else would be impractical. The interesting thing is how these publishers decide in practice usually. And usually its $1 = 1€ which is a 30-40% rip off on european customers.
Thanks for the answer. I thought Steam might have a default conversion unless publishers set a different price. Basically like Humble now does it only with higher prices. Doesn't seem to be the case.
Posted February 24, 2014
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Niggles: Just about now GOG staffers should be into reading this massive long thread .......
I seriously doubt it. I don't think it was an accident this news was dropped on a Friday afternoon. Someone likely stuck around and read the first few but that's likely going to be it. They knew what the response was going to be (their decision to try and hide the old youtubes proves this) and so they dropped it on a Friday afternoon, let it run it's course over the weekend and lose most of it's steam, and Monday they will probably press on as if this thread never took place.

At least I'm guessing that's their plan. If the apple cart is upset more than I think it is (and that would have to come from more than this thread) then I suppose they might further engage on this subject, otherwise I don't think they will. It's a losing fight, so best not to fight it.
Posted February 24, 2014
Me and my friends mad a little Pirates of the Caribbean marathon yesterday and guess what, I could help but thought about this thread during this dialog ;)
Posted February 24, 2014
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Ganni1987: Many people here disagree with this change and partially so do I, but I really have to ask, do any of you buy games on Steam or GamersGate?
No, at least not so far. I have some games on Steam, but they were either free (Serena, Portal) or I got Steam Keys as a Kickstarter reward or with the purchase of a DRM-free version.
Pages:
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
(4041 posts)