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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 21, 2014
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Darvond: Screw them then, especially for not revealing themselves in the first place.
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skeletonbow: snippity
I agree on the general sentiment, but you are presenting a false dichotomy. It's not either a) you just/mostly care about DRM and b) you just/mostly care about regional pricing.

There's a lot of people here who care about BOTH DRM-free games *and* regional pricing, me included. As I said on my post, I can tolerate it and reading most of the comments it seems like most other people can tolerate it too. And yes we can vote with our wallet and not buy regionally priced games or leave GOG entirely, that doesn't mean we can't comment here that we don't appreciate this development in particular and that we don't have a valid point.

I mean seriously, no regional pricing was one of GOG's key features!! You can't think we'll just see "some loud noise over unexpected change by a vocal minority."
Posted February 21, 2014
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PaladinWay: First online gaming store I bought from was Impulse. I like Stardock's attitude and they made any DRM in the game abundantly clear and I avoided buying any games with DRM but bought the games without. GameStop bought them and I saw them be "lazier" about the DRM indicator on newer games I knew had DRM, so I stopped buying anything there.
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Pheace: Gamestop didn't buy Stardock btw. Stardock sold Impulse to them because they wanted to focus just on game development and the store was taking too much attention (and interfering with their sales tactics no doubt).

But yeah, they've gone from their low DRM stance (key to get patches is hardly DRM-free) to supporting Steam over time.
Yes, poor statement on my part. Stardock sold the Impulse part of their business and is still definitely a separate company.

My issue with DRM is that it's basically malicious code being installed on my computer (Sony's DRM attempt with their audio CD's is even properly called the "Sony rootkit"). I don't mind an attempt to make life easier for legitimate customers and not make it take more work for pirates. To me, that's what Stardock did. The lack of extra code in their games but updates only coming through their online-verified store (or updating on your own from your pirate site, I suppose) was 100% fine with me.

But yeah, with the Steam thing I don't buy from them any more and haven't even redeemed my Fallen Enchantress game that I get free due to that stance of theirs making me lose interest in their products. If Valve modifies their EULA enough that I agree to it (or Microsoft continues their TPM madness enough that I consider SteamOS the sufficiently lesser evil and agree to their EULA), then I'll at least grab what I've already got free. Not sure I'll ever buy from them again, though.
Posted February 21, 2014
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MaceyNeil:
I seldom buy games directly from Steam (because of the pricing). As for their TOS, until it effectively doesn't prevents me from playing my games, it's not hurting me in any way. Yes customer support is crap and I know that I don't really "own" my games, but hey, at least they were cheap (bundles).
But I'm getting off topic here...
Post edited February 21, 2014 by blotunga
Posted February 21, 2014
Back when GOG was forced to implement regional pricing for The Witcher 2 they stated that Geo-IP is a flawed system for determining a user's location and that they were only using this system because of court orders. If they haven't changed their minds about IP geolocation, wouldn't the only alternative be to now require a customer's physical address, as verified via credit card information, PayPal, ...?
Posted February 21, 2014
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Paul_cz: snip

Not to mention how incredibly patient and open Enigmatic is....when other websites/stores implement changes like that, do you ever see them on forums speaking with customers in such a detail ? Because I never saw that.

snip
Eh, are we reading the same thread here? One of the reasons this has caused so much uproar is the lack of full planning, the lack of details, the lack of clarity where this is heading.

And yes, they deserve credit for the positive things they've done (and no one has denied it them), but this is a different case and not comparable to 2012 expansion (I'll be back on that and a question for TET).
Posted February 21, 2014
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Marcomies: I have always liked and supported GOG and I can understand, if not appreciate, you willingness to change you principles to make more money by getting bigger release titles at your site. If these changes truly only affect new big publisher games that could not have made it to GOG catalog otherwise, I can definitely live with it and maybe even buy some of them here for the sake of DRM freeness. In that case most of our fears would have proven wrong but can you really answer all these questions now to prove our worries to be unnecessary:

Can you promise that only new, big publisher releases of new games will be affected by regional stuff?

Can you promise that Europeans will not pay 9.99€ for the same old games that Americans pay 9.99$ for. That anyone can pay in whatever currency he/she wants to if the game is not one of these "regionally priced" ones?

Can you promise that you won't start distributing different version of games for different regions, providing certain games only for some regions and region locking gift codes or installers?

Can you promise that every game (big, small, old, new...) from now on won't be released with regional prices and you just raise your hands in the air and tell it's out of your hands?

Can you promise that GOG will never accept any game with any sort of DRM into its catalog for any reason?

If you can give solid promises on these issues without any lawyer/politician-talk, then I promise I will stop worrying about the future of gog and will gladly throw my money at you as I have done for the last four years.

ps. For the sake of mutual respect between you and your customers, don't try to feed us shit and call it candy, even if you honestly think that it's particularly good shit. The message I quoted here was the message you should have posted on the news, not the one about "Good news!" and "more good news!". I don't appreciate it when I'm being talked to like some media-illiterate toddler and I doubt anyone else here does either.
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Wishbone: Fantastic post! Quoted in full for extra visibility.
Probably sums up my questions as well. If we got some sort of definite answer from TeT would be fantastic :)
Posted February 21, 2014
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TheEnigmaticT: I understand that this change...
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Marcomies: I have always liked and supported GOG and I can understand, if not appreciate, you willingness to change you principles to make more money by getting bigger release titles at your site. If these changes truly only affect new big publisher games that could not have made it to GOG catalog otherwise, I can definitely live with it and maybe even buy some of them here for the sake of DRM freeness. In that case most of our fears would have proven wrong but can you really answer all these questions now to prove our worries to be unnecessary:

Can you promise that only new, big publisher releases of new games will be affected by regional stuff?

Can you promise that Europeans will not pay 9.99€ for the same old games that Americans pay 9.99$ for. That anyone can pay in whatever currency he/she wants to if the game is not one of these "regionally priced" ones?

Can you promise that you won't start distributing different version of games for different regions, providing certain games only for some regions and region locking gift codes or installers?

Can you promise that every game (big, small, old, new...) from now on won't be released with regional prices and you just raise your hands in the air and tell it's out of your hands?

Can you promise that GOG will never accept any game with any sort of DRM into its catalog for any reason?

If you can give solid promises on these issues without any lawyer/politician-talk, then I promise I will stop worrying about the future of gog and will gladly throw my money at you as I have done for the last four years.

ps. For the sake of mutual respect between you and your customers, don't try to feed us shit and call it candy, even if you honestly think that it's particularly good shit. The message I quoted here was the message you should have posted on the news, not the one about "Good news!" and "more good news!". I don't appreciate it when I'm being talked to like some media-illiterate toddler and I doubt anyone else here does either.
Agreed. I like to see the top level post modified with these questions answered in very clear language. That or a new top-level post.

Also agreed that instead of "Good news!" it should've been "We've got some things we think most of you will consider good news (new big games) and a few things some of you will consider bad (less than 100% of the terms we wanted on those games). Read on for the particulars."
Posted February 21, 2014
Well, this sounds like bad news.

When I joined, there were five things that GOG advertized:

1) Dedicated to bringing old games to new platforms
2) Games always being patched latest official versions
3) No regional pricing
4) Set price points of $0, $5.99 and $9.99
5) DRM-free

Now, many games are not patched to latest versions (instead, you need to download a separate patch or there is only an older version available), there are more new game releases than old game releases, games can have any price and now the regional pricing comes in.

What is left is DRM-free... but for how long?


I am not saying that all changes have been bad. In fact, I personally voted for more flexible pricing and newer games. But when I did, I was under the impression that those were just extra services which would not distract GOG from its principles.


I personally would rather see GOG keeping worldwide prices and finding new kind of, unexplored business opportunitues, such as selling C64, Amiga, Atari ST games etc. Or offering multiplayer servers for a monthly fee for older games. Or something.

Giving in to regional pricing seems like a bad move, because...
1) it means that publishers wishes outweigh those of players and community
2) being in a country where I will end up paying more for the same product (or if regional content comes in, possibly inferior product), I feel like forced to being a cashcow.


Of course, DotEmu has regional prices too and I buy games from them too, but with this move GOG will end up being the preferred game store for me.

Too bad. After GOG started to offer FLAC files just recently, I thought they had really moved to another level in terms of customer friendliness. Apparently, that was not the case.
Posted February 21, 2014
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GOG.com: we're launching soon with regional pricing--two RPGs and a strategy game
2RPGs + 1 strategy game = Fallout 1/2 + Tactics = Bethesduh confirmed!
Posted February 21, 2014
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Telika: Not sure. It's not too bad to be warned about it a bit in advance - even though we can't do a thing about it.

"SINCE WHEN DID YOU KNOW ABOUT IT AND NEVER EVER EVEN HINTED AT IT ?"
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Wishbone: That is certainly an issue, but I doubt they would be ignorant of the details right up until the day it launched. If the actual implementation is a month away, they could easily have waited a week if that meant they could actually tell us something useful when they made the announcement.
I can tell you about the deals that we currently have signed--well, I could except for the fact that we have NDAs in place--but I can't tell you what will happen after GOG.com goes to the largest professional game developer conference in the Western hemisphere in 6 weeks' time and talks to all of the partners who have given us the brush off for a variety of reasons in the past.

As such, anything I say now is rather speculative. But we will be launching a game with regional pricing before we go to GDC. So we can either announce this with as much notice as we can give so you so that the game doesn't show up as a surprise, or we can tell you what we know now and talk it out with you guys.

It's pretty evident which way the management team went with this one.
Posted February 21, 2014
I be willing to be the two RPGs are Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. As far as the strategy game goes......I have no idea. Either way it'll be a fun time I'm sure.
Posted February 21, 2014
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donsanderson: Whatever happened to simple the "Don't like it, don't buy it principle"?

Jeez TET, I hope you got hazard pay, or at least a good bottle of something strong to have to do this. ;/

Folks, the way to approve/disapprove of a companies offerings is with your wallet.
Not by having a fricking riot!
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Elenarie: When you use PC MASTER RACE shit on the official social media channels, you should be prepared to have that PC MASTER RACE throw shit at you.
I honestly have no idea what you're talking about here.
Posted February 21, 2014
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whodares2: I be willing to be the two RPGs are Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. As far as the strategy game goes......I have no idea. Either way it'll be a fun time I'm sure.
Why would CD PROJEKT RED need to region price their own games, or even have a NDA? Not to mention as I understood, Cyberunk is still a fair ways away.
Post edited February 21, 2014 by Darvond
Posted February 21, 2014
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Elenarie: When you use PC MASTER RACE shit on the official social media channels, you should be prepared to have that PC MASTER RACE throw shit at you.
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TheEnigmaticT: I honestly have no idea what you're talking about here.
https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/344370937417826304 maybe?
Posted February 21, 2014
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TheEnigmaticT: As such, anything I say now is rather speculative. But we will be launching a game with regional pricing before we go to GDC. So we can either announce this with as much notice as we can give so you so that the game doesn't show up as a surprise, or we can tell you what we know now and talk it out with you guys.
Fair enough.

I know you probably don't have the authority to do so right now on your own, but would you please direct your management to this post, and have them answer those questions at their earliest convenience?
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
(4041 posts)