Not quite. Let's take We happy Few Deluxe Edition.

US price is: $79.99
My price is: €84.99

€84.99 = $96.72

That $13.73 difference. Average monthly salary in my country is €835.22 (my salary is about €500). Yea, fuck that. That difference is a lot to me.

Only one that I know of that benefit from regional pricing is Russia.

Well that sucks. Now games which are unfairly priced by greedy publishers will cost me 13.5% more. Definitely will affect how much I buy here.

Let's hope there is at least some upside to it (like more games).

Wow. I'm speechless. Alright then.

The fault primarily lies with the developers and publishers that set the regional prices to begin with (That and any price differences that arise from taxes, where that applies). Trying to make up for the pricing difference seems like it would only encourage companies to continue that practice or possible even abuse it, basically taking away money from GOG. It's a very maladaptive solution and I'm not sad to see it go. I don't see how it could have ever been tenable and I don't understand why GOG even tried it. The situation being really unfair to poor European countries (among many others) doesn't change the fact that this program had a low chance of working out. Like, I get it, I'm Romanian, the situation sucks.

Artoemius, earlier in this thread essentially said that the proper solution was for GOG to not allow regional pricing on their platform at all to begin with. That's definitely one thing to be disappointed at GOG about, but it's difficult to tell how many companies wouldn't sell on GOG if that policy existed. I would prefer a world where those companies don't show their face on GOG because I'd rather buy from companies with pricing policies that aren't toxic.

Overall, I don't think the end of this policy should change anyone's opinion on GOG much? But it's pretty understandable if you benefited from the lower prices and will try to shop elsewhere.

It is as illegal. And also, it's putting the issue under the rug, which I don't want to do.

Keep in mind this was never THEIR problem, but something that was required of them from publishers!

Putting themselves on the line and giving the money back THEMSELVES was too nice of them.

Please direct your ire to the ones responsible.

I don't think this is how it works.

If I'm reading what they're doing correctly, it's basically a 'code-free' version of the current gift/redeem system. Once the game has been added to your account, it's entirely out of the third party seller's hands and equal to any other purchase made on GOG. At no point do they ever have direct access to your account.

I imagine this is so that select sites like e.g. Humble can offer GOG games directly without having to go through gift codes.

Sorry but it was never "stolen from us" as we never had the ownership of our games.

Check your manuals from games sold in the 80s/90s.

Does the word "intel" have an association with Mass Effect, or is that a random guess? I do maintain that getting ME 1 here is a possibility because - like Dragon Age Origins, Dead Space, Spore, SimCity 4, etc. - they are pre-Origin games still on Steam.

That'd be sweet too of course. But I wonder if GOG would want to have a Steam Workshop-like service running first, since - unless I'm mistaken - Skyrim and Workshop have a bit of a connection because of all the mods Skyrim has.

VAT has nothing to do with it, and that has been established long ago. Some publishers tried to use it as the justification but it doesn't hold water, and even if it did you can take it as the cost of doing business in the EU, same as apparently the cost of doing business with digital stuff in Russia is giving them a 70% discount. And for example Australia also has tax on digital content, but while other stores tend to have massive price hikes for AU, way more than the tax by the way, GOG for most games has discounts for AU, though, again, there is the tax, and they're definitely not poor.
For the EU it's just that ever since digital distribution became a thing, before GOG even launched, somebody apparently decided that 1 EUR = 1 USD and that became the norm, and one thing GOG specifically and firmly fought against... until they no longer did. So when the Euro was 24% stronger the price was 24% higher, when it was 8% stronger it was 8% higher, it didn't matter whether the VAT was paid according to the rate in the seller's country and everyone (GOG included) moved financial headquarters to Cyprus to have 15-19% (grew over the years), didn't matter whether after a certain point it was paid according to the buyer's country and therefore varied between 18% and 27%, the regional pricing model was the same, at least all Eurozone countries got charged as if 1 EUR = 1 USD. The only difference came recently, after the decision to ban price differences within the EU, which actually specifically excludes digital content but publishers took it as the opportunity not to align EU prices to US ones, but to align all European prices to the higher Eurozone ones, so even the poor non-Euro countries, and even non-EU countries (Serbia and Montenegro), get charged as if 1 EUR = 1 USD.
Again, there's no justification that holds water other than the fact that they can get away with it.

Five years ago, people at least weren't willing to let GOG get away with it. That's literally the first paragraph in their response to the mess, which brought the FPP: "We're not perfect, we're exploring new frontiers, and we make mistakes. We thought DRM-Free was so important that you'd prefer we bring you more DRM-Free games and Fair Price was less critical and that it could be sacrificed in some cases. The last two week's worth of comments in our forums (nearly 10k!), show that's not the case. We didn’t listen and we let you down. We shouldn't sacrifice one of our core values in an attempt to advance another. We feel bad about that, and we're sorry. Us being sorry is not of much use to you, so let’s talk about how we will fix it."
Now, however, it seems that users do let them get away with it. People just more and more willing to allow themselves to be pissed on in more and more ways, and less and less willing to show solidarity with others, fighting for something because others are negatively affected even if they may not necessarily be, personally.

The FPP applied ONLY to those paying MORE than the USA price, which as was pointed out includes poorer EU countries or even non-EU countries, like Serbia and Montenegro. Nothing will change for anyone paying the same or less (so those paying less will still get the same discounts too).

And since that ad was posted already but that presentation not yet, here it is too:
First (longer piece, quoting the end of it), they even named two publishers they gave up on specifically because they demanded regional pricing and, to quote them: “If there is a backbone of your business and you change it, you are destroying your business. It will come in time, maybe today you will make a fast dollar, but afterwards you will deeply regret it. That’s how we see that.” And later in that same talk: “The moment we will betray our values, the whole GOG will explode and that’s the end of it.”
Oh, and the end of another older commercial, about new games: "You'll release them with goodies?" *nods* "And no DRM?" *nods* "And fair prices for all?" "But of course!" Heh...

Off topic , but i'm waiting for a reply for this : https://www.gog.com/forum/general/questions_to_the_owners_employees_of_gog/post31

...depending on how the story telling is....and the urm....overall difficulty of the game, whether it is literally press this button to win(Or even easier a walking sim game where all you do is just walk and you win by walking(or sprinting if the game lets you if you prefer a faster pace game....) to the end of the game....), or dark souls masochist level (ps - I hate that game with a passion! hahaha), I wouldn't mind a turn-based survival horror RPG.....otherwise yes, you do have a point......survival horror games are meant to be fast pace action and turn-base only goes well with RPGs that have a strong storyline......and in a fantasy/open world setting......or strategy type - so that it's not longer a RTS classified........though others may beg to differ....

Don't tell me, you've finally convinced EA to release C&C here?

I think it would be good to clearly say how much price which we see is _base price_ and how much of it is "mandatory extra" imposed by dev for given region. For sure it is unfair to expect that you cover all difference.... but ultimately it is unfair that there is a difference at all (when I can understand concept of lower price for certain region I am unable to understand what moral guidance was needed to allow higher price).
Ultimately if we do not see dev greed we cannot fight with it. So let us see the greed.

Would still want to see games marked according to pricing. Now it was argued that if a label stating that a game has price hikes would be negative and drive publishers away (well, that's their own darn fault now, isn't it?), maybe a positive label, one for flat-priced (still a handful of those), one for discounts for poorer countries only (I guess they could throw marketing on it and label that as "fair-priced", though I'd protest against the term, since there are many poor countries not covered and poor people even in wealthier countries), and if you see neither listed you know somebody's getting screwed.