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On March 31st we are going to discontinue the Fair Price Package program. Let us explain the reasoning behind this decision.

We came up with Fair Price Package (FPP) as a way to make up the price difference between various countries. Some games on GOG.COM have regional pricing, meaning the price of the same game in one place can be higher compared to its price in North America. In countries where the game is more expensive, we give users the equivalent of the price difference in GOG Wallet funds. In actual numbers, on average, we give users back 12% of the game price from our own pocket. In some cases, this number can reach as high as 37%.

In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller. However, we look at it, at the end of the day we are a store and need to make sure we sell games without a loss.

Removing FPP is not a decision we make lightly, but by making this change, we will be able to offer better conditions to game creators, which — in turn — will allow us to offer you more curated classic games and new releases. All DRM-free.

We wanted to make sure you have some lead time to still benefit from the Fair Price Package. The program will last until the 31st of March, 2019, so if you would like to take advantage of it, now is the time. The funds you gather from the program will keep the 12 months expiration date from the moment you’ve been granted your last funds.
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First of all, thank you for your support. This was not an easy decision to discontinue the FPP program and we're grateful to you for understanding the reasons behind it. We see that quite a few of you raised concerns about GOG's future. As a part of publicly traded company, we can't comment on any financial results until they are officially reported, but we want to ensure you everything is good with GOG. Being part of a big gaming company, some reports - especially some given by significant media outlets - can often sound much scarier than reality.

You've been also concerned about your access to the games you’ve purchased on GOG. We've covered this topic years ago and it's been in our User Agreement for a long time (please check the section 17.3). This is not only a legal obligation to you but a core part of our ethics as a company.

But don’t worry, all is good, and we have a great plan for the future of GOG. We can’t wait for you to see some of the exciting things we have coming very soon.

EDIT: pinned
Post edited February 26, 2019 by elcook
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HertogJan: You never owned a game, just like you never own a record or movie. You own the license for a copy of it and you own the fysical item that's carrying it.
If you owned it, you could make more copies and sell it legally.
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SPTX: That's pretty much what I explained. It's a play of words. Of course when you buy a Ferrrari you don't own the name Ferrari, that would be bonkers, but you can't say you don't own a Ferrari and that would be silly to be legally bound to call it nothing else but a car. And you can do pretty much whatever you want with it except reproduce/sell patented material.

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HertogJan: They're actually legal and binding in the US and perhaps in some other countries as well.
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SPTX: You're sure about that?
https://www.lawdepot.com/blog/what-makes-a-contract-invalid/

A void contract is null from the moment it was created and neither party is bound by the terms. Think of it as one that a court would never recognize or enforce because there are missing elements.
A contract can be void for the following reasons:
-The terms of the agreement are illegal or against public policy (unlawful consideration or object)
-A party was not of sound mind while signing the agreement
-A party was under the age of consent
-The terms are impossible
-The contract restricts the rights of a party
Alternatively, a voidable contract is valid and may be enforceable in certain situations if both parties agree to move forward. One party is bound to the terms of the contract, whereas the other party can oppose the contract for legal reasons if they so choose. Therefore if the unbound party rejects the contract, it becomes voidable.
A contract can become voidable under the following circumstances:
-A party was coerced or threatened into signing the agreement
-A party was under undue influence (one party is able to dominate the will of another)
-A party is not of sound mind or mentally competent (minor or mentally ill)

-The terms of the contract were breached
-Mutual mistakes on behalf of both parties
-The contract is fraudulent (omitting or falsifying facts or information, or the intention to not carry out the promise in the contract)
-Misrepresentation occurs (a false statement of fact)
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SPTX: I'd like to have a case of an EULA being disputed and settled in favour of the publisher before we can claim they are legal in the US. You know, a precedent.

And nevermind that the EULA is never actually signed. That alone speaks volumes.
when you click on the agree button, it usually means you agreed to said eula before installing the game

funny how people have this illusion that just because back in the good ol retail disk day devs and publishers couldnt realistically stop you from using their software in other ways than it was outlined in their Tos (you know that wall of text softwares asked you to agree before installing it anf what nobody ever reads) that it meant you owned the game.

You didnt, you merely owned a license to use it and nowadays devs and publishers finally have means to enforce said Terms of Service which naturally caused outrage.

very ironic in my opinion tho

people will vote with their wallet toward the service they prefer and like it or not, digital distribution is a much easier and convenient way for many of us to play our games compared to retails. You might not necessarily care about the features those services offer compared to retail ones but many of us do.

Btw many indie games still release in physical packages with disks and all that if you are so insisting on those


Bottomline is: at the end of the day its the customers who give their money to the companies and not the other way round
Post edited February 28, 2019 by Zetikla
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CyrusTheGreat: Some may argue even you have offline installers, the game may not run in future generation of OS or system. Yeah, that may be true but that's will be one problem to be fixed or to have workaround in future.
I fully expect that in a century's time, someone will have made a Windows 10 emulator that runs on those future machines. I would be very surprised that if that didn't happen.
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Reglisse: So only the DRM free thing is better than Steam now?
And I get 10% off from Humble for Steam keys + Steam is Linux friendly.
Should I continue to support GOG?
I bought some games twice because no Linux support here...
I'm sad now T_T
It's the end?
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hummer010: The choice.
That's pretty easy for me since I don't care for linux nor game on one but want drm free games, the choice is gog. However if there are exclusive games on steam that I wanna play, that then becomes a different story......and depending on how badly I wanna play it and other factors like how many layers of drm I need to go through just to finally play the damn game.........

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DoomSooth: If they did then someone else or you still would have said there isn't enough notice. Certain people always seem to think the sky is falling. Someone's always complaining about something. I complain about the complainers, mostly. :)
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Breja: You misunderstood entirely. I'm not talkign about how long a notice they gave us, I'm talking about this announcement coinciding with the press news about GOG being "in trouble" and a wave of panicked threads on the forum. It's bad timing becuase this news gives credence to all the negative rumors, thereby putting GOG in an even worse situation. Regardless of what the truth is, in light of the recent headlines this OP basically reads "yes, you heard right, we are fucked", at least on the internet where everything is short attention span and hyperbole.

The sound PR decision would be to postpone the announcement at least a little, get on top of the rumors with some actual good news for once (some impressive new release, fix the website, bring new dev/publisher on board, anything), and only announce this once some confidence in GOG has been restored.
...wait what's this about them going down under?? This is news to me.....
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Zoidberg: It is as illegal.
So you'll not use VPN to buy at whatever region price you desire because "it's illegal" but instead you'll pirate by downloading torrent copies?
Logic just took a big smash-hit in the teeth
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Zoidberg: It is as illegal.
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mobutu: So you'll not use VPN to buy at whatever region price you desire because "it's illegal" but instead you'll pirate by downloading torrent copies?
Logic just took a big smash-hit in the teeth
It is as illegal... and thus if it's the same I'd rather express my disagreement by not pay money...

Doesn't need to seem logical to you really, I really couldn't care less about what you guys think about it.
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CyrusTheGreat: Some may argue even you have offline installers, the game may not run in future generation of OS or system. Yeah, that may be true but that's will be one problem to be fixed or to have workaround in future.
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Inicus: I fully expect that in a century's time, someone will have made a Windows 10 emulator that runs on those future machines. I would be very surprised that if that didn't happen.
Exactly, or whatever workaround . But if the software itself has any more store-dependent mechanism, I believe there will one more issue they need to resolve if people want to get it running.

Anyway, I hope GOG will do well and I will buy games here as long as the game is sold here.
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Zoidberg: It is as illegal.
So is discrimination, too bad those laws are rarely enforced.

Imagine going to a GameStop and having your price calculated after you show them the nationality on your ID.
Do the same online and nobody bats an eye.

I agree with you though that you should rather not support such measures with any money at all, which is why I'll take an even closer look at the publisher tag now since GOG's curation didn't care about that anymore for years now, which is the really sad thing.
The FPP was a nice gesture but accepting regional pricing was the wrong approach in the first place.
Post edited February 28, 2019 by Klumpen0815
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Klumpen0815: The FPP was a nice gesture but accepting regional pricing was the wrong approach in the first place.
True. But if GOG were bigger then they would have enough power to actually negotiate better prices. Still, EU should have made it illegal for publishers to instigate regional pricing in the first place.
Post edited February 28, 2019 by sanscript
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skirtish: I understand your points and think you're absolutely right in pursuing them if they are that important to you, I just wish you would keep the sort of insulting rhetoric down, implying others who don't share your preferences are somehow unfit customers. As you have correctly established, we just have different priorities here.
When those priorities clash and they refer to the same thing, you can't agree to disagree, live and let live and so on. Support in one direction removes the chance of the other. Difference being that I demand more rights and care for customers, in more areas, and you're willing to put up with whatever.
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Cavalary: what if what a game is worth to me includes it not being sold [...] for more than its base price?
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skirtish: I'm sorry, but could you clarify this? I don't understand what you mean.
Exactly what's going on. Ideally have a single price for all for the same product purchased from the same place, less ideally because there's no way to do it fairly but I guess tolerably have discounts for some poorer countries (never asked for any for mine, mind you, though for example the average wage here is about the same as that in Russia now I see, and they get a 70% discount in general, and let's not even talk of my earnings personally...) but have a single price for all the rest, not higher prices for some.
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Klumpen0815: Imagine going to a GameStop and having your price calculated after you show them the nationality on your ID.
Do the same online and nobody bats an eye.
Hear, hear.
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Inicus: So how do you compete with Steam? Others have made their big, tentpole releases exclusive to their platform (e.g. Origin). I'm kind of surprised that Witcher 3 was not exclusive to GOG, and maybe that's something CD Projekt should consider for Cyberpunk 2077. Of course, that alone won't magically make GOG as popular as Steam. But it might bring to GOG some lazy people who never even checked if there are alternatives to Steam. There is certainly a lot of hype for Cyberpunk 2077. Just a thought.
They tried that with Thronebreaker and then quickly put it on Steam too because CDP was very unhappy with the sales... Could work if they would do it just to attract some people, a very long game, giving up on the sales goals, but CDP won't work because they just want the money, hence GOG's situation.
Post edited February 28, 2019 by Cavalary
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Erynar: It does seem kind of hypocritical to allow 18+ content with games like The Witcher 3 and not allow 18+ visual novels
Witcher isn't an 18+ game. If it were, then it would be rated AO for Adults Only, which it's not. Rather, it's rated M for Mature 17+.

GOG doesn't allow AO games unless they have been censored first before being sold on GOG.

So GOG's policy is consistent. It's not a good policy, but it is consistent.
Post edited February 28, 2019 by Ancient-Red-Dragon
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Erynar: It does seem kind of hypocritical to allow 18+ content with games like The Witcher 3 and not allow 18+ visual novels
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Ancient-Red-Dragon: Witcher isn't an 18+ game. If it were, then it would be rated AO for Adults Only, which it's not. Rather, it's rated M for Mature 17+.
That's not what the game card says:

"Rating:
PEGI Rating: 18+ (Bad Language, Violence)"
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Ancient-Red-Dragon: GOG doesn't allow AO games unless they have been censored first before being sold on GOG.

So GOG's policy is consistent. It's not a good policy, but it is consistent.
Could you please say that again? Wasn't one of GOG's own policies, to "Offer Uncensored games whenever possible"? And they even marked the relative wishlist entry, "in progress", years ago?

Regional Pricing/other policies being dropped is one thing, completely fooling the customers ever since the beginning is another!

Can somebody please verify/confirm?
Post edited February 28, 2019 by KiNgBrAdLeY7
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skirtish: I understand your points and think you're absolutely right in pursuing them if they are that important to you, I just wish you would keep the sort of insulting rhetoric down, implying others who don't share your preferences are somehow unfit customers. As you have correctly established, we just have different priorities here.
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Cavalary: When those priorities clash and they refer to the same thing, you can't agree to disagree, live and let live and so on. Support in one direction removes the chance of the other. Difference being that I demand more rights and care for customers, in more areas, and you're willing to put up with whatever.
Yeah, you demand "rights" that I don't want and are thereby campaigning to deprive me of some games that you deem unnecessary, demanding that GOG doesn't carry games that don't meet your criteria. You're effectively trying to dictate which games I should be allowed to buy on here. I play very little and buy maybe one game every two months. It is far, far more important to me to have a bigger selection of games and I'm far more willing to spend a larger amount of money to get a game I really want than have my game of choice not be available. This doesn't make me unprincipled or a lesser customer than you. I just have different priorities. The significant difference between us is that I'm not trying to insult you for yours.

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skirtish: I'm sorry, but could you clarify this? I don't understand what you mean.
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Cavalary: Ideally have a single price for all for the same product purchased from the same place, less ideally because there's no way to do it fairly but I guess tolerably have discounts for some poorer countries but have a single price for all the rest, not higher prices for some.
How does this relate to what I said? My position is that you should decide how much money a game is worth to you and that you should buy it only if its price is less or equal, and let me do the same. You're not replying to that but instead repeating that you just don't want to let me do it.

I'm fairly certain that lots of people in the low-price regions are financially better off than me. I, too, am not representative of the general average economic prosperity of my country as I choose a minimal lifestyle. I cope. I buy games that are worth their price to me considering what I have available. Sometimes that would be even more than they cost in higher-priced regions. But I certainly don't demand no one should be allowed access to games that I deem not meeting my requirements.

You are valuing your own principles higher than mine, you're dismissing mine, and you're being overbearing and insulting over it.
At least stop the Russian discount too!
Post edited February 28, 2019 by Klumpen0815
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eiii: Sure, at least you still can be proud of your DRM-free game even when it crashes on start because the GOG achievement server is not available anymore and the "lazy" developers you forced to add GOG specific features to their game have "forgotten" to test if the game still runs when those servers are not available anymore. ;)
That quoted post is baseless fear-mongering. Under no circumstances would that ever possibly happen.

Just because you personally hate Achievements, it doesn't change the fact that - as the person you are replying to pointed out - there is no excuse for devs to treat GOG customers like second-class citizens by removing features like Achievements from the GOG version, even though the Steam version has them.
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PixelBoy: That's not what the game card says:

"Rating:
PEGI Rating: 18+ (Bad Language, Violence)"
Why are you using PEGI though? The ESRB rating is clearly not Adults Only, therefore it's not an 18+ game.
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KiNgBrAdLeY7: Could you please say that again? Wasn't one of GOG's own policies, to "Offer Uncensored games whenever possible"?
I don't know; was it?

In any case, their policy now is not to allow uncensored AO games, and that's been consistent for quite a while, i.e. they censor HuniePop, and VNs, and refused to allow Agony Unrated onto GOG because it's an AO game, etc.
Post edited February 28, 2019 by Ancient-Red-Dragon