Sorry, but that is really not the reason (or not most of the reason anyway) for regional pricing. The real reason of price discrimination is simply that they can and that they maximize profits. That's all.

The operating costs of GOG surely depend only to a minor fraction on the location of the customer. After all it is an internet business. Likewise taxes are different, but not that much different to explain Russia having 5 times lower prices than Australia (just a guess, not sure about the exact number).

Just take out regional effects of taxes and operational costs and you still get a huge spread in regional pricing. And the reason is just economical, maximizing profits. There is really nothing else.

They have regional prices because they can, not because they want to make it fair for anyone. They are only maximizing their profits, whether this is a fair price or not doesn't bother them at all. (It's not very fair IMHO.)

Region locking or censoring is something else though. It may very well depend on local laws. The rationale behind is that GOG surely would like to offer as many games as possible, so if it can't, there must be some legal obstacle one way or the other.

I am %100 fine with MP only or MP components of games to require Galaxy to run.

There is no way though I will buy CP77 if it requires galaxy to run. Just to Download? ok. fine. Don't like that either but meh.

and I like galaxy and each time I play gog game i do it through the program. I like the achievements, the save cloud, the time tracking. All require the net. but this is my choice.

I came here in 2008 cause of old games and promise that they will work no matter what, on new system but also that i could download it on different computer and then install it on mine without need to activate it.
If this changes for SP games, I am out.

I agree 100% with this.

MP only games on GOG should either have a direct connect support without the client or the client should get the ability to establish MP-matches with other Galaxy-clients that are on the same LAN even if that is not connected to the outside world. In essence, GOG would need to make their client as independent of their service as the game installers are.

As for requiring the client for single player, there is no way I would buy any such game here or anywhere else as while I might be willing to let the MP portion to be dependent on the compatibility layer that a properly done DRM-free client could provide, SP games do not benefit anything by having yet another failure point added to them.

+1

You people shouldn't be so willing to accept DRM in multi-player.
Unlike the common belief here, most multi-player on GOG is actually still DRM-free, but the Galaxy dependent list is growing and too few people care about it.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/lists_games_that_need_galaxy_for_multiplayer_and_the_ones_that_dont

You raise some valid points concerning multiplayer and DRM-free.
But let me share my views on the issue of MP and why I don't bother if Galaxy is used for multiplayer. Because I suspect many people here share my views and so you probably can glimpse why we think like this.

Back when I started gaming, multiplayer was 2 guys playing a game on the same PC. Some years later it was several people playing games on several PCs connected by LAN.
Then the age of internet appeared.

Now me, I very rarely play MP games. I don't play MMORPGs and I don't play online shooters. GWENT is the only MMO game that I play, mostly because I enjoyed Magic the Gathering and I find the Witcher universe funny.
In fact 99% of my gaming hours were spent playing offline games.

I never created a Steam account because I didn't want to feel forced to connect online in order to be able to play an offline single-player game. I only play GWENT because it's a free game. If I had to pay/buy the game in order to play it, then there's no way I'd be playing it now.
For me serious gaming is a solitary experience. It's been so for more than 30 years and I suspect it'll remain as such.

If people want to play online games they have to be connected to the internet. Hence, I don't see what's the problem in using an internet-based client in order to play the game.

If Cyberpunk 2077 turns out be some sort of co-op/MMO crap (like many trash released recently) I understand that it could require Galaxy to run it. I wouldn'y buy the game, for sure, but I would understand CDP's decision. If it's a multiplayer-based game, then let it run on a MP client. Again it's not on my interest to buy online-only games so I woudn't bother about it.

On the other hand, if C2077 has a singleplayer campaign, and it requires the Galaxy Client to install and run, then GOG are sure to loose one of their oldest and best customers.
I repeat what I've written so many times before: GOG has only thrived thus far because they're an alternative. If they ever decide to turn into Steam2.0 then their busineess is doomed.

Bottom line is: I want my singleplayer experience to remain 100% offline when and if I want it. Sure - I may want achievements, cloud saves and hour count (which I do have, since I use Galaxy) - but that's a decision I want to make. Not GOG making it for me.

Sorry for the wall of text.

A) the game is dead/worthless as soon as the service provider / third party ceases to exist or deems it not worth providing it anymore, popular example: https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/vyWpoM6CBIe6FjW8NIY7bvzOrgBURhzw
B) the provider may change policies and introduce payments for previously free things and/or
C) make contracts with shady data-mining corporations (although that most likely happened from the start)

B+C might happen, A definitely will happen at some point with absolute certainty.

Now if you give players the option to easily make their own servers or play via LAN (which can also be utilized for playing online), the game may hibernate at some point but it will stay alive and you can still get a bunch of people together in 20 years to play it.

Absolute dependency on external services is always a bad idea from the player's perspective but necessary for data-mining and in-game purchases.

As everyone is likely aware, CP2077 will be both a single and multi-player game. It seems pretty reasonable to make the assumption that the multi-player portion of the game will be implemented using the GOG Galaxy multi-player platform and most likely include cross-play with people who buy the game on Steam or other services, if for no other reason than it would be pretty embarrassing and a complete lack of confidence in their own multi-player back end to try to convince all kinds of other companies to use it and trust their solution if they don't eat their own dogfood and use it in their own games. (Pedants: Where by "their", I mean CDP S.A. corporate hierarchy.)

If anything, it would be a shocking surprise for them to _not_ use Galaxy for the multi-player matchmaking back-end.

This conversation thus as far as I can tell isn't about multi-player but rather about the single-player game. I can't see any reason why:

1) GOG would make Galaxy mandatory for single-player.
2) Why anyone would think that they would, other than paranoia that will never be satiated.

They might do the "include Galaxy in the standalone installers" thing of course as they've decided to do that already, but unless someone wants to play a single player game *and* get the Galaxy specific features like achievements, game time tracking, in game overlay with chat and other future Galaxy features, there shouldn't be any reason why one should need to have Galaxy.

Not to mention the absolute massive public noise, loss of trust, and exodus that would happen if they ever did enact one of the paranoid scenarios.

In short, I'm not at all even remotely slightly worried about single player CP2077 *requiring* Galaxy. Or any other game for that matter, unless some future game from CDP or some other publisher happens to be multi-player only and they decide to implement it on the Galaxy platform and sell it here, in which case it'd be a completely different ball of wax as the multi-player would be no different than many other games already here, there just wouldn't be a single player. But then that's not CP2077 I'm talking about anymore so ...

Cross that bridge if and when the time comes.


P.S. oooh, I just thought of something after I posted... :) They could simply redefine the acronym DRM to mean something else. Like "Direct Rendering Manager" (the name of the tech the 3D drivers are built upon in Linux). In which case they could say "Oh, we always meant that DRM-free means Direct Rendering Manager free. It was our way of saying we don't reeeaaallly support games or Galaxy on Linux." :)

Although I also doubt that CP2077 will have galaxy required for single player I do disagree with crossing that bridge when the time comes, because that is usually to late, in my mind crossing that bridge when the time comes is now, show our utter discontent with galaxy right now because it is easire to make it so right now than when the game launches.

Not implementing something is always easier and better than removing something that has been implemented.

I don't worry about that. We have shown. They know. We don't need to repeat ourselves. I don't think they handle everything very smarly but I would never believe that they are so stupid to not know that a lot of people out there hate DRM and include the Galaxy client in that.

So indeed I just need to wait for CP2077 to be released and cross the bridge then.

Hm. Stranger things have happened.

I wouldn't be surprised by any company trying to force the use of something on their customers. There exist countless other companies exactly doing that, often enough ignoring customer complaints. They just know that boycotts usually do not last long and the only thing they might fear is bad publicity, to some extent.

So, is it really only paranoid and without any basis? Well, we might think that, but only until it happens.

Thats the thing, if you do not remind them about it they tend to forget, you have too much faith in managament, it does not matter what company there is there is always a few that get absurd ideas, like pushing the galaxy installer with all offline install files "because users are too stupid to install it from the website" ..... or "Hey, lets make galaxy required nobody is complaining about it these days, ergo everyone loves a always online client thingie"...

This is sadly the way for every company that gets big, gog is growing and with the growth comes alot more managament and managament can do incredibly stupid things, f.e. change something that does not need change because someone elses company did it and its the new fab, I have seen this in so many companies around the world.

I may paint a bleak picture but it is from experience.

Overall, like most people I like the Galaxy client and features of the platform itself. I'm not pleased with every single choice they have made to date but that is to be expected as no program is going to 100% please everyone, so we make compromises and give feedback. Some of the feedback given has resulted in them making changes for the better, such as restoring the ability to configure where downloads go for example.

Like the majority of people here though (that like or dislike Galaxy), I strongly did not like their brilliant idea of forcibly including a copy of Galaxy inside every single standalone game installer. That was seriously short sighted in execution regardless of how popular Galaxy actually is, and how much they want it to be. Especially when they have been on record as saying that they wanted to make Galaxy so good and useful that people just want to use it automatically and choose to opt in on their own. Shoving it at us by forcing us to download it and then using the get-out-of-jail card "oh, well it's optional you can just disable installing it every single time you install a game, but we'll make YES the default to annoy you." was disingenuous.

But allegedly they listened to feedback and are now providing 15000 different types of installers to choose from, so yay I guess.

Will they do things that are potentially controversial in the future? Probably. It isn't necessarily with malicious intent however, but more likely to be poor understanding and poor communication in the growing disconnect between the company and their ever widening customer base. The days of one on one communication with GOG are slowly moving away month by month sadly, but at the same time it is an indicator of their success, as close knit communication doesn't easily scale to volume.

So I think they'll make choices over time that I/we will disagree with, but I don't think they purposefully go about making decisions to screw people over on purpose because "they're on a planned trajectory towards DRM!!!!" type conspiracy theories or anything like that either.

I highly doubt CP2077 will mandatory require Galaxy for single player, but should I turn out to be wrong... then GOG and CDPR will have harmed the way that I view them as a company and lose some of the good will and trust from myself and others no doubt. As it stands right now, they've got an instabuy from me when the game comes out, but if they do something anti-consumer or just clueless, myself and many others can just as much decide to wait until it is $4.99 in a seasonal promo in 2021 or whatever instead, or forego it entirely.

I personally would consider consider mandatory Galaxy requirement for a single player game to be anti-consumer behaviour period, and it would put the game on my dead-to-me list, regardless of the pointless debate on whether to consider that "DRM" or not.

In the end, it is anti-consumer behaviour that we all distance ourselves from. DRM is just one of the forms of that. I hope they make the right choice on being pro-consumer like they very much did with The Witcher 3.

I think people in this thread don't get one thing. It's not like GOG is modifying games to require Galaxy for multiplayer. Every game that had non-Galaxy multiplayer is unchanged (many of them have some old, key based DRM). But modern games, that get build for Steam use Steamworks for multiplayer (and use Xbox/PS4 native multiplayer solutions). Simply put game developers are not building their own multiplayer solutions any more, as every platform (Steam, Xbox, PS4, UPlay, Origin) has it's own multiplayer solution. If GOG doesn't offer their own multiplayer solutions, those games simply won't come here, or they will be butchered non-multiplayer versions (which already happen with a few games).

And I know we would all prefer that game developers maybe approach this topic differently, but I think we should all be aware that at this point in time no game developer will build a dedicated, separate multiplayer solution just for GOG.

That's why I also had this argument with different devs, the results made me sad.
Some deny the existence of IP-based multiplayer options, dedicated server binaries, LAN-play and everything there ever was apart from Steam while some acknowledge the existence of such options but say it's not worth the "effort" although from what I gathered from several IT people it actually isn't a big effort to add a DRM-free multi-player mode without achievements etc if you were already able to make one with more features.