How do you fix unfairness that only affects some people? Why, you make it affect all (or at least more) people, of course! So there will be no more of that pesky fair stuff going around for comparison, and/or to be able to say that it just doesn't work.

To customers of other stores, of course; specifically, Steam was mentioned by name. That was GOG's rhetoric; do you want me to go dig up the post?

I'd be interested in one from Steam where they show concern about being unfair to GOG customers...

That I cannot provide.

I really don't understand why concern for customers of other stores should influence GOGs policies.Its crazy. Disappointing to be honest.
GOG should be concerned more about existing customers and the undecided ones out there who want be GOG customers rather than worry about how other store customers view GOGs pricing policies. oh well....

Another new game whose prices are "rich country"-friendly:

---------------------------

The newly added game Clustertruck is regionally priced:

>>> It is $8.77 instead of $14.99 in regAR, CL, CO, MX, PE
>>> It is $5.29 instead of $14.99 in RU, UA, regUZ

Because the devs don't want to get complaints from Steam users about them getting shafted for buying from their preferred store. (With store credit, they're still getting shafted, it's just not that obvious.)

Novel idea: Stop shafting them then. Not like Steam completely bans everyone from NOT setting very different prices for regions.

Ah, but then the devs feel like they're shafting themselves. In some cases they actually do, in other cases it's what Steam tells them.
(Also, some rightsholders have to deal with monopolist regional distributors and are in fact banned from setting reasonable prices, even on Steam).

"Rich countries" are usually a vat issue. I think Joel posted a breakdown of their pricing in the Trine3 thread (?).

Suppose the devs want to get an honest $9.99 for the game, Steam takes 30%, so $14.99 looks like a good price point... except Country A happens to charge a vat of 27% on top of that (which it presumably spends on the citizens' welfare), and Country B doesn't charge a vat at all. The devs, meanwhile, are from an unrelated Country S. Why should they, effectively, pay A's citizens' vat for them (which goes back into the economy to benefit A's citizens)?

And no, I'm not saying "they shouldn't". There are in fact convincing soundbites such as
"It's the cost of doing business with A, pay up or GTFO"
"A's excellent welfare system makes more people able to access and afford the game"
"A is actually a kleptocracy in slow fall and the people are poor, maybe you should partially subsidize the purchase to increase total revenue"
But none of those is an inherently better argument for fairness. Also, "overpricing" (vs. flat pricing) should not be an issue for GOG regulars, because store credit is still a thing and it now lasts forever, so GOG ends up paying for your politicians' hookers and blow.


Regional discounts are a matter of purchasing power. Ostensibly, if developers are not making use of the ability to convolute the supply/demand curve and set up different prices for different regions, they're losing substantial amounts of revenue. In practice, however, the results the system produces are more batshit than Wells Fargo's cross-selling goals ("eight because it rhymes with great"). Consider these two frontpage offers:

Clustertruck: $14.99 base, $5.29 in Russia. Looks potentially incredibly fun and potentially incredibly disappointing (depending on difficulty level). $5.29 is the price of an average movie ticket or a shitty lunch in Moscow, or a decent lunch in the neighboring regional capitals -- looks about right for an instabuy. If they're planning to make money off deep sales (maybe because it's the natural state of the market these days, maybe because the best way for gimmick games to make money is to sneak in with a mass of impulse purchases beyond Steam's 14-day refund window), it's underpriced and should be 599 RUR ($9.4) instead (to skim some instabuys, have a nice "less than 300 RUR, feels like a great deal" 50% off price, and hopefully get a couple fractional cents after fees at 75% off). It's kind of a mess, and the GOG cms with its lack of sanity checks doesn't help, but at a flat 1000 RUR, a gimmick game is not going to sell. At all. (Some games will; titles featuring "classic" gameplay such as RPGs and adventures are often substantially underpriced.)

Now the other one:

Shadow Warrior 2: $39.99 base, $10.69 (currently $8.69) in Russia.
...excuse me but what? Fucking seriously?
If impersonal-you have access to a computer you can actually play SW2 on but can't afford it at (say) $29.99 (1999 RUR) no matter where you live, go sell your life story to a Hollywood studio or at least write a Cracked article. The shittier the country, the less likely it is that you've managed to afford a high-end PC despite financial difficulties and the more likely you are to be a beneficiary if not the cause of said country's shittiness.
And the exceptions are not a meaningful market share. There's no way a person who just sold their kidney to buy a new gaming PC can't also pay the US price for the newest AAA game said PC can run -- but they won't stay in the market because staying requires upgrades and their second kidney is not for sale. It doesn't matter if an AAA game in two years' time costs $70 or $40 or $10 or $0.99 for them -- their PC can't run it. Pricing it regionally at $0.99 to cheer up the kidney-sellers only benefits kidney-buyers.
But sure enough, 'experts' say, "price it low or Russians gonna pirate!!1!!!!11!". Fuck. It's not 2003 anymore. It's 2016, 2.5 years since Russia choked on Crimea, and for the people who are still in the AAA market, lack of a client is the hardest-to-crack DRM evar.

I'm keeping it very simple: It's one product in one store. If you go to your local corner store, or a nearby hypermarket, or whatever else, and you buy something, they do not alter the price depending on the street you live on, or the city or even the country you come from if you happen to be on a trip.
About the VAT argument (and also the income level one), was just recently pointing out that it's not, see what I was saying about the Vikings prices: Denmark, 25% VAT, ~3000 EUR / month average net salary, 20% discount. Malta, 18% VAT, ~1000 EUR / month average net salary, 25% surcharge. Plus, those cost of doing business in that country and supporting better welfare policies and even development coming from possibly higher taxes because they may allow more to afford the game at all are solid arguments.
As for the rest, there are rich people in poor countries and many poor people in rich (not to mention merely high-tax) countries. And what regional pricing does best is favor the former and shaft the latter.
But this is just a rehash of the same old...

If a game publisher sets the prices on one of their games in a given region to a given price and that results in sales in that region dropping significantly and perhaps an increase in piracy in that region, then the publisher can scientifically derive that their prices in that region are too high, and presumably would lower the price to a point with which they will see an increase in sales and profitability and corresponding decline in piracy.

If however, a game publisher sells a game for a given price in a region and they are profitable in doing so and their sales, profitability and piracy rates are within the thresholds they consider to be acceptable/normal, then presumably they will consider the prices they charge within the given region to be just the right level for what the market there will support and give them the profit/ROI they are seeking.

Within any region regardless of the specific pricing, there will be people who will find the pricing acceptable and those that find it too high always, as people's income level and amount of disposable income vary greatly not only from country to country but from region to region and locality to locality within a region. But if a company continues to sell a game at a given price in a given region, it must be selling enough copies for them to confirm their pricing strategy works and produces the level of profit they want on their end of the bargain even if sadly it does not meet the criterion of those below a certain disposable income threshold.

In that case, I imagine that unless they see markedly high piracy rates in such countries they probably are likely to leave their prices as-is even if some may find the prices excessive. This is not to suggest that people should pirate games if they find them priced too high, but rather an attempt to try to rationalize why the games are priced as they actually are. It wouldn't make sense for a company to price a game so high that nobody actually buys it and ends up driving piracy in the given region per se IMHO, so they must have reasons for it. I mean all conspiracy theories aside, it's all about profit and ROI to game publishers at the end of the day.

Speak for yourself. I for one am suggesting just that, and not only for that reason. Most definitely "pirate" anything not available DRM-free for one.
Why we keep talking about very different things, be it when it comes to GOG or the industry in general. Finance/business-"right" and ethical-right have pretty much nothing in common.

I prefer to retain a neutral position on that than to engage in the public controversy.

You're absolutely right of course, but if one wonders why the price of a game is what it is in a given region at a given instance in time I am suggesting that it is because the publisher of the game has sales demographics that demonstrate to their shareholders and/or board of directors that their pricing models work in the given region. That's all I'm saying really, is trying to understand why things are how they are and express my thoughts about that - but it's not a statement of justification, rather one of observation.

Whether it is ethical or not I can't really say, however I'm sure that people in general are likely to have wildly divergent views about that, probably weighted by how much they are personally affected by the pricing themselves as well.

You basically mean you are a selfish twit then. Gimme gimme gimme or I'll steal it. Yup, typical childish pirate.

Makes you a lowlife. Who are you to decide that? What makes you so special?

Lamborghinis are too expense for me; maybe I should go out and steal one. That'll show them for making expensive cars...

Nope, it would just make me a thief.

What it comes down to...you don't have some special right to take anything you want. No one "needs" video games. And with all the games given out for free, that argument is more than stupid. You can call them greedy, but behind the game industry, there are many people employed trying to eke out a living. How many studios go under? Quite a few. If there was so much easy money in it, why would any studio cease to exist?

Unethical people always find excuses why its ok to take advantage of others...