skeletonbow: My hypothesis is that a game publisher decides to try GOG's way of pricing first, then perhaps on day one of sales
HypersomniacLive: Grain of salt or not, I don't see how any of what you're saying has anything to do with the specific game, and the change that was introduced a day after its release.
Ah, that's easy to explain. My use of the phrase "... that a game publisher ..." is indicative that the hypothesis was being made in a generalized manner and not to any one specific publisher lest it have read "... that
the game publisher" instead. To be clear though, it was indeed a general hypothesis based on observing certain data output from MaGog into this thread, however I did in fact misinterpret some data (from multiple games, not any particular one) which I used to base the hypothesis on. More on that below.
HypersomniacLive: The game was, and still is, heavily discounted in the regRU, regUA, regUZ regions, so what exactly is being "shut down rather quickly" by increasing the price in those regions that had to pay the same as the US a day earlier?
Yes, after both mrkgnao and your comments I went and re-reviewed the specific game in question as well as others above in the forum that I had observed similar changes on. At first I did not see what mrkgnao was suggesting I missed so I was puzzled, but then I noticed the following:
"* Regional price for Tropico 5 is $5.89 instead of $24.99 in regRU"
The order of the low price and high price and the exact wording are different than some of the MaGog posts such as:
"NOTE! CHANGED Quest for Infamy, reg_price_full, regUZ: $5.49 ***TO*** $3.19"
So I got the before and after prices mixed up on the first example because of being used to seeing the latter example where the order the pricing appears in the text is reversed in the text but the actual direction of the price movement is the same. It mistakenly appeared to me that the price of these games had
increased, whereas that is not the case as I see from re-examining the information.
So, my hypothesis is obviously incorrect for some of the games in which I thought I observed something different than what is actually happening. If the numbers were indeed reversed as I mistakenly thought they were though, I think the hypothesis is reasonable, not that it really matters much mind you. :)
HypersomniacLive: And are you suggesting that devs/pubs get sales data on a per user account basis?
I do not have any level of knowledge about what sales data GOG gathers and/or makes available to their partners unfortunately so I'm not able to make such a specific claim (nor have I). I think it is reasonable to believe that publishers do get access to some amount of sales data with which they may use to spot pricing mistakes and correct them, to determine pricing changes and other metrics. Whether or not they make detailed information available on a user account basis to publishers however, they certainly have that information available to themselves and if they spot an account purchasing large numbers of orders for the same game over and over as gift codes then I'm willing to bet a high stake that they have software in place to detect that and report it to a human being (a GOG employee or otherwise) to investigate and make a judgment call about it. They'd be foolish to not do so since they know very well that there are opportunists out there that try to do this very thing. Do I have direct knowledge that they do it? Nope, not even the most remote slightest hint. That's why it is my hypothesis and not stated as a matter of fact. :)
