My point being that clearly GoG has not lost all the money you claim (not by a far bit) since the majority of games you claim you would have bought, would never have been here.

Frankly, regional pricing was inevitable just because of the way game companies make contracts with regional distributors. They cannot undercut their existing contracts (and will not alter them for a distant #2 or #3 member of the online market). Since these prices are negotiated on the regional level and take into account factors such as VAT and local distribution costs, they will inevitably vary. The only other option would be flat pricing at the highest price offered to any region on Steam, so the whole world could feel the pain, which wouldn't do GoG any favors either by becoming known as the most expensive site on the web to buy games...

@stg83 But would Warner Bros. be here without Lucas Arts/Disney? Did they join GoG to avoid a market competitor from gaining an advantage?

Warner, LucasArts and Paradox? Probably yes, not a single of their games has regional pricing except for the Russian discount. And somehow I doubt that they said "We'd like to sell our games at your store, but you have to make them cheaper for the Russians" in the past.

You may say what you want, but then why weren't they here before? Something enticed them to change their minds; there were significant changes to GoG's business model...

You claim they would still have come, I think not, and neither of us are in a position to know...there were other changes to GoG's pricing as well where older games HAD to be $5.99 or $9.99 and nothing more. GoG has become much more flexibly priced in a number of ways...

Who is anyone online and why should you trust him or her anyway? Just saying... trust on the internet shouldn't even be a thing.

No idea, he does seem to have a fair understanding of the subject and he did reference the specific law that covers it so I assume you could verify or check this yourself. As I said I don't know anything about German law.

Let me rephrase my question.

When will you stop buying from GOG? When they start to use drm? When they charge you 10 times the price let's russians have to pay? When they block a game in your country? What will it be?

They lost the money, because without their broken principles, I would have bought these games.

I don't think we will come to a common point on this issue, so I'll stop here.

and without this thread I would have been spared a headache.

Good. Fuck off. Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.

1. Yes, when DRM is an open thing and not an accidental leftover from the developer / publisher, then I'm done here.

2. No, not when they charge me 10x the price the Russians or anyone else pays, because my perceived value of a title has nothing to do with the price someone pays on the other side of the world. It has everything to do with whether or not I feel the price I'm asked to pay is worth it for that product.

3. If a game is blocked then I guess I won't buy it. My backlog will breathe a sigh of relief as it's becoming pretty crowded in there.

I get your gripes, but reality and principle do not always coincide. This is what happens when a store tries to work within the legal and marketplace realities of many different countries. If they were to stick with one-world pricing I think this place would see very little growth in the catalog, sales would dwindle as customers ran out of things to buy, and the conversation would instead be, "gOg sure stuck to their guns on pricing. I'll really miss that store."

The one and only thing that would make me bail is making their new client mandatory (even though I use it) or adding games that require a form of DRM, at that point I'm better off sticking with my Steam games.

Or if they just stopped releasing anything interesting at all. Lately? They've been kicking ass.

I'm here for the games, and I want to back those games up and always have them ready. The chances of GOG adding DRM are pretty slim, since I honestly believe doing so would kill their whole operation. It's something they can continue to do, because there are still a huge number of titles out there they can sell DRM free, Whereas regional locks/pricing were eventually going to hit GOG no matter what. They obviously could only keep that going for so long before it started to stunt their growth.

I would do the same, except if I really want the game badly enough for and it is block in my country I would trade / use VPN or import from overseas (Darn Japanese Publisher).

Or Russia could move to us. Wouldn't this be a lot easier?

Obviously the way out of the unfairness of regional prices is not moving to a different region but giving up regional prices and coming back to worldwide equal prices.


If you do this you are doing something illegal. This counts like not having bought the game at all. Could as well just pirate it and make a donation smaller than the price of the region you are living in. It would be the same.

They make the prices. We cannot change them. We can either buy it or not buy it. Quite simple. That's why I did not buy much on GOG lately too, less expensive games, less giveaways ... but of course that's all I can do. And I don't lament about it every day.
This is the interesting point and I feel different about it. This is exactly the point I can not get over and it almost makes me going mad. I feel like I have to pay more so others have to pay less. The perceived price to value drops maybe just a little but to me it looks like a permanent bias, like I'm treated unfairly and ripped off just a bit, but the whole time - always. I cannot make myself free from this and don't want to either.

In short: my perceived value to price ratio drops if others have to pay much less than me for exactly the same stuff.

What I do in the end? Buying later and/or pirating. That may sound sad but that's how it is.

No. Just don't make a public announcment with a "please don't tell me how I'm wrong". You keep it to yourself, no one will comment on it. You go public, expect people to respond. And to tell you how you're wrong. Especially on the internet.

Well, yeah. I don't buy titles with DRM, so that would be the end. Surely it's not been nice to watch the other friendly principles bite the dust, but this is really the only one that ever really mattered to me.

I've kept my bags packed since password-protected installers, but they ceased that practise. Galaxy was released, and it is not currently looking like a threat. There are a few isolated cases where DRM surely could have been disabled better, but it's just shoddy work and not very serious in my mind. Defcon will survive master server being shut down. Ethan Carter only launches Steam if you have it installed, which you won't if you have a problem with it. F.E.A.R. installs some ugly bits of hard-to-remove garbage but only if you run multiplayer, and even then they're not supposed to actually do anything. All of them are certainly worth fixing, but not really fussing about.

Meanwhile the catalogue is getting bigger and better with much-loved and highly wished-for titles added all the time. This has been a great year for GOG. If there's a better place to shop at for games, I don't know it. But do tell, I like to keep my options open.

Same here. Regional pricing was never an issue for me even before I heard of GOG. They offer a game for a price and if it's worth it I buy. Regardless of what others pay.

But... "no regional pricing" was part of GOG's holy trinity. So it does bother me that they don't keep it.

DRM in general wasn't really an issue for me either before using GOG (depending on how bothersome it was). What I hated were compulsory clients. An installer with a DRM would be a minor annoyance, but if there was a compulsory client, then I might as well use steam.

But... if GOG does introduce games with DRM then the above would apply too. More so, because DRM-Free was the holy father of the trinity.

As for blocked games. There are so many workarounds it's hardly an issue.