What I suspect is that a lot of these publishers have put pressure on GOG to abandon these principles with vague, non-binding promises of day-one or close to day-one releases of AAA, when in actual fact these publishers see GOG as nothing more than a way of mitigating what they perceive as losses from secondhand sales and abandonware.

Games like Shadow of Mordor, Cities: Skylines:, the Batman Arkham series and Skyrim all have one thing in common - they're games where the publisher can pull the retail version and tell gamers "buy off Steam or fuck you". Contrast that with Lego Batman, or Lego Harry Potter, where gamers who don't want to buy off Steam can go to eBay or Amazon and completely legally buy a secondhand copy.

Note how almost all of the games that the major publishers have brought here can be bought secondhand on disc. The only publishers that have shown any integrity in this regard are Nordic Games and Deep Silver, who have been remarkably good with ex-Steam games.

Agree 100% which is why I laugh when one of these publishers finally shows up here and some forum users proclaim 'they are committed to DRM-Free'. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Yeah, we see with UPlay and Origin how well this works. And we saw it with Witcher 3, where everyone complained that they have to installl Galaxy to run the game.

And that's exactly the point where publishers say "Yeah, fuck you too. Was nice to do business with you. See you next time (not)." And to be absolutely honest: I can't see where a discount would salvage "DRM free" there. There's no difference between "Multiplayer's not working because I don't have Galaxy installed" and "Multiplayer's not working because I didn't buy it".

I never said what you quoted, but... thanks for reminding me of something ;) You do know that GOG stopped being Good Old Games because they realized that they can't survive with old games only? Their statement back then was that they got all the easy to get oldies and that getting more classics becomes more and more difficult with every title they get. They said that they had to expand to keep g(r)o(w)ing. So, yeah, GOG is still around because they did what they did.

None. But you can't expect this to happen from one day to the next. We got quite some semi-new AA+ games. Some of them DRM free for the first time. And with Alan Wake, GOG even managed to get a Steamworks game (a game that needed Steam, no matter where you bought it, including the boxed version). Metro and Saints Row are pretty good additions too, if you ask me. And then there are games like Book of Unwritten Tales 2, Trine 3 and all the highly anticipated Kickstarter games (Original Sin, Wasteland, Shadowrun, Pillars). They're not AAA material, but definitely high quality day 1 releases.

You answered your own question. Publishers prefer DRM for their new releases and since Steam basically IS PC gaming, they don't need GOG at all for their new games. But that's what I meant with "you can't expect this to happen from one day to the next". GOG will have to prove that DRM free day 1 releases will earn a publisher some extra money. To do this, you'll need one or two companies who'll risk to try it. Maybe the Kickstarter games and Witcher 3 will help to do this.

Humble gives out cheap Steam keys. Of course they're better known than GOG. People love Steam.

I don't know if you recognised it, but everyone buy Origin and UPlay games. It's true that they say that Origin and UPlay are shit, but nevertheless they don't care and use it.
There will be no argument for GOG in future not to use DRM or make Galaxy not obligating.

Sorry, that's the fuckin' buggy forum. I always have problems with multiple quotes. I've never seen such a piece of shit of forums software. GOG has the time for every unnecessary thing, but usable forums not...

And because of this we need region locks, Galaxy and in future DRM and maybe region locks in installers...

These are all old games (Alan Wake, SR, Metro). You gut it for a few bugs at Steam.
Trine 3 wasn't a high quality day1 game. It was a big disappointment. I'm very happy that I didn't buy it.

We exist so that we can read these threads because we're masochists.

I don't know if you realized it, but EA and Ubisoft are two of the biggest companies in gaming. EA has Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Battlefield, The Sims and FIFA and you don't have much of a choice if you want to play their games. It's Origin or no game for you. What does GOG have? Nothing? Great deal -.-

And do people really BUY games on UPlay? Ubisoft's stuff sells like hot cakes on Steam. People seem to prefer to launch UPlay through Steam to launch their game xP Another example would be GTA V. It's ALWAYS in Steam's bestseller list. Why? Hey, I heard you like DRM, so I put a DRM in your DRM oO

Just because you don't want to hear the arguments, it doesn't mean there aren't any...

Ah, yes, now I can see everything crystal clear.

Seriously?! I hope you see for yourself how far you drifted into bullshit territory there. Adding new games to the catalogue because oldies are getting scarce is something completely different from telling people to use a client they don't want instead of getting the same game from their beloved Steam. Again: You can't force feed people a client without a strong line up of exclusives. GOG is not EA.

Hint: That's probably why I wrote "We got quite some semi-new AA+ games".

Yeah, I see, you really live the dream of DRM free games -.- That's the second time you started to talk about prices when we're talking about DRM (discounts for games with disabled multiplayer was the first time).

Yep. Completely debunked everything I wrote.

Sorry, but I think it doesn't make a lot of sense to discuss this any further with you. You're cherry picking single sentences to babble incoherrent "This is why GOG will have no other choice but to add DRM" bullshit. I'll give you one last tl;dr: GOG dropped two "principles". "No regional pricing" and "old games only". Since they dropped "old games only", we got more (great!!!) classics than ever. And allowing regional prices brought a lot of newer games, where publishers didn't want to have a lower Euro price on GOG than on Steam (and other stores). Why did GOG do this? I'll tell you: To get more games DRM free on GOG. You can't add DRM to get more DRM free.

You have the choice:
Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Skyrim or one of the other RPGs
Battlefield: CoD, CS, DoD, ArmA, MoH or the old (better) BF games
Sims 4: Sims 3 and Addons
FIFA: PES

No, but they USE UPlay. Ubisoft says "you need that" and people say "ok, i'll use it".

Didn't hear about Medieval???

What do you want to say? That you can get an old game here that you even can get as a supplement with gaming magazines? Wow. Impressive...

You won...

Every business have to expand to survive (that is a simple economic law) so to do this they have sometimes to bend their priciples a bit to get more publishers. Of course they could have said screw bethesda/id and all the companys which were forcing us to use regional pricing and such but then they could not sell those games meaning a loss for GOG. As you might remember they have lost nordic a while ago leaving many gamers who where asking GOG to bring nordic back. Since the problem was GOGs principle of not using regional pricing at the time they came back after GOG introduced regional pricing for some games. Of course there are many publishers out there who GOG could add but would they lead to the same money GOG is receiving from the games bethesda/id/nordic earns them? GOG will always have the difficulty to explain to publishers why DRM-free is no big risc for them and given the fact that still several devs/publishers are using DRM to "protect" their software - even some of which will result in an unplayable game for people who legally bought it - you can imagine that ist is not that easy to pursuade some publishers.

Stretching principles results always in making further compromises. Most of them could be very helpful but there is alway also a risk stretching too far and having no turn back. What's so sad staying true on the principles and having therefore stagnation? From my point of view it's a simple lie of business that you have always to grow for showing the world a healthy company / business model. In fact it could be also reversed very fast if the growth is too fast and most of the principles your company was characterized by are forgotten. If that process was too deep and far-reaching the customers stay also away because they have no futher identification and the reasons why they used your services are also long forgotten.

I bought some 400 games on GOG, pretty much every one of those that interested me. I have no interest in the 600+ other games here. That means that if GOG wants more of my money, they need to continuously put other games on the shelves.

In order to keep making money, GOG must sell to people games they don't already have. That means they either need new games, or new customers. It's not even a question of growing, it's simply needed to keep existing as a store. The compromises they agreed to was a way to get both, and survive.

Personally, I think the whole "regional pricing" change is overblown.
Let's set the stage a little...
Just prior to this change, there were some significant issues.
One issue was because all games were in U.S. dollars, a significant number of people had banks who would gouge them with fees for the currency exchange. So, GoG primarily being a European company, did something about it, add more currencies...

This created some issues for the developers:
1) Now prices are advertised in these other currencies.
2) Changing exchange rates, makes this price potentially variable.

Remember, GoG isn't the only online retailer. So, for some companies, this change in advertising caused some games to be undercutting competitor prices in various regions (whereas before, the price might have been less, but because it was in U.S. dollars, it doesn't seem to be).

I shouldn't have to say much about the legal contracts and their complexity, so it stands to reason that this change created issues with some regional contracts. Also consider that developers who sell boxed copies of their games have additional contracts with their regional distribution networks. Thus, more contracts and arrangements to worry about.

So what was GoG's solution? Go back to the days banks price gouge certain customers?
Well, they found a better solution...
What if GoG allows regional pricing (to prevent this advertised undercutting), yet Gog agrees to pay the difference out of their own pockets (i.e. fair pricing). Now, as a result, developers don't have to worry about competitor concerns as GoG advertises a similar price, but GoG still has a flat worldwide price cap that matches the U.S. dollar. The only drawback is it comes in the form of a credit for the next game, but that isn't so bad.

Developers happy, GoG's principles significantly intact, customers can now pay in their banks currency and avoid additional fees, win win win. And as a bonus, other developers who may have had similar concerns with "worldwide flat pricing", with this hurdle gone, are now more interested in dealing with GoG.

Unless GoG drops the fair pricing plan, they aren't actually regionally price gouging like other stores...

But let's be honest and say that this wasn't GOG's original plan. They planned to give out $5.99 or $9.99 store codes for a short ammount of time and for the three AAA games that they announced. After that it would've been the "normal" regional pricing like the one we have on Steam. And the codes were only valid for full price purchases.

Only a massive shitstorm (and probably a lot of people that stopped buying) led to the "Fair price package" we have now.

And while I won't pay more in a long row with that model, I still boycott it. Not because of the money, but because it sends a completely wrong signal to developers and publishers. Buying those games means accepting regional pricing. The developers and publishers don't care if there is a fair price package. They get their money anyway. But GOG has to pay the difference and that's not the way it should be (even if it's a very nice thing that GOG does so).

I would accept flat price + VAT without complaining about it and I would also accept regional discounts for very poor countries, but the arbitrary regional pricing we have at the moment is a complete no-go for me.

And by the way, whichever insensitive jerk who keeps downrepping me...I'm sure everyone loves losing 5 points in a two minute span. Seriously, this forum has really gone into the crapper...