I can understand the need to prioritise, given the shifting nature of the marketplace. Personally I think you've chosen the right sequence. I haven't stopped buying from GOG because you added some regional priced games, but I most likely would if you added some DRM'd games.

Sorry, you already picked them once when you launched. And just because you gained some traction with DRM free there's less need for one banner-bearer on that front. Necessary but not sufficient, you know. Regional pricing is in far more of a need of that, however, just because the tide has turned firmly against it this year.

Plus, I'll say it however many times I'll need to: Turn CDP's shop international, or make a third one, and put whatever you please there with whatever other rules you please, but keep GOG to its (now-former) principles and if you can get 100-150 titles a year, be they older and indies, added to it like that, fine by me. My opinion of CDP is going down the toilet as of this year anyway, but wanted to still have GOG in reasonably high regard.

But now with that Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms thing too, and the fact that release notices now no longer mention price just to avoid mentioning regional pricing at all... Yeah. No thanks.

Sadly, you're here to take the crap we throw back while the higher ups who orchestrated all of it sit and count their money while ^&*##ing on all of us. Unenviable position there.

PS: And heh, your message makes it look like there's a timeline for a return to flat pricing. If so, I'll get back to the support when I'll see it, not only published but actually implemented. Not before.

I would like to see that happen too. Generally I prefer to buy titles once all the DLC is out and they are fully patched (basically what used to be the GOTY editions). So if they are also flat priced by the time that happens, then all the better.

If we see more of this happening, I'll be glad to start a Regional-to-Flat Pricing GOGmix as well. For now it would look almost like mockery with just one game in it. :)

I think the notion that 'DRM-Free has gained some traction' would be up for some debate. What titles have come here DRM-Free that would be considered a 'win' for the DRM-Free movement? Indie titles? And then the second question, has the DRM-Free movement impacted sales of titles with DRM (namely Steam)?

I think GoG is picking battles because as a business, is it not sustainable in the current marketplace to hold on to both DRM-Free and flat worldwide pricing. You may be fine of them only getting 100 titles a year (and who's to say it would be that many) but as a business it's not ok if it's not going to bring in enough revenue to stay afloat. You can say 'it was fine the first couple of years of GoG' and the response would be that business must always evolve and grow or else you are not going to be in business very long.

I also remember how you made all sorts of announcements about it instead of hiding it in notices or even switching stealthily, even suggested that people change their location to buy the game, used only that to determine pricing until a court order forced you to implement geolocation, and then somebody obviously fought to change the situation as soon as possible. All of it opposite to what's happening now.

Been through all of it enough on other threads and don't give enough of a damn about GOG to do it again. Bottom line, *again*, *IF* it was a desperate financial situation, make CDP's shop international or a separate subsidiary to grow further and let GOG keep spearheading some battles. Though the 2013 results I saw posted in the original mess thread said it was doing pretty darn well, so that's one huge hypothetical "if" anyway.

Yes, that would be awesome.
But it is also possible that the Fair Price Package will be abandoned after a while, or that other publishers and/or developers, especially new ones, automatically think that regional pricing is okay here, as long as their games are DRM-free, and so more and more games will switch to the regional pricing system, until there are no more flat prices here...

But that's just guessing and not very constructive. For now I'll just ignore every regionally priced game and let every user decide for themselves.

You mean they don't already? :/
And the vast majority of the roughly half (based on figures from a 2013 presentation) that aren't affected won't care and plenty of the others will be either too used to it or feeling too powerless to do anything whether or not they agree, and the majority formed this way will decide for all. As it already has.

So please tell us: Which bigger games did we get without DRM, because of regional pricing?

The Witcher 3 and The Witcher Adventure Game from your own company? Divinity: Original Sin, a crowd-funded game which developers brought all their other games flat-priced here and promised the game would be available on GOG right from the beginning of their campaign? Wasteland 2, another crowd-funded game that made millions before it was even released?

All other games that arrived regionally-priced here by now (60 titles by now) are indie games and/or games by developers that were fine with flat prices before. In addition to that 35 popular games had to leave the catalogue, because you couldn't find an agreement with their publisher.

Can't see the ominous big DRM-free titles, just a bunch of greedy developers who try to take advantage from the new price sceme.


I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand I don't want to support publishers who do regional pricing (at least the kind of unfair regional pricing that is done most of the time). On the other hand buying the games the moment there is no regional pricing (even if it is temporary) might send a signal that people are willing to buy their games if they just stop doing regional pricing.

One problem is that many of these games are not only regionally priced, but also aligned on Steam prices... One can of course that games getting older will return to flat pricing, but I'll only believe it when I see it.
This

I confess to being curious about that too. The only additional titles so far that possibly fit the bill are Pillars of Eternity and the Mount & Blade series. And the latter arrived mostly under the "flat price w/ Russian discount" model, so even that isn't really a regional price coup.

Please let me know if I'm overlooking some other top-of-the-range regional priced games we are getting because of this switch.

So, which big games have we gotten only because of this sacrifice?
I still don't see AAA games here, regardless of regional pricing or not, so I still do not see any advantage of this move.