Especially not a store with janky code like GOG.

The first few years of Black Friday deals in Brazil several stores did exactly that; it didn't take long for the customers to brand Black Friday's motto as "Everything for half of the double!"
After two or three years the government intervened with legislation to inhibit the abuse. If you show that there was a price hike before the sale (easily detected with webcrawlers) the store will pay a hefty fine.
Things are much better now.

Something I(!) dont understand

I(!) buy when the price is "right for me".

If I've set myself a certain limit, for what I'm willing to pay, it doesn't matter, what the price was at a certain time before, and it also doesn't matter how many percent it may be discounted (or if it is/was discounted at all).

The price depicted on the price tag, at the time when I think about buying the item, is what decides, whether I buy that item, or not.

So, "Game A" is on sale right now for 50% off and costs €20,-?

Well, let's assume a little note on the price tag tells me that "Game A" was on sale some time before for 30% off and also costed €20,-?

That tells me that the base price was lower at an earlier time...which a lot of people seem to think is good to know "for reasons", I guess?

But, at the end of the day: the price on the price tag is still €20,- and if that is too high for me, I won't buy.
It's as simple as that.

Or let's assume, the little note on the price tag tells me that "Game A" was available for as low as €10,- at an earlier moment in time (with or without out mentioning any percentages applied either earlier or now)?

Well, that also doesn't change the fact, that the price NOW is €20,-...and again: if that's too high for my liking, I won't buy.
Simple as that.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I consider this to be common sense.

You and I both, man.

The reason why you don't understand the problem is that your train of thought contains two fallacies:

1) You assume that you have an unlimited amount of money available so you can always immediately buy all games that reach the "right" price. But that is usually not the case. On the contrary, money that can be spent on hobbies is usually quite limited.

2) You only look at one isolated game. But it is not uncommon for hundreds of games to be on sale at the same time. During big sales there are even thousands of games on sale. And these games are all competing against each other for your money.

To expand on your example: Game A is on sale for €20, which is a low enough price for you. However, Game B that you would also enjoy is also on sale for €20, which is also ok in your book. Since you only have €20 available right now to spend on games you have to decide which game to buy.

Now let's add the following information: Game A is 50% off (base price: €40) and game B is 75% off (base price: €80).

That leaves the question: Since you can buy only one of these two games, which game would you buy?

Most people would naturally select game B since the assumption is that 75% sales are harder to come by than 50% sales. Or to put it in other words: It is more likely for game A to go down to €20 again in the future and do so faster than for game B.

And with that the price hike worked its miracle.

Even if you don't fall for such tricks because you always check price histories it is a well documented fact that such shenanigans do work.

Do you really think the EU would have bothered to make an EU wide directive if these fake discounts haven't already become a massive problem?

Not always the case. Like Activision games on GOG are notorious for getting regular say -75% discounts in the past but in recent years it's only 30-50%.
Also many games had their "historical low" in some kind of flash promo for like 1 day years ago.

Well, thank's a lot!
Not what I was saying in my last post, but ok - let's assume, €20,- is low enough for me.
Sure! If I have only €20,- to spend, and there are two games for that price available which I have interest in, I'll have to choose.
Which is what I have to do anyway.
If I have the same €20,- available to spend, and there are three games for €10,- each, I'll also have to choose.
Same goes if there are 10 games at €5,-
Can't buy them all for my €20,- so I have to choose.
The one that interests me more at that time, respectively the one that I intent to play immediately.
I'm not most people.
That's just your assumption. Nothing more.

One important thing that you leave out with your "Game A is 50% off (base price: €40) and game B is 75% off (base price: €80)" - example is: not every game is worth the same to me.

You are assuming that I would be willing to pay €20,- for "Game A", simply because €20,- is my limit and because "Game A" is available for €20,-

But: maybe "Game A", while interesting in general, has some feature(s) that make me don't want to spend €20,- on it?
Maybe "Game A" is only worth €10,- for me?

And of course: the same goes for "Game B" of your example. Maybe that will reach the interesting price point for me, only when it's discounted 90%?

So, going with your example: maybe I won't buy either of them, but "Game C" instead, which costs only €12,- and save the rest?

Again: the price on the price tag right now is the only important info.
It's really not that complicated.

His whole example started with the assumption that both games are worth 20$ to you.

"To expand on your example: Game A is on sale for €20, which is a low enough price for you. However, Game B that you would also enjoy is also on sale for €20, which is also ok in your book."

Of course all the rest is based on assumptions, but personally I think that it's more probable that a -50% games drops more in the future than a -80% game.


In any case @joppo brought up the best example what this information is about. This way a price increase prior to the sale (which can happen when games exit the 'in development' status) may not become visible, but one does not get deceived by the percentage discount.
You also see if you recently missed a lower price. In that case you can decide if you want to wait for that price again.

Both is useful information. Does a price tracker like the one on gogdb a better job? You bet. But that only means that the information on the store page is not worth as much as the one on gogdb, it does not mean that it's completely worthless. Many people do not go to external sites before buying.

This might have been covered before here or elsewhere but is there a site that keeps good track of historical prices for games here on GOG, like psprices or isthereanydeal?

Let's assume both interest you equally and you would like to play them both immediately.

Good for you. And I never said you are.

Of course. But it is a reasonable and usually valid assumption. I know that there are games here that have 90% as a standard discount. Heck, I even know a game here that has been almost constantly on sale for >90% for years. But these are the exceptions, not the rule.

No, I already understood that not any game is worth the same to you right from the start. I merely used two games with the same value to you as an example to show you that you have to choose. It doesn't matter if the choice is between game A which is worth €20 to you and game B which is also worth €20 to you or if the alternative to A are the games C+D, both of which are worth €10 to you.

The point was that when you do not have enough money to buy everything that has hit an acceptable price (whatever that may be for any individual game) you have to choose. And at that point other factors than the current price can come into consideration.

And for most people these factors include the height of the discount. If it doesn't for you, that's fine. But it does for most people and that's why the price hike works.

gogdb.org

I get that. And believe me, i wish i had for the store i've been shopping at the most recently to have something like that, too, but i've got nothing, there.