Lowest price in the last 30 days before discount: 6.19

This came up when lookling a switchball hd not quite sure what it means.

its the lowest price in the games history of being on GOG, before any sales discounts etc.
its a new thing they added to give some price history, but its also implemented for newer games so it can be confusing.

It's a solution to the problem: "Is this (sale) price better than any previous offering?". So, if you see the current price is lower than it has ever been before, the customer can confidently purchase the item knowing that noone else has bought it cheaper.¹




























¹ Not considering the variable value of your purchasing currency. For instance, a 2008 US dollar is worth probably two or three 2023 dollars, less the opportunity cost incurred by spending the money a dozen years ago on a game that now you can buy for inflation-ravaged chump change.

It only compares prices from last 30 days.

Do people really care that a game had a cheaper price at some point? "This game looks like a good value for me... but wait. It was available for sale for $1 less a few weeks ago. I won't pay this reasonable price for the product I want because it may (or may not) be sold for that lower price again!"

Lunacy at its finest.

It's connected with Omnibus Directive.

"when the seller reduces the price of a good or service, the seller will be obliged to inform about the lowest price in force during 30 days prior to introducing the reduction. If the product is marketed for less than 30 days, the lowest price since it was placed on the market should be provided..."

I agree, but as someone who has seen his fair share of comments like:
"this game was available last year in a Humble Bundle with nine others for $1,-!!!11!1!! So, I will not pay these inflated prices on GOG!!11!!"
I can confirm: yes! Some people here do care about that.

Edit: typo

You might want to be a bit less judgemental / snarky. This was brought in to meet EU requirements. And a lot of that was in response to the bogus / fake discounts, ie, increase base pricing pre-sale then boast how a "deeper discount = lowest price ever" actually wasn't is basically fake advertising (which everyone with common sense hates). That's been seen in a number of things from using long obsolete "peak scalper" GPU pricing (when shelves were completely empty) as a "benchmark" for discounts in 2023 and yes some video games publishers have been guilty of raising prices pre-sale in the past too.

Not everyone has infinite time to spend analyzing price history charts for every single thing they buy. The law simply promotes marketing sale discounts honestly. "If it's 20% off, then just say so and don't make up fake numbers". I don't like over-regulation either but this is basic common sense.

Up to 5 min or so is infinite time now? I agree companies should be honest, but caveat emptor, and all. I don't think the law is bad on its face, I just really wonder about the necessity. Prices change all the time. People should be in the habit of checking things themselves and not relying on the government to force someone else to do research for them. If they don't want to spend that time, they deserve to be taken for as much as the seller can get from them.

It's a simple marketing trick. You may read it as one of that translated adverts you can spot around: "Hey friend! Buy it right now while it's a best deal. You won't have such opportunities too often, or you may even lose your chance to buy at this price for ever." :)

It's a pointless feature when looked at from that perspective, anyway: it's only 30 days. The purpose of the EU law that apparently prompted this change is pretty clear, though: to prevent the shady practice of placing items "on sale" by raising the list price just for the purpose of the "sale". Even there, it won't work, though. A grocery store I used to frequent did this a lot, and just keeps the higher price for long enough that they expect people to forget it used to be cheaper before advertising a brand new price drop (to actually slightly higher than it used to be). 30 days is just too short. Having a 1-year price history might at least prevent that sort of fraud. I'm sure the fraudsters will still find a way around it, kind of like furniture stores "changing ownership" regularly in order to hold almost non-stop "going out of business" sales.

We sure do care, and doing so is not 'lunacy' at all. On the contrary: it's the epitome of logic and rationality.

The lowest price at which a game has ever been sold is actually, usually, it's actual real true value, and also a price at which it will inevitably (at least 99%+ of the time) also be sold again in the (usually not-too-distant, i.e. within 3 - 6 months) future.

The makes the "lowest price in the last 30 days" an absolutely useless metric.

To buy a game at a higher price than it's actual lowest price ever is (usually) to be ripped off.

It's tone deaf, really. I'm one of those people. If a game is 20 bucks, goes on sale for 10 bucks, but is normally 5 bucks on sale, i think i might wait until it's on sale for 5 bucks. Sure, that's only 5 bucks, but that's a 25% discount and that 25% can be used for other games. But the tone deaf thing is, anyone who does this is probably not going to trust something in store to tell us.