I don't know exactly when this happened, but absolutely every NIS America game lost its regional prices, at least for my region. And honestly, it gets really hard to buy these games without their regional prices, because I'm talking about a 3x price increase! !

Another strange thing is that this happened ONLY on GOG. Both on Steam and Epic NISA prices follow regional.

Could any GOG moderators explain why this is?

Well considering that they are also planning on increasing the prices for many of there games.

https://nisamerica.com/blog/upcoming-changes-pc-games-pricing

See this thread: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/release_ys_ix_monstrum_nox_21ba0/post50

I wish it'd be easier to get original language versions of games without translation BS. Fan translation patches tend to be less censored, and those of us who can speak the original language don't end up screwed over by this sort of BS. Honestly, most games i'd rather just play in their original language if i understand it, and not be treated to the bad voice acting usually found in translated titles, and would it really kill them to leave in the option for the original language subtitles? If you miss a word or something 'cause of SFX, it can really be helpful instead of trying to figure out what was really said from the context of the shite translation.

Thank you so much for this, Meow. Apparently my country is one of the big "happy ones". But the worst thing about all this is not having a single report on why, either by GOG or NISA. Unfortunate. They became insanely expensive games.

Indeed their prices are obscenely high now.

It was a pretty bad decision all around, but I guess it affected us brazilians (and south-americans as a whole) harsher than any other nationality. Covid has taken its toll in economies all over the world but I think ours sunk deeper than the G7 (who are obviously primary drivers of pricing decisions).

A while ago I posted that piracy was so widespread over here in the 90s because publishers completely ignored South-American markets and didn't leave us any options. The games simply did not come here, unless in the luggage of someone who brought back a copy bought overseas and spread it to their friends.

These days thankfully that just is not true anymore so there is not a compelling excuse why one HAS to pirate. The end result for NISA, however, is very much the same: they will hardly ever see a single cent from the people in troubled economies while they think they should treat them as affluent. I could as well pirate their games, if not for the fact I have a sizable backlog already and have no shortage of games from sensible publishers to buy, but NISA are going to get exactly zero from me whether I pirate or just ignore them.

There are other options if you're willing to learn some things, but this isn't the whole catelogue: https://www.dlsite.com/soft/circle/profile/=/maker_id/VG01562.html

I'm under the impression that publishers set prices. If you haven't yet, would contact NISA about this (since they don't check the forums) and explain real purchasing power for Brazilians to them and hope they pass that up to higher-ups.

if it were the case, GOG prices would match in some way those on steam. But alas, no, it's GOG greed, pure and simple. In my case, they raised prices on their entire catalogue a while ago, making themselves pretty much an untenable proposition for anyone in my country compared to pretty much every other game webstore on the planet. My case is far from being the only one, just read the "local prices" thread stickied in this forum, people been complaining for years now but I guess GOG is determined to drive their customers to their competitors.

Well, of course I totally agree. A clinical reading of our "tragedy" from the past, but which still carries traces in the present. You are correct, but the problem is that the prices were regional, and they are still regional on the other platforms. It doesn't make any sense.

Regional pricing for reasons other than the legal costs for copyright/trademark registration is pretty asenine. The question, though, is why such things cost as much anywhere if they can be sold cheaply in some ares to begin with. In effect, either i'm paying an extra 25(130R$) bucks for 60(300R$) dollar game for no reason, or i'm paying 30(150R$) bucks for a 60 dollar (300R$) game to offset someone else only having to pay 10(50R$) bucks. I don't think either scenario is right, because i may not be in a 3rd world country, but i'm not exactly Bill Gates, either. Alot of people in Brazil have more money than I do at any given moment (not to call Brazil entitled or anything, just that this notion of determining one's wealth based on location is hardly accurate: for context, my bank account has about 300R$ according to xe.com, and it's probably going to drop to about 25R$ per month, and not rise at all until october or december when it might rise by about 1.5kR$ at most). I'm curious what these games are actually worth.

It's quite complicate kohIrak, the regional prices are there to set a competitive and fair price for every game depending on the region they are selling it, they take in count, life expenses, average salary and other taxes, this help a lot to avoid piracy because we can contribute with a fair price accordingly to our life style. For example, here in Argentina, we paid 65% on top of the price, that means that a us$60 games cost us us$100... Now, our average salary is us$400 (and droping), now I ask you if it will be fair to ask you for 1/4 of your entire salary to purchase a game, will you pay it? That would be a fair price for you? That actually help us a lot to support developers, maybe not much, but is better than nothing and despite the help that represent regional pricing we more than offen paid more than the real price, GOG didn't add regional pricing on Argentina yet.

Which makes no sense, 'cause it's not fair. Within a country like the US you can get areas that are way, way more affluent than other areas. Some people i've spoken to before in Brazil have found amusement that my area in particuar is comparable to some parts of Brazil, and they seemed to have the most amusement for things like the road conditions in particular. The whole notion is insane. And that's why I kept a netbook running for 10 years, when it was already considered low tier the moment it was released (and intentionally so to keep it cheap). Now i'm using something that cost me 400USD. I plan on using this until at least 2030. As for the additonal price in particular, that should not be the game dev's fault, but something those of you in argentina do something about. I'm sure it's not simple, but this is not my responsibility. Either i'm paying more to make up for you, or i'm paying more when the product isn't really worth said price. To pay significantly higher than it's worth is unfair, regardless of how much you make. When i buy games on GOG or elsewhere, i have to see them as long term investments, because the average weekly pay for my area is probably round 200USD (i'm not sure if you are talking about what timeframe your choice of word "salary" is based on, 'cause normally we mean yearly, but if these numbers are to be believed it's certainly worse on average than the US, but not what people in our respective countries think it is). Based on working 40 hours a week (which is the average, and it's hard to get more or less), the average hourly wage in my area is supposedly 20USD an hour (honestly, all the open jobs are offering half that, but i'm thinking they're averaging types of positions rather than basing it on individual positions [for example, if you weight store clerk with CEO, it'll go between, because you're adding average then dividing by 2, where as if you go by number of positions you know there's easily 20-40 store clerks for every ceo of a small corporation]). And that's just my area: Pennsylvania on the whole is one of the poorer states in the US, but there are still even worse parts of this country like Detroit.

Don't get me wrong, i'm sympathetic to the fact argentina is worse off, but i noticed those south of the US border have a very, very inflated view of what goes on in the US. Hondurans tend to be particularly interesting cases. I hear that they tend to lie to their family back in Honduras, 'cause no one believes them when they tell them the truth. And no one wants to talk about the trail of tears that Hondurans go through to get to the US when they're told they're going through official channels (hint: they're not). The US is the modern day El Dorado, and just like El Dorado, you don't see any streets lined with gold. Then you got some parts of the US where they have money to do some of the craziest things, or at least they think they have the money, then they have trouble keeping the people living in tents and cardboard boxes from crowding those expensive projects and "making them look ugly with their presence." I'm skeptical on how much it supports devs. Usually, they're salary or hourly, not commission. It's just some corporate kitty.


EDIT: At my last job, I had this crazy fool who was working over 8 hour shifts with maybe 1 day off per week for about a month or two just so he could buy Fallout 4.

No they aren't. On the contrary: regional prices are the exact opposite of that.

The only true fair price for a game would be one single price that is universally charged in the same amount everywhere, regardless of where it is sold.

Regional prices are inherently unfair because they discriminate based on country in order to make some people overpay for games and other people underpay for the same identical games.

And as others have pointed out, there is no way to accurately determine how much money a customer has based upon a gigantic sweeping generalization such as what country they live in.

To try and assume how much money one has based solely on what country they live in is extremely discriminatory & prejudicial, and it's mind-boggling that such discrimination is allowed, whereas discrimination on other similar grounds is not.