The whole thing is really rather silly.

Basically it's like this:

Before GoG just sold a game at say $20. Let's say on Gamersgate or Steam the same game did cost $20 in the US but if you bought it from Europe you had to pay 20€ instead.
So basically it was already cheaper on GoG before.

However, this was not directly visible since GoG just listed all prices in $.

Now that GoG shows the prices in €, everybody from Europe can directly see that they have to pay less at GoG than on other stores. Apparently the publishers pulling out have a problem with that as they consider it unfair towards the other sellers.

It doesn't have much to do with regional pricing at all because that's what each publisher can decide himself. I'm pretty sure that GoG pays for the "store credit" themselves.

Just for clarification:
Let's take this imaginary $20 game I mentioned above... the publisher can now decide to just use the cost determined by GoG which is $20 or 15.19€ (non-regional pricing), or they can decide to do regional pricing which basically means it's $20 in US, but for example $23 in Germany and $17 in some poorer country. BUT if Germans buy the game they also get $3 store credit from GoG.
This is pretty much how GoG handles it now.

You're probably right about this... Apparently the publishers don't think people are capable of doing some basic math or figuring out how currencies work.

Some outcry from Steam loyalists would not be unexpected in this situation :)

Also look at the values that FrictionalGames wrote in their example.

They want to sell their games for $19.99 in US and 17.49€ in Europe.

On GoG however $19.99 games cost only 15.19€ in Europe.

So in short you can say that for them the game is 2.30€ too cheap for Europeans on GoG.


Edit: And indeed GoG is now a little bit cheaper for me when paying in €, because I don't have to pay currency recalculation fees.

The funny thing being that it has ALWAYS been like this, it's only more visible now with the Euro prices... Honestly this all smells like a money-grab to me, with Gog basically taking the hit (offering fair price package) for the games that probably would have been pulled otherwise :(
Well, so long and thanks for all the fish, Frictional!

Last time I felt this confused was after seeing the Star Wars prequel trilogy. With them it was just because of the utter stupidity of the movies, but here I just don't understand the reason for this complex pricing system. Is the aim of all this to offer true regional pricing (means truly different pricing) for those companies that haven't yet shown interest towards gog because of single dollar pricing system? Sounds reasonable, if so, but I also understand perfectly the position of some publishers, where currency converting may put them in a bad light among other sellers giving "obvious" edge to gog. Although prices were cheaper with dollar pricing for europeans already before, now it just got more complicated. I just hope that rest of the publsihers are OK with this system and we don't see more departures...

It's kind of OT, but since you started - I don't really get the motivation for this move either. While paying Euro-prices is probably more convenient for some customers (I don't much care either way), this has now lead to 35 games being removed, as well as more than 20 games now having region-based pricing that apparently wasn't implemented before [url=]http://www.gog.com/forum/general/newly_regionalpriced_games/post1[/url]

Is this now going to bring a lot of newer, more expensive titles to Gog? I can't really see how... The publishers could charge European customers more, but wasn't that kind of implemented already? Also that fair pricing package is going to become rather costly as time goes on, isn't it? I really hope Gog can stand by this, I don't dare imagine the shitstorm that will follow if this concept gets dropped along the way...

Just a scenario from my point of view, as I belive it's too easy to make the publishers the bad boys here. As I'm absolutely not familiar how international transactions for digital goods work it's very likely there are mistakes in there, maybe completely wrong. So feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.

The interesting question is how sales were booked in the balance sheets before. As Gog didn't tracked sales by country and they were paid out in us dollars only it was easy for publishers to count this revenues as from one country and using one tax rate. Now they get from gog split revenues because of different currencies, maybe also sorted by country. They also are fluctuating by exchange rate. My guess is that at this point things are getting too complicated and risky for some publishers, as they can't just book their revenues like before, As it's now visible where the revenues come from they need to take care about regional taxes to be on the safe side.

In short: GOGs new system is too complicated and risky for many publishers. On other shops they maybe can compensate that risk due to flat pricing, as they have a mark up/buffer for some regions. That's not fair to customers, but easy to handle for them. So what are the solutions here? If GOG wants to keep the fair pricing, they need to go back and use only one currency without tracking the sales. Newer, regional priced games can still be paid and shown by different regions. Second solution is to abandon fair pricing and allow publishers to set flat pricing including mark ups. Personally I prefer the first solution.

Again, I'm not familiar with international law and balancing, that are just my thoughts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

You are forgetting the EU tax. I don't know how it works, but prices in € apparently pay an extra that is not paid in $, meaning that, if you do a straight conversion $ --> €, either GOG or the publisher loses some money. And this is where Frictional puts the blame.

To be honest, I'm not even sure you could blame either GOG or Frictional. If the EU tax refers to the sales tax, then we are talking about a tax that is on average twice as big in the EU when compared to the US, something that is extremely unfair, but it would be the EU governments to blame.

I've seen a lot of harsh criticism to GOG for all these problems with regional pricing and conversion differences, but I can only imagine how incredibly complicated it must be for them to implement a pricing system that is perceived as fair by all their users and to convince all their partners to accept it at the same time.

I actually think we're in utter and complete agreement :)

Well, that actually does make sense, if it is indeed how Gog handled things.
Although that makes it even harder for me to see what was the purpose of these recent changes?
I guess it's not for the likes of me to know...

Many asked for diffrerent currencies and payment options. Also I guess it's helpful for regional pricing, the first euro-priced games on gog were the regional-priced ones (Witcher 3, Age of Wonders 3, etc.)

I would honestly not give the blame to anyone. I can actually understand both viewpoints very well.

I'm not really forgetting EU tax (actually there is different tax per country too!) and I actually know how it works. Simplied if there is 20% tax and you buy a product for $20 that actually means the seller gets $16 and the state gets $4.

If you look at it from the publisher perspective then it kind of makes sense to instead of selling your product for $20, you sell it for $25. Then the customers actually pays the tax (seller gets $20).
In another country where there is no such tax (US doesn't have it?), it of course makes sense from the publisher viewpoint to only take $20 for the product. For them it means the same amount of money for every object they sell, easy to manage.

From a European buyer perspective however, this isn't fully fair, because the tax itself doesn't really reflect the average income at all. If we stick to the example and say the average income in US is say $2000 per month (I don't actually have real values, just an example) and 0% tax. And then you have a European country with only $1000 per month average income and 20% tax. Is it really fair to take $20 for the product in the US and $25 for the product in the poorer European country?

Double edged sword. Even all people paying in $ is not really fully fair, but most people are okay with it because then at least everybody pays the same. But paying more than some other country that actually has a higher average income feels more "unfair".

In Germany, with a high average income, it's not really unfair to pay more than US, but GoG always was cheaper and a sudden 30% cost increase might make customers angry too (that's why they decided for that store credit system).
I personally would still buy at GoG because I mainly buy here for the DRM-free stance, but a higher price might mean I think the game isn't worth the cost and end up not buying it (not before a sale anyway).

It's all about price fixing and collusion.

I don't really give a shit about physical stores that have been playing the rip off game for years. They should die, the free market is killing their business model because something better for the consumer is available. This is the choice that free markets and capitalism is supposed to provide when it's working.

Instead we have a complex cartel and government interfering to block consumer access to choice: you can't import any longer because of the region locking. Prices are remaining artificially high because the free market has been locked up to protect those old businesses that can no longer compete on fair terms.

We don't need these high price stores and distributors any more, all of the providers can be located in the country with the lowest overheads (and the tax issue could be eliminated entirely.)