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We'll be removing a number of games from the GOG.com catalog - here's your last call to get them with a special discount!

Today, we're here to honor the promise we gave you to announce ahead of time whenever we're taking a game down from sales. We wanted to give you one last chance to get the titles we're delisting with a considerable discount, and the partners involved agreed. There are 35 games on that list and you can get them all for up to 80% off until Tuesday, September 2, at 3:59AM GMT. Any title you buy will remain in your collection even after it's removed from our catalog, so you can always download and re-download the installers and bonus content. Check out the promo page to see which games this concerns.

We're still ironing out a few details. For now, the promo pages, like the one for the Last Chance Special, list all the game prices only in US dollars. But don't freak out: if you chose to use your local currency you will see the prices in local currency in checkout, and you can still finalize the transaction in local currency. We hope to have this issue fixed within the next weeks.
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Ragnarblackmane: I am really disappointed that so many excellent games are being removed. No way I can afford all of them now,eventually I'll have to get some on Steam.
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sqlrob: There's no "have to" about it. There's plenty of games I'd love to have that are on Steam. I've bought a grand total of none of them.
Ah ah, good one. Same here. I think regional pricing might not be to blame for Nordic Games departure since quite a few games just became regionally priced (Daedalic's, for instance). It's quite odd though, since several of the games being removed have been here for a very short time.

After going through the list there's not much there I'll pick up, if anything. The Gothic titles I already own. From the rest, there's maybe a dozen that I've looked into at one time or another, but the only ones I'm considering at this point are Painkiller and The Guild.
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Pangaea666: Seems to me the cheapasses are the people who jog on over to Steam to buy their DRM-filled filth because it's a little cheaper than here, and complain because GOG aren't d*ckheads that shaft their cusomters too (with DRM).
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micktiegs_8: Oh, you caught my post before I edited?
Must have... because what is stated there was very different to what I read :D
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Getcomposted: From what I've gathered, and I could be wrong, GOG wanted one price for all games, with conversion rates between all the currencies they now support. But some of the games were kind of region-locked into agreements with regional pricing sellers, so they couldn't come to an agreement with Nordic etc. about being allowed to sell the games worldwide at one price.

If they wanted to continue selling the games, those 35 would be regional priced and for GOG, that's just too many games.

They're standing by their principles and sticking to their "Fair Price promise - £1 does not equal $1".

So they agreed to disagree for the moment and are removing the problematic games. Hopefully, in the future, they will be able to reach a consensus and the games will come back to GOG.

[Edit: I'm using the term "regional pricing" incorrectly. But, essentially, one region is priced differently to another due to currency conversion and I think the companies withdrawing their games weren't able to agree to GOG's currency conversion rates, due to other existing agreements.]
I don't get it what the issue really was with Nordic if gog could regionally price all of these 23 games today and could not regionally price Nordic games.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by Matruchus
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BadDecissions: Like, a lot of people are blaming Nordic, but since Nordic was perfectly willing to sell their games at a single flat, world-wide price until GOG started flailing wildly with its pricing policies ("One world-wide price! More then one world-wide price! One world-wide price except when there isn't! Multiple world-wide prices, but we'll refund the difference! Uh ... one world-wide price, sometimes, and you can pay with your local currency, at a fair exchange rate, except when we can't offer a fair exchange rate? Somebody please help us, we have no idea what we're dooooooing!"), I'm going to assume this is basically GOG's fault.
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F4LL0UT: I tend to defend GOG most of the time but I must say, your post probably captures the situation pretty well. Considering what a mindfuck the pricing model is now I'm shocked that all other publishers are staying. The new pricing model is utter non-sense.
That's actually true - thinking about it that way, I'm actually kind of confused at what exactly the "main" policy they are trying to follow is anymore (in regards to pricing models that is). I think life would honestly be so much easier if it were still one, fair, world-wide price.
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Getcomposted: From what I've gathered, and I could be wrong, GOG wanted one price for all games, with conversion rates between all the currencies they now support. But some of the games were kind of region-locked into agreements with regional pricing sellers, so they couldn't come to an agreement with Nordic etc. about being allowed to sell the games worldwide at one price.

If they wanted to continue selling the games, those 35 would be regional priced and for GOG, that's just too many games.

They're standing by their principles and sticking to their "Fair Price promise - £1 does not equal $1".

So they agreed to disagree for the moment and are removing the problematic games. Hopefully, in the future, they will be able to reach a consensus and the games will come back to GOG.

[Edit: I'm using the term "regional pricing" incorrectly. But, essentially, one region is priced differently to another due to currency conversion and I think the companies withdrawing their games weren't able to agree to GOG's currency conversion rates, due to other existing agreements.]
Now this is an intelligent post that clarifies a few things, not that I'm surprised given who wrote it however. Cheers.
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FlamingFirewire: [...] I think life would honestly be so much easier if it were still one, fair, world-wide price.
Hear, hear!
Because I can't be arsed to read the whole thread I'll just throw my two cents out there, like a message in a bottle.

This, is most vexing. Nordic's scare-off is irritating and annoying, but little more than that. The site started off simply as good old games, and slowly expanded from that to include new indie releases and some medium-to-major titles.

Gog has a well deserved popularity both among its users and many indie developers as a viable alternative to Steam. Despite Steam's rolling (pardon the pun), GOG is here to stay. In fact gog has reason to be vastly more popular among its users (let's forget about the DRM issue for a second please) since the rumour mill hints that GOG has an actual quality control policy of sorts as opposed to Steam's apparently non-existant one.

I don't think we'll ever know the REAL reason for Nordic jumping ship. In my experience, corporate and office politics are all too often extremely petty. I would be extremely surprised if the reasons for the games dropping weren't so.

So in conclusion or as the cool kids say these days TL;DR: Nordic leaving and taking away all his toys can be seen as a dick move on their part, but I'm sure we'll soon get a dozen new guys with even shinier and more wonderful toys.

PS: Jack Keane, you shall be missed, but your legend will live on in our hearts.
Post edited August 28, 2014 by j0ekerr
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ALH: I'm sorry if i missed something but i had extra gift copies of Torchlight and AW: American Nightmare.Both have vanshied from my Gift List.Anyone else have this problem?
I had 1 torchlight game and 2 the witcher games, they were free when i got them and now they are gone from my gift list. They better fix it and fast.
Pricing needs to be up to the publisher. I'm here to build a DRM free collection, not to fund the chip on somebody's ideological shoulder. Leave pricing to the publishers.

All this foolishness does it make me not want to buy series games at GOG anymore, unless I have already played through them; because chances are I won't be able to complete the series unless I buy them all at once.

Case in point, Gothic. I never got around to playing the first game, so I have no idea if I'd want 2 and 3. Now I know I shouldn't have bought the first game to set aside for a rainy day; I should have waited until I was ready to play it.

Maybe I just don't need anymore games, but to me this is a huge disincentive to take part in the sales here or to try anything new on impulse.
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Accatone: It's not really about regional pricing; it's about GOG's own pricing scheme based on local currency payment options. G-Doc gave an explanation about the situation:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/last_chance_special/post226
And yet it is a bout regional pricing. Even if it's just a few cents regarding the exchange course. I'm still not sure whome to blame. Strange to see 35 games leave he catalogue while several games get a new regional (and often more expensive) price instead.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by PaterAlf
Now that's sad news that games are being pulled out of gog catalog, I hate news like that.... But thank you for looking after us gamers and giving a big discount as well - I bought Penumbra Collection for the second time and maybe one day I will finally play it for the first time...
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G-Doc: ...we're following the simple truth that $1 does not equal 1€, in other words, that 1:1 currency exchange rate for digital goods prices make absolutely no sense and are not fair to the buyers... we're starting to use our own pricing scheme that brings the value of non-US Dollar prices as close to their actual equivalents as we can help it. A game with $5.99 price tag - for example - will cost 4.49 Euro, 3.69 Pounds Sterling, 6.49 Australian Dollars, and 219 Roubles respectively... publisher friends had other obligations that made it impossible to reach a common ground...
G-doc's reply is still vague.

It's obvious GOG is allowing regional pricing in many cases so that alone is not the dealbreaker. Maybe the issue is that Nordic Games wanted 1:1 currency exchange (this seems to mirror SpellForce 1's Steam price model) seen by GOG as too steep (markup could be 60% difference in regional price) especially since GOG is offering store credit for the price difference. Currently, with Blackguards, the highest GOG regional markup is not more than ~32% price difference (Germany has $59.39 Blackguards, US is $44.99).

We know Nordic Games did not previously require regional pricing (because they have continually added to GOG at one price) so it's not clear why Nordic would suddenly would demand regional differences. One possibility is that discrete differences in GOG's standard regional price tiers was an objection (prices range up to $0.12 by currency per $5.99 purchase).

Also, it's likely GOG has a contract to sell titles for a duration (i.e. Bohemian titles expiring) and G-Doc says GOG removed the titles, not Nordic. Potentially GOG could continue to sell the titles at whatever rate was previously agreed if pricing alone is an issue.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by undeadcow
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Bavarian: ...it seems they [Nordic] prefer not selling their games at all to selling them at a decent price without ripping off European customers.
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undeadcow: G-Doc says GOG removed these titles, not Nordic. Also, we don't know that this is related to regional pricing because other games like Blackguards have wildly different pricing by region on GOG as an example of many games that today have new regional price variances.
Perhaps my English isn't good enough, but what I read out of G-Doc's statement is that they couldn't find an agreement on regional pricing. I assume GOG can't bear to come up for the discrepancy in prices Nordic asks for (a.k.a. Fair Pricing Package). So they had no other choice but to remove the games from sale.

Of course this is just an assumption, and as others already said, this situation is partly GOG's fault, because of how they handled the whole regional pricing debacle. But to me the question remains: Why are EA, Ubisoft and Activision still here, while Nordic has to leave?
That's pretty much terrible. GOG without Gothic 2 just doesn't feel like GOG anymore. :(

And it's also so sad, because GOG and Nordic Games always seemed to have a really good relationship, and I was actually excited for many more titles from Nordic Games to come. i was certain that we would see Titan Quest and Darksiders here.

I just hope they can sort this out soon. I would really appreciate it if Thom could drop a comment here, he always seemed to care about the forum. Maybe he can clear some things up.
Sad to see so many great titles leave, but thanks for the advanced notice and excellent sale to pick up all that I am missing. And goodbye to Nordic, you will be missed. :(