All business and business people are inherently corrupt, that is why contracts and regulations were invented, and why we should always be cautious, and diligent when dealing with, and in business transactions with business people. In this instance, the blame should be directed toward the corrupted system of finance and banking that is the foundation of moral decay and confidence ruin in all things we rely on today.

While I also feel the gut wrenching of loss by these titles being withdrawn from the GoG catalog, I do appreciate having the notification of removal and opportunity to get games from this last chance sale that we might have had a passing interested in but not yet bought.

And I look forward to the day when many of these issues can be resolved, with Nordic Games and other publishers will find a way to return those lost titles back into the catalog. There is always a way to make things work, when people work together against the ruthless pursuit of profit of blind business motives.

Also, I'm still reserving some hope for Titan Quest gold to make it here, among other Nordic Games titles... :P

Take two at responding as the forum after my last response which was in quite some detail :(

Removing the business-speak and boiling the NG message down to the essence we have the following:

1) Whilst GOG only showed a price in $ it was equal to the other stores in that currency. The extra being charged to £/€ customers was hidden effectively.
2) Now GOG is showing the translated local price it is too apparent of the extra being charged on the other stores.
3) we have to make a decision which stores to keep for the alleged level playing field for our partners.
4) The GOG market segment is tiny compared to these others (Steam and offline) so we'd rather upset them and their customers than the others.
5) Even with the regional pricing GOG has introduced the store credit would make it appear cheaper here and upset our other partners.

TL:DR; There's not enough people buying our stuff at GOG compared to elsewhere to care about us here.

You do realize you are part of the problem yes ?

But as said before I'm all for a poll or vote from GOG just so we have clarity on this matter.

Thanks a lot for the clarification ThomNG. It saddens me to hear the reasons for the removal of the games. Although I'm glad you still support this site it just doesn't sound like these games will ever return to GOG's shelves.

Ditto. Though I fear that will never happen...

So, since US prices are listed without taxes, does that mean VAT is being dynamically added to prices when they're displayed in other currencies since by law you have to list them with tax?

Or did you just apply a defacto 25% price hike to all products in the store?

Or are people from North America just implicitly being charged more?

People seem to forget that part of the reason regional pricing exists is because not all countries require taxes to be listed as part of the price. For instance, neither the US or Canada require prices to be listed with taxes.

Sup, i like very much the local pricing stuff, but if the local pricing sutf may hold back a non-drm game, i hope GOG will still accept the game and sell it in U$D or whatever the guys want, to me it's not a problem to have mixed currencies since GOG's way will surely be a fair way for gamers.

I would like to thanks Nordic Games for being honest with us, I respect that you took the time to explain why to us, that's rare, most just don't care to explain or bring bullshit.

Best regards.

It seems the issue is that specific to currency Nordic will not sell Spellforce Platinum for 9.99 pounds on Steam and but ~6 pounds (or $9.99 equivalent) on GOG because they'd see that as preferential treatment.

Since currency rates vary so frequently Nordic cannot track the exchange changes so they just price their games near $9.99 = 8.99 pounds = 9.99 euro, etc out of convenience (even if the actual currency difference can be as much as 60% in price).

There are some examples of inconsistencies, such as Desperadoes sells for $4.99 on Steam but $5.99 (closer to UK rate) on GOG, which suggests Nordic is willing to vary somewhat but maybe in this case GOG and Nordic could not agree despite GOG now allowing regional pricing (possibly because GOG refunds regional price differences so changes greater than GOG's 30% profit from each sale costs GOG money).

I just made a wish with my proposal of USD lock

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/make_a_usd_lock_for_games_with_pricing_issues

Please if you agree, vote for it.

I live in the us and don't get charged tax in my state.

Setting certain titles to $ only would certainly be a novel, amusing and valid way out of this contractual mess...

And that wasn't real honesty - that was PR bullshit ... Everything he said about making a level plaything field so all stores the same cost and no one gets an unfair advantage over the others is nonsense - otherwise logically they could never have had theses titles in the first place... And it certainly would have come up in the 5 years they have been here... The Guild 1 was the first game I bought here to give some idea how long that has been in the store only to be pulled now... And if it was that much an issue it also would have come up with the recent black mirror releases which are not even on gogwiki...

Makes some sense I suppose.
Nice to see a response on the forum as well.

That's the part I kinda don't understand, the prices on GOG for Nordic games have been flat for a while, the only difference now is that GOG has non US prices too.
Does GOG require absolutely accurate exchange rate prices that change on a daily basis ? That would be somewhat silly.

Better steam prices for games nowadays don't surprise me much. Some are just more equal than others.

No one in the United States pays tax on GOG items because GOG is an international/foreign company not obligated to pay US tax (that may change when GOG opens a headquarters in US, expected next year). Not sure if this exempts other locations from tax, etc similarly.

No, it was one of the reasons. Now it's the only one left.