Yeah they are but its different when a game is pirated from a store that was founded in order to fight piracy by selling drm-free games. I mean you need to really be twisted and sick to pirate gog games.

GOG already made a test with The Witcher 2, the first version found on torrents was no theirs, but a version with DRM, of course it was cracked, the thing is, pirate distributors enjoy cracking DRM, they take it as a game, a challenge, and since DRM treats customers like criminals (I am looking at you Diablo III) actualy some people will pick piracy only when there is not a DRM free alternative.
That would be my case, I make an oath, on the grave of my Grandfather, that I will never download a pirate copy of a game that is available on GOG at that moment, however, if it is not available (and maybe will never be) then I feel no guilt, it is the devs fault for not joining the DRM free crusade.

DRM treats the users as criminals, so why bothering with being treated as one without being one, I preffer to attone my sins once a game is released on GOG rather than buying it on Steam or, god forbids, Origin (I don't realy have anything against other retailers yet, but in such cases the game must be DRM free too).

If GOG versions of the pirated games were the norm, then in stead of a large and almost steady growing fanbase of loyalists, there would be a handfull of customers with many exploiting the DRM free system, but turns out it is not the case, with its reasonable prices (in comparisson to the competitors), its nice discounts, and its DRM free policy GOG attracts many customers who otherwise would opt for piracy, and they know it.

It would be silly to expect GOG games not to be pirated. There will always be people that just pirate for the sake of it.

They're not lost customers though since they wouldn't buy the game no matter what.

It's the ones that pirate because there's no attractive option to them/are appaled by the business practices that you want to get.
And so far I'd say GoG has done a decent job at that.

I don't know but I really don't like such stuff like this: http://btdigg.org/search?info_hash=32bbeb3c75f664e250619c54a7ac56a894cfd240&q=good%20old%20games%20pack%201

Very true, apparently a lot of people even pirate things that are freely downloadable from the retail websites.

Free GOG games like Ultima 4 have probably been downloaded from pirate sites numerous times

Yep, from what I've heard mass uploaders actually make money from some of the host sites.

Ummm... didn't I already say the exact same thing?

Yah One click hosters usually give some small amount of money per so and so many downloads of files you upload for example.

Which beer?

Joking apart, I'm abandonning this, noone is blinder than the one who doesn't want to see: those are NOT the same things! You cannot live on videogames, can't eat or drink them, they cannot protect you from harsh weather!

You want more buying power for luxury items? Get a better economy management and improve your country! Every country in Europe should do that... don't encourage wild capitalism though... like unfair pricing! :)

It's a difficult balance, to make as many games available as possible while keeping both users and publishers happy. I hope many of the big games come here because I'm buying all my games on GOG now. I was planning to only buy maybe 5-10 games when I joined and now it's over 100.

I'm sure GOG do what they can to convince publishers and maybe the new pricing and Galaxy client is what is needed to bring them over. If that's what it takes to bring majority of the publishers then I can accept that as long as I get DRM-free games. If the price is too high I can wait for a discount.

But yes, I think GOG has showed the way how to deal with piracy especially with releasing Witcher games without any DRM. That's a good sign of faith in gamers and the no-DRM business practice.

So what about the support und updates for the titles which will be removed from GOG? What if some crappy Windoofus update suddenly causes i.e. Gothic 2 to crash all the time?

And I do agree with this. But to continue the above Linux example, speak out against Unity/KDE/Gnome, not against Linux.
My reasoning is that a Luxury item should cost someone the same number of hours at minimum wage, no matter the country. If someone has to work 20 hours to buy a luxury item while someone else has to work 100 hours, then that price is not fair. The $US price may be the same in both cases, but the wage is not.

Or, to put it another way, there was a study at some point comparing the number of hours a McDonalds worker had to work to be able to afford a Big Mac. That number should have been a constant, but it wasn't. So why should someone require more work hours to buy the same thing? Isn't that unfair pricing?

Actually there's good reason why physical goods in different countries cost more.
Labour/wages/Ingredients costs vary from country to country. A beer made in america should be more expensive than one in poland(although the polish one probably tastes better :P)

Of course the whole thing is mostly undermined by globalization buying and producing out of country where it's cheapest but still selling for the highest price possible.

The same just doesn't hold true for a product that's pretty cost free to duplicate and where the wage costs are pretty flat
(I assume GoG has international servers, but so far no international offices.)

If anything games should be priced by where they are made, not where they are sold.

Yup. I know some guys who download pirated games from GOG, even though they could very well afford them.
The reason is plain and simple. They're so used to piracy that they think it's almost a "given right" of them to acquire pirated stuff.

It's twisted and greedy, yes.

I admit that I once pirated a game from GOG... Xenonauts. I downloaded it because I wanted to see how the game worked out.
I enjoyed the gameplay. And as soon as the game gets a promotion I'll buy it from GOG.

quote Seducemepzl: Now I feel like GOG has no future because of a vocal minority of first-world Europeans and Australians who don't want to pay their normal local prices for games. Maybe I'm biased being American, but consider that I don't complain that Russians and others pay less for games. I don't complain that Europeans have received a GOG discount equal to their VAT (15-25%) for years. What I care about is DRM-free games and a better future for gamers. Prices are almost irrelevant; I can wait for a sale if a price isn't attractive to me.




I really find it quite arrogant from the citizens of U.S.A. to proclaim, how they believe regional pricing is fine, how they agree with it and how they state that the "first world" European and Australians who disagree with paying substantially higher prices are just a vocal minority.

just to inform you, a great part of Europe consist of Eastern European countries, where people live and earn not first world wages and lifes, where the standard of living is lower than in U.S.A. but that's not the point.

The point is, that people not affected by being ripped of on regular basis by companies, vote loudly for the rip off and condemn people affected for opposing it.

/satire

MY PROPOSAL for GOG future, that would bring GOG more money in general and safeguard its future in monetary means: USING FLAT PRICING BASED ON THE HIGHEST REGIONAL PRICE

that way, U.S.A. citizens and other cheapskates from low regional priced countries (i use your way of describing people who don't want to pay unwarranted high prices and being ripped of) can contribute to the survival of GOG and their financial situation the same way as European and Australian citizens. = now you might argue, but because the money paid by the European and Australian citizens goes for good part directly to the wallets of publishers instead of GOG, you might be the one, to contribute more to GOG survival and that might seem unfair. Well it would NOT be unfair, because you all state, how you are willing to pay so much more and would accept rip off pricing contrary to the cheap Europeans and Australians.


So for the record, I am all for paying the rip of prices for the games, if EVERYBODY pays them, even if that means, rewarding greedy publishers for ripping people of, just because they reside outside of U.S.A and R.F. (the main reason, the publisher don't dare ask for ridiculous pricing in United States and Russia is, that both countries are giant countries and regional powers = otherwise it would be logical, to ask FIRST WORLD country U.S.A citizens to pay regional high prices like us)


p.s. i am non native speaker, so my formulations might be harder to understand, but i hope, you people get what i mean


to sum it up- please reintroduce the flat pricing BUT with the highest regional price as base for the flat price, that way, we would keep the games greedy publishers want to take away from here or get new ones and GOG would keep the difference between low regional price and flat price (joke)