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Hey Goggers;

As many of you know, we announced on last Friday that we are going to introduce regional pricing for 3 new games coming up on GOG.com soon. Looking at the amount of reactions (over 3,500 comments at this very moment), it is obvious that this change is making many of you guys worried. We must have failed to clearly explain why our pricing policy for (some) newer games will change and what this means as a matter of fact for our PC & MAC classic games, which account for over 80% of our catalogue.

To be honest, our announcement was a bit vague simply because our future pricing policy is not 100% set in stone yet and we were just worried to make any promises before it was. You know, GOG.com has been growing quickly (thanks to you!), and the more we grow, the more we are worried to make some of you guys disappointed. This is why we were so (over-)cautious with our announcement.

We should have just been upfront about why we've made these changes and what they mean for us in the future and what we're planning. So let's talk. To be clear: what I'm talking about below is our plan. It's a plan that we believe we can accomplish, but while it's what we want to do with GOG, it may change some before it actually sees the light of day. Please don’t blame me for talking open-heartedly today and telling you about the plans and pricing policy we want to fight for and eventually achieve. The below plans aren't sure. The only guarantee I can give you is that we’ll do our best to fight for gamers while still making sure GOG.com as a whole grows (because well, we still want to be around 50 years from now, you know!). So, enough for the introduction, let’s get things started.

Why does GOG.com need to offer newer games at all?

We've been in business for 5 years now, and we've signed a big percentage of all of the classic content that can be legally untangled. There are still some big companies left we're trying to bring into the GOG.com fold, like LucasArts, Microsoft, Take2 and Bethesda, but what classic titles will we sign in the future once we have those partners on-board? We need to sign newer games or else just fire everyone and keep selling the same limited catalog. Either we bring you “not so old” releases from 2010+ or brand-new AAA titles, because these will become classic games tomorrow. It’s as simple as that.

Also, well, we want to expand beyond just classic games, hence the fact we have been offering you brand-new indie releases for almost 2 years now. Why expanding? Well, obviously, because the more games we sell, the more legitimacy we have on the market and the more likely it is that we can achieve our mission: making all PC & MAC video games 100% DRM-free, whether classic or brand-new titles.

To be straightforward (excuse my French):DRM is shit-- we'll never have any of it. It treats legitimate customers like rubbish and pirates don't have to bother with it. It's bad for gamers, and it's also bad for business and our partners. We want to make it easy and convenient for users to buy and play games; rather than give piracy a try. Happy gamers equals a healthy gaming industry; and this is what we fight for. Anyway, I am sure you well know our opinions about DRM.

To make the world of gaming DRM-free, we need to convince top-tier publishers & developers to give us a try with new games, just like they did with classic games. We need to make more case studies for the gaming industry, just like we successfully did back in 2011 with The Witcher 2. It was our first ever 100% DRM-free AAA day-1 release. GOG.com was the 2nd best-selling digital distribution platform worldwide for this title thanks to you guys, despite having regional prices for it. We need more breakthroughs like this to be able to show all the devs and publishers in our industry that DRM-free digital distribution is actually good for their business and their fans. And when I say breakthroughs, I am talking about really kick-ass games, with a potential metacritic score of 85% or more, AA+ and AAA kind of titles.

And this is exactly why we signed those 3 games we told you about last Friday. We believe those 3 games can be massive hits for hardcore gamers, that they can help us spread the DRM-free model among the industry for newer games and we did our best to convince their rights holders to give GOG.com a try. One of those games, as you see already, is Age of Wonders 3. We're planning more titles even beyond these first 3 soon.

Alright, but why is regional pricing needed for those (only 3 so far!) newer games then?

First of all, you have to be aware of an important fact when it comes to newer games: GOG.com cannot really decide what the prices should be. Top-tier developers and publishers usually have contractual obligations with their retail partners that oblige them to offer the game at the same price digitally and in retail. When they don’t have such contractual obligations, they are still encouraged to do so, or else their games might not get any exposure on the shelves in your favorite shops. This will change over time (as digital sales should overtake retail sales in the near future), but as of today, this is still a problem our industry is facing because retail is a big chunk of revenue and there’s nothing GOG.com can do to change that. We need to charge the recommended retail price for the boxed copies of the games in order for developers (or publishers) to either not get sued or at least get their games visible on shelves. You may recall that our sister company CD Projekt RED got sued for that in the past and we don’t want our partners to suffer from that too.

On top of that, you have to know that there are still many top-tier devs and publishers that are scared about DRM-free gaming. They're half-convinced it will make piracy worse, and flat pricing means that we're also asking them to earn less, too. Earn less, you say? Why is that? Well, when we sell a game in the EU or UK, VAT gets deducted from the price before anyone receives any profit. That means we're asking our partners to try out DRM-free gaming and at the same time also earn 19% - 25% less from us. Other stores, such as Steam, price their games regionally and have pricing that's more equitable to developers and publishers. So flat pricing + DRM-Free is something many devs and publishers simply refuse. Can you blame them? The best argument we can make to convince a publisher or developer to try DRM-Free gaming is that it earns money. Telling them to sacrifice income while they try selling a game with no copy protection is not a way to make that argument.

Getting back to those 3 new upcoming games coming up. The first one is Age of Wonders 3, which you can pre-order right now on GOG.com. The next 2 ones will be Divine Divinity: Original Sin and The Witcher 3. We’re very excited to offer those games DRM-free worldwide and we hope you’ll love them.

Still, we know some countries are really being screwed with regional pricing (Western Europe, UK, Australia) and as mentioned above, we’ll do our very best, for every release of a new game, to convince our partners to offer something special for the gamers living there.

And don’t forget guys: if regional pricing for those few big (as in, “AA+”) new games is a problem for you, you can always wait. In a few months. The game will be discounted on sale, and at 60, 70, or 80% off, the price difference will be minimal indeed. In a few years it will become a classic in its own right, and then we have the possibility to to make it flat-priced anyway (read next!) The choice is always yours. All we are after is to present it to you 100% DRM-free. We are sure you will make the best choice for yourself, and let others enjoy their own freedom to make choices as well.

So, what is going to happen with classic games then?

Classic content accounts for about 80% of our catalog, so yes, this is a super important topic. We've mentioned here above that we can’t control prices for new games, but we do have a lot of influence when it comes to classic games. GOG.com is the store that made this market visible and viable digitally, and we're the ones who established the prices we charge. We believe that we have a good record to argue for fair pricing with our partners.

So let's talk about the pricing for classics that we're shooting for. For $5.99 classics, we would like to make the games 3.49 GBP, 4.49 EUR, 199 RUB, and $6.49 AUD. For $9.99 classics, our targets are 5.99 GBP, 7.49 EUR, 349 RUB, and $10.99 AUD. This is what we’ve got in mind at the moment. We’ll do our best to make that happen, and we think it will. How? Well, we have made our partners quite happy with GOG.com's sales for years - thanks to you guys :). We have created a global, legal, successful digital distribution market of classics for them. This market didn't exist 5 years ago. By (re)making all those games compatible with modern operating systems for MAC and PC, we've made forgotten games profitable again. When it comes to classic games, we can tell them that we know more about this market than anyone. :) Being retrogaming freaks ourselves, we know that 5.99 EUR or GBP is crazy expensive for a classic game (compared to 5.99 USD). We have always argued that classic games only sell well if they have reasonable prices. Unfair regional pricing equals piracy and that’s the last thing anybody wants.

What’s next?

We will do our very best to make all of the above happen. This means three things:

First, we will work to make our industry go DRM-free in the future for both classic and new games (that’s our mission!).

Second, we will fight hard to have an attractive offer for those AA+ new games for our European, British and Australian users, despite regional pricing that we have to stick to.

Third, we will switch to fair local pricing for classic games, as I mentioned above.

TheEnigmaticT earlier mentioned that he would eat his hat if we ever brought DRM to GOG.com. I'm going to go one step further: by the end of this year, I'm making the promise that we will have converted our classic catalog over to fair regional pricing as outlined above. If not, we'll set up a record a video of some horrible public shaming for me, TheEnigmaticT, and w0rma. In fact, you know what? Feel free to make suggestions below for something appropriate (but also safe enough that we won't get the video banned on YouTube) so you feel that we're motivated to get this done quickly. I'll pick one that's scary enough from the comments below and we'll let you know which one we're sticking to.

I hope that this explanation has helped ease your worry a bit and help you keep your faith in GOG.com as a place that's different, awesome, and that always fights for what's best for gamers. If you have any questions, comments or ideas, feel free to address them to us below and TheEnigmaticT and I will answer them to the best of our abilities tomorrow. We hear you loud and clear, so please do continue sharing your feedback with us. At the end of the day GOG.com is your place; without you guys it would just be a website where a few crazy people from Europe talk about old games. :)

I end many of my emails with this, but there's rarely a time to use it more appropriately than here:

“Best DRM-free wishes,

Guillaume Rambourg,
(TheFrenchMonk)
Managing Director -- GOG.com”
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cmdr_flashheart: Can you get them DRM-free, though? I am hoping that GOG brings more DRM-free big and AAA titles.
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paulrainer: but these 3 games arent even triple A games - they are in all honesty a bit shitty
- i mean whoever at GOG thought that selling out to get these games was a good i dea needs to be beaten until they turn blue with their own shoes.
TW3 definitely counts as AAA, and as for AOW3 and DOS, they're both excellent games/series; tastes differ, I suppose. Certainly, all this drama is making some people not look favourably on them, but in the end, the awesomeness of the games will speak for themselves, I guess.

edit for your edit: I disagree, but it's okay- different types of game players can co-exist, lol.
Post edited February 26, 2014 by cmdr_flashheart
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pds41: Guillaume - I appreciate the honesty of your email and agree that I'd like to see new DRM free games here, so can accept regional pricing on those to start with.

However, I struggle to see why you would want to move to regional pricing for the classics unless you're being forced to. At the moment, pricing is inherently fair to the purchaser - everyone pays the same amount of USD. I'm a Brit and I don't mind paying in USD; indeed I would rather continue paying in USD than having a GBP price based an exchange rate at a fixed point in time.

I don't see how this new pricing scheme for classic games benefits me.
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TheFrenchMonk: Hi pds41,

Regional pricing means that your bank will not charge you extra fees to convert your purchase from USD to GBP i.e. we can guarantee that what you see is what you pay. That's good for you guys in my humble opinion.

On top of that, well, there are lots of European/British/Australian gamers out there who are worried to buy anything in USD on the internet, because their bank account is in a different currency. By having local currencies, we will be able to make them feel safer about GOG and have more retrogaming fans on GOG. Even among my circle of French friends, there are people who constantly tell me "5.99 EUR for a classic game, really?" and I am like "no, it's 5.99 USD, which is 4.something EUR". These are exactly the kind of people we also need to make feel more comfortable about GOG.com.
And yet you don't give a crap about those of us in the US that are paying in USD and being charged a foreign transaction fee because your bank isn't in the US.

Honestly, this all seems like rationalization rather than anything legitimate. I can't understand how tossing out the last vestiges of your credibility is going to convince people that you're trustworthy.
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HenitoKisou: Not true, did you read all pages? Blue text posts are still here and are reasonable. However there are several people who overreact for the worse, like steam community mindless folk who don't have their own opinion only repeat tried and true slogans.
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Lilim: Blue text posts? All 4 of them? All posted within an hour from the letter itself :-)

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing/?staff=yes
Tbh if I was on the GoG team I would have given up replying because no matter what they say it isn't going to be good enough.
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Ichwillnichtmehr: Google Translate:

Come here a Pole, not the Englishman did not even know the living conditions in Poland. Strzeliliście themselves in the foot this idiotic move, congratulations.
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Lilim: Google translate has some major problems with Polish ;-) Let me get it for you:

Give us a Pole here, not an Englishman who doesn't know a thing about living conditions in Poland. You've shot yourselves in the foot with this dumb move, congratulations.
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Lilim: Not that I agree with the above, just translating.
are there any poles left in poland ? i thought the whole country moved to the uk to claim benefits ;P
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Ichwillnichtmehr: I guess that begs the question:

"Does GOG.com know it's customer base?"
It can swing both ways, I'd personally prefer they ditch uniform pricing if it means they can introduce AAA titles to their catalogs, not that I'll be buying them right out of the gate, but I like the notion of newer games being DRM-free, not just aging titles that have already seen the bulk of their sales.

Given how variable the economy is worldwide, I'm not sure uniform pricing makes much sense to be quite honest.
Post edited February 26, 2014 by Magnitus
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spyder256: What??!! Why??! All this over 3 fucking games. What a bunch of melodramatic bull shit.
Then you don't understand. It's not a matter of 3 games. First it was DLCs, and they promised that DRM-Free and no regional prices would stay. Then they give up on regional prices, but they promise it's only for 3 games. Then in a few days ALL games are getting regional prices, including old ones, but they promise the prices will be fair.
It's not a matter of 3 games. It's a matter of trust. Nobody trusts a liar. If they keep promising and then they continuously betray those promises, i think it's only logical that people won't trust them anymore.
Maybe tomorrow it will be DRMs. You can't tell, since their promises obviously have no value whatsoever.
And since my only means of expressing my disappointment with this kind of behaviour which i think is unfair is actively boycott them by not buying their games anymore and convince other people to do so, i'll stop buying and i'll write down my complaints on the forums.
It's not being melodramatic. It's being logical. Maybe you are used to being scammed and be ok with it, i don't know. But myself, i always complain when i think something is unfair. No matter if it's a webstore applying unfair policies, a train being late, or a prime minister not elected by citizens being put in charge of my country for the 3rd time in 3 years. I will express my freedom of speech by complaining.
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Lilim: Blue text posts? All 4 of them? All posted within an hour from the letter itself :-)

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing/?staff=yes
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boldee: Tbh if I was on the GoG team I would have given up replying because no matter what they say it isn't going to be good enough.
This.
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Lilim: Blue text posts? All 4 of them? All posted within an hour from the letter itself :-)

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing/?staff=yes
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Magnitus: Well, they can't pay someone full time just to manage this thread. There are over 1.5k posts at this point and I expect, quite a lot of repetition from posters who don't feel like reading the content of the 1.5k posts that preceeded theirs.
Sure, that's understandable and 100% correct. Yet if you encourage the community to ask questions and claim to provide at least some answers "tomorrow" (that is today) - you shouldn't be surprised that some people actually believed you on that and are waiting for at least a little something in that regard.
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Lilim: Blue text posts? All 4 of them? All posted within an hour from the letter itself :-)

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing/?staff=yes
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boldee: Tbh if I was on the GoG team I would have given up replying because no matter what they say it isn't going to be good enough.
You'd probably also know better than to respond with condescending bullshit. It's a bit like trying to put a fire out by throwing more flammable materials in hopes of appeasing it into voluntarily stopping the burning.

It's a matter of them giving us more and more PR bullshit when the dishonesty and PR bullshit is what caused this furor in the first place.
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Ichwillnichtmehr: Google Translate:

Come here a Pole, not the Englishman did not even know the living conditions in Poland. Strzeliliście themselves in the foot this idiotic move, congratulations.
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Lilim: Google translate has some major problems with Polish ;-) Let me get it for you:

Give us a Pole here, not an Englishman who doesn't know a thing about living conditions in Poland. You've shot yourselves in the foot with this dumb move, congratulations.
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Lilim: Not that I agree with the above, just translating.
Thanks for the translation.
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Wolfsherz: So, you take a lot of words to tell European Customers that the prices on GOG actually increase.

$9.99 is not €7,49! ==> Should be €7,26
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TheEnigmaticT: You mean to tell me that your currency exchange fees are less than 26 eurocents?
YES!!! Well, NO!!! :)) The thing is, I pay exchange fees for both euros and dollars, so I would prefer to pay them for cheaper game in dollars;-)
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Magnitus: Well, they can't pay someone full time just to manage this thread. There are over 1.5k posts at this point and I expect, quite a lot of repetition from posters who don't feel like reading the content of the 1.5k posts that preceeded theirs.
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Lilim: Sure, that's understandable and 100% correct. Yet if you encourage the community to ask questions and claim to provide at least some answers "tomorrow" (that is today) - you shouldn't be surprised that some people actually believed you on that and are waiting for at least a little something in that regard.
Indeed, they haven't really given us any answers that make things look any better. In fact, the answers they've given us are mostly vague and the ones that aren't vague are even worse that we were assuming.
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boldee: Tbh if I was on the GoG team I would have given up replying because no matter what they say it isn't going to be good enough.
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hedwards: You'd probably also know better than to respond with condescending bullshit. It's a bit like trying to put a fire out by throwing more flammable materials in hopes of appeasing it into voluntarily stopping the burning.

It's a matter of them giving us more and more PR bullshit when the dishonesty and PR bullshit is what caused this furor in the first place.
Yes it might be PR bullshit but in all honesty would you bang your head against the wall posting? Thinking about a reply from GoG I think I would prefer to see a response once they have read all of the posts here, if the posts slow down of course. However as I have said earlier and been insulted for it there is a lot of complaining here for the sake of complaining without what seems to be a complete understanding of the situation, those posts aside there are some good legitimate posts that should be replied to addressing the concerns, ok we may be PR bullshit again who knows but replying in the forum seems to be pointless while people seem so aggressively upset in some cases.
Post edited February 26, 2014 by boldee
corporate suicide in action
Damn, I though we are talking about three games, but the entire catalog is at risk :(
So let's talk about the pricing for classics that we're shooting for. For $5.99 classics, we would like to make the games 3.49 GBP, 4.49 EUR, 199 RUB, and $6.49 AUD. For $9.99 classics, our targets are 5.99 GBP, 7.49 EUR, 349 RUB, and $10.99 AUD.
Unless we will be able to choose it will turn really bad after year or two because exchange rates change...