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General discussion (archive)<b>Letter from the M.D.</b>: About Regional Pricing(5517 posts) (5517 posts) 
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 25, 2014
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”
Posted February 27, 2014
high rated
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skeletonbow: Either way, there is a finite limit of "old" or "classic" games no matter where someone draws the line and thus a hard limit of how much a company selling such games can expand and produce ongoing profit. I think the way GOG started out was a fantastic concept and very brilliant personally, but for a growing company to want to expand beyond their initial vision makes sense to me.
But does gogs current catalogue truly look like it's reaching the end of the supply? Is it really only "LucasArts, Microsoft, Take2 and Bethesda" that's left, and then nothing?
Even assuming that's it (which is ludicrous to me), what about finally doing something about Amiga? I'm not arguing against newer games, but I have a hard time buying into the notion that gog would have to "fire everybody and stop expanding the catalogue" after they get Doom, Grim Fandango and Age of Empires.

I dunno, all I see is Night Dive apparently working on getting Harvester and gog introducing regional pricing for The Witcher 3 and it just feels off.
Posted February 27, 2014
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Selderij: <span class="bold">Business strategy meeting at GOG.com headquarters.</span>
Regardless of anyone's individual views about the recent changes, that is absolutely hilarious! I think even GOG.com would appreciate the humour in that, seriously. You gotta laugh at yourself sometimes even if painted in a bad light in such a manner. I disagree with the premise of course, but that made me bust a gut and I thank you for it. ;o)
Posted February 27, 2014
high rated
The only thing GOG will respond to would be a drop in profits, particularly a substantial one. They did this to increase profits of course and I'm sure expected stormy seas followed by calm and the money rolling in. I imagine that is what they are banking on here.

I have no idea what total percent of customers are negatively impacted by this new deal but I imagine GOG knows and was mindful of that before deciding to go ahead with this. In other words, I don't see them changing it and like I said elsewhere since core values are actually just bullshit, I expect games with DRM are next once they hit the next revenue ceiling which can only be broken by selling those too. After all, hitting a revenue ceiling was the real reason for abandoning this so-called core value. They wanted to grow and that is mentioned in the letter we just got. What does grow really mean? It means to grow profits of course.

It amazes me how some people still cling to the idea that these guys can be trusted to keep their word about anything when they just didn't do that. The videos where they go on and on about regional pricing being evil are pretty damning stuff and yet people will actually believe they won't break other promises. I think they are in denial myself. I guess it will at some point all come down to whether GOG becomes satisfied with a certain amount of revenue and will retain DRM-free or if they want to grow further and sell everything that everybody else carries and make more money which will require them to ditch that too. I kind of find it hard to believe a business will deliberately choose to make less money because of some holy crusade myself. People will argue in response to this but then why would anybody buy from GOG? They'd be shooting themselves in the foot abandoning the most important thing that makes them different. My response to that would be, so what? Nobody else does it and they are still in business.

Just because the business was grown with the help of the anti-drm crowd and those that valued fair pricing worldwide doesn't mean they have to stick to that forever once they get bigger I hate to say. Once they are big enough they can get away with throwing those folks under the bus in pursuit of ever more profit. It's the normal way of business isn't it? Whatever makes the most money wins?

Mission statements are nice and all but they evolve over time to suit the ultimate goal of every single for- profit business under the sun - to make the most money possible.
Posted February 27, 2014
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dirtyharry50: The only thing GOG will respond to would be a drop in profits, particularly a substantial one. They did this to increase profits of course and I'm sure expected stormy seas followed by calm and the money rolling in. I imagine that is what they are banking on here.

I have no idea what total percent of customers are negatively impacted by this new deal but I imagine GOG knows and was mindful of that before deciding to go ahead with this. In other words, I don't see them changing it and like I said elsewhere since core values are actually just bullshit, I expect games with DRM are next once they hit the next revenue ceiling which can only be broken by selling those too. After all, hitting a revenue ceiling was the real reason for abandoning this so-called core value. They wanted to grow and that is mentioned in the letter we just got. What does grow really mean? It means to grow profits of course.

It amazes me how some people still cling to the idea that these guys can be trusted to keep their word about anything when they just didn't do that. The videos where they go on and on about regional pricing being evil are pretty damning stuff and yet people will actually believe they won't break other promises. I think they are in denial myself. I guess it will at some point all come down to whether GOG becomes satisfied with a certain amount of revenue and will retain DRM-free or if they want to grow further and sell everything that everybody else carries and make more money which will require them to ditch that too. I kind of find it hard to believe a business will deliberately choose to make less money because of some holy crusade myself. People will argue in response to this but then why would anybody buy from GOG? They'd be shooting themselves in the foot abandoning the most important thing that makes them different. My response to that would be, so what? Nobody else does it and they are still in business.

Just because the business was grown with the help of the anti-drm crowd and those that valued fair pricing worldwide doesn't mean they have to stick to that forever once they get bigger I hate to say. Once they are big enough they can get away with throwing those folks under the bus in pursuit of ever more profit. It's the normal way of business isn't it? Whatever makes the most money wins?

Mission statements are nice and all but they evolve over time to suit the ultimate goal of every single for- profit business under the sun - to make the most money possible.
That was a very depressing read. I hope you're wrong, but most the time that seems to be how things eventually end up (*cough* Blizzard/GMG/etc.).
Posted February 27, 2014
high rated
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skeletonbow: Either way, there is a finite limit of "old" or "classic" games no matter where someone draws the line and thus a hard limit of how much a company selling such games can expand and produce ongoing profit. I think the way GOG started out was a fantastic concept and very brilliant personally, but for a growing company to want to expand beyond their initial vision makes sense to me.
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MoP: But does gogs current catalogue truly look like it's reaching the end of the supply? Is it really only "LucasArts, Microsoft, Take2 and Bethesda" that's left, and then nothing?
Even assuming that's it (which is ludicrous to me), what about finally doing something about Amiga? I'm not arguing against newer games, but I have a hard time buying into the notion that gog would have to "fire everybody and stop expanding the catalogue" after they get Doom, Grim Fandango and Age of Empires.

I dunno, all I see is Night Dive apparently working on getting Harvester and gog introducing regional pricing for The Witcher 3 and it just feels off.
I don't know why people seem to feel there is some finite limit to old games. No matter where you draw the line in the sand, let's say five years old and older, with each passing year another entire year of releases falls into the old games group. You could draw the line at 10 years old or 7 or whatever. It doesn't matter. When 2014 ends, all the games that came before just became a year older and so it goes. Thus there is a massive supply of old games and it will never run out for so long as games continue to made each year.

Sure, not every old game is Wizardry 8 or Ultima VII or System Shock 2 or pick your favorite classic but each year has its highlights, games destined to be classic with the passage of time.

I don't buy the stuff about old games drying up. No, this is about margins and money. This is about wanting to carry new games with much higher price tags than 5.99 for more profits. That is what this is all about and allowing regional pricing removes a barrier to doing this and that is why they did it.

I love how they spin this stuff: "We did this for you so you can have..." when in reality they of course did this for them so they can make more money. That's fine too but the spin isn't.
Posted February 27, 2014
http://www.gog.com/support/website_help/payments_pricing_promos

#7 is entertaining, it looks like it was written in such a hurry there is errors and redundancy.

"Regional pricing will always something that is undertaken at the request of the company for whom we are selling the game."

"Our company is based in Europe and the VAT/Taxes are all included in the game's prices. <snip>
However please be advised that we are based in Europe and have no control over your bank's additional international/card transaction fees (where applicable)."

Edit: The google cache updated... Anyway the previous wording as of a few days ago:

7. What are your prices in different countries?
Our prices are always the same, worldwide. It doesn't matter whether you live in the sunny Bahamas (lucky you!) or some place where polar bears roam the streets, it's always the same price. Our company is based in Europe and VAT/tax is included in the games' prices. This means that GOG.com will always charge you the exact order total visible at checkout.
However please be advised that we are based in Europe and have no control over your bank's additional international/card transaction fees (where applicable). Most banks don't charge their customers extra, but if you use funds already present on your PayPal account to buy games on GOG.com, you will be able to avoid any such additional costs.
Post edited February 27, 2014 by tammerwhisk
Posted February 27, 2014
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skeletonbow: Either way, there is a finite limit of "old" or "classic" games no matter where someone draws the line and thus a hard limit of how much a company selling such games can expand and produce ongoing profit. I think the way GOG started out was a fantastic concept and very brilliant personally, but for a growing company to want to expand beyond their initial vision makes sense to me.
avatar
MoP: But does gogs current catalogue truly look like it's reaching the end of the supply? Is it really only "LucasArts, Microsoft, Take2 and Bethesda" that's left, and then nothing?
Even assuming that's it (which is ludicrous to me), what about finally doing something about Amiga? I'm not arguing against newer games, but I have a hard time buying into the notion that gog would have to "fire everybody and stop expanding the catalogue" after they get Doom, Grim Fandango and Age of Empires.

I dunno, all I see is Night Dive apparently working on getting Harvester and gog introducing regional pricing for The Witcher 3 and it just feels off.
It's not a matter of whether their existing supply is completely exhausted or not really. I don't want to see GOG limit themselves to the existing supply until every game that they can have - they do have, and then there are no more games ever after that except new titles that come out which fit into the prior paradigm of pricing. There may be other games, but they are slim pickings compared to the entire list of all games that exist for which people would like to have DRM-free versions. I want all of the Tom Clancy games DRM-free. I want all of the Grand Theft Auto games DRM-free. I want all of the Battlefield, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Crysis, F.E.A.R games DRM-free. I want all of the Valve games DRM-free, and Blizzard too. Some of these seem very unlikely to ever happen, but we've already seen some titles come to GOG DRM-free which I would have guessed were never going to come here so one should never say never. The fact is, that while GOG started as "Good Old Games" and that was a good place to start, the benefits of DRM-free gaming exist beyond "old" games, and there is a huge market out there of people who want to play all kinds of games, new, old, whatever.

Some people think GOG should limit themselves to old games because they are "better" (which is highly subjective). How does one measure "better" exactly for example? There is an argument that games with in depth story and immersiveness which give the gamer a variety of emotions and a pleasant experience with many hours of gameplay is "better" and that can be applied to many old games and new games alike IMHO. One could also argue that for example, a game like Grand Theft Auto V selling over one billion dollars worth in 3 days from release and being that extremely high in demand is a reflection of how gamers who bought the game felt excited about it and voted "this game is awesome" with their wallets. Why wouldn't that game fit on GOG's shelves too? I'd like to buy it DRM-free when it is available for PC *on GOG*, and if the only barrier was regional pricing then giving in on that for that game allows me and thousands of others to buy the game and rejoice about it DRM-free and GOG to have a huge profit and endless funding to go after zillions of other titles *especially* those "classic" games they might not otherwise have been able to do before. Now if someone doesn't think GTA5 will ever make it here whether or not there is regional pricing, fine, pick one of the other thousands of games than the example I gave. Many games will make it here now I believe that never would have before, whether or not any individual game one highlights makes the cut for some other orthagonal reason.

Seeing the success of current generation games on the platform might make people like Lucasarts, Take Two, Microsoft say "hey, we want a slice of that market, get some people working on the legal issues and find the source code".

As for Amiga games or other ancient platforms, there might be money to be made in them but it is going to be extremely small peanuts for an extremely small niche market at best and not in any way "big" or evolutionary. Not something that's going to send a company's revenue surging forward. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be persued, but rather the point I'm trying to make is that to think that bringing Amiga games here is on par equal in terms of the number of people interested in buying such games, or in terms of the profit that could be made from offering such games - compared to the people interested in and profit to be made from selling current generation AA, AAA titles in high demand is either putting the blinders on or just ignoring reality IMHO.

I sometimes wonder if people actually want GOG.com to be financially successful and grow and reap the rewards of their efforts, or if people want them to stagnate and just give give give with no big rewards for their efforts like they have some kind of obligation to the world or something.

I want to see GOG go from releasing single-digit numbers of games each week, to releasing double digits of games each week, and not just classics and indie retro type games but new AAA stuff too. They can't dictate to that industry how to sell their games, it's the other way around.

While some people wonder if GOG's is making decisions in the best interest of customers (I think they are)... I'm left wondering if those same people even remotely care about the best interests of GOG as a company, financially or otherwise.

If there's one thing I've learned in business side of things in any industry, it is that the larger you get and the more customers you have overall, you reach a point where it is completely impossible to make everyone happy because of people who have mutually conflicting interests, and additionally some subset of your customers will assume and treat you like you're just another evil greedy company out to screw them over for profits and you don't care about them regardless of anything you do at all, and totally ignoring all of the good things you have done over time for them. I see this virtually everywhere both on and offline. Faced with this - as every business ultimately is, you make the hard decisions and you push forward knowing you can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time. You can largely measure whether your decisions were right in the end by how successful you become.

My money is on this one being for the good of everyone including those who are strongly opposed to it, whether or not they continue to be customers here.
Posted February 27, 2014
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MoP: But does gogs current catalogue truly look like it's reaching the end of the supply? Is it really only "LucasArts, Microsoft, Take2 and Bethesda" that's left, and then nothing?
Even assuming that's it (which is ludicrous to me), what about finally doing something about Amiga? I'm not arguing against newer games, but I have a hard time buying into the notion that gog would have to "fire everybody and stop expanding the catalogue" after they get Doom, Grim Fandango and Age of Empires.

I dunno, all I see is Night Dive apparently working on getting Harvester and gog introducing regional pricing for The Witcher 3 and it just feels off.
avatar
dirtyharry50: I don't know why people seem to feel there is some finite limit to old games. No matter where you draw the line in the sand, let's say five years old and older, with each passing year another entire year of releases falls into the old games group. You could draw the line at 10 years old or 7 or whatever. It doesn't matter. When 2014 ends, all the games that came before just became a year older and so it goes. Thus there is a massive supply of old games and it will never run out for so long as games continue to made each year.

Sure, not every old game is Wizardry 8 or Ultima VII or System Shock 2 or pick your favorite classic but each year has its highlights, games destined to be classic with the passage of time.

I don't buy the stuff about old games drying up. No, this is about margins and money. This is about wanting to carry new games with much higher price tags than 5.99 for more profits. That is what this is all about and allowing regional pricing removes a barrier to doing this and that is why they did it.

I love how they spin this stuff: "We did this for you so you can have..." when in reality they of course did this for them so they can make more money. That's fine too but the spin isn't.
Ah, that's easy enough to explain.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/finite

At any given point in time, the number of games that actually exist total in the world is finite. The number of games that could exist is infinite of course, but the number that do actually exist is finite. As such, the number of games GOG can sell are also finite because they can only sell games that exist. That includes games in development as pre-order which don't exist yet as a finished product, they're still a finite quantity.

The finite number of games GOG can sell without regional pricing is far less than the number of games they can sell with the option of regional pricing, because there are two options:

1) regional pricing
2) global pricing

The total finite number of games that can be sold at all by any business, is the sum total of all games that are available as a product to sell and that is the sum total of #1 and #2. Since the total of #1 and #2 automatically is a larger number than either #1 or #2 are alone mathematically, the finite number of games one can sell limiting themselves to just #1 or #2 alone is smaller than the total number of games that can be sold including both groups together - albeit still finite.

Yes, there are more potential games to sell next year than this year, but it is a finite amount at a fixed point in time. The amount increases over time, but is still finite and to limit sales to just the subset of games that do not require regional pricing - limits the total number of options available from the total number that could be available.

Ideas are infinite, so when GOG starts selling games based on ideas which don't actually exist as games yet, then they have an infinite supply of games to sell. If they ever decide to do that though, they're going to face fierce competition from Kickstarter. ;o)
Posted February 27, 2014
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Selderij: <span class="bold">Business strategy meeting at GOG.com headquarters.</span>
One of the most amazing works of art I have seen in a while.
Posted February 27, 2014
Regardless of what one considers finite in terms of old classics, the subject was settled a few years ago. It was reiterated in the letter, but that's behind us now. GOG never have stopped bringing classics here since they dropped "Good Old Games" either.
Posted February 27, 2014
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dirtyharry50: I love how they spin this stuff: "We did this for you so you can have..." when in reality they of course did this for them so they can make more money. That's fine too but the spin isn't.
That only works if you define "you" as yourself and you alone. When the real definition is that "you" is everyone out there collectively and not you the individual at the exclusion of everyone else who also exists and has desires which may differ from your own.

There are a tremendous number of people, myself included who want to have what GOG is saying they are doing "for you". I want those games. You may not and that is your own decision and it is not right or wrong, but simply how it is for you and that is ok. One could equally argue that GOG not doing this is selfish because they are limiting the choices of gamers like me to access other titles DRM-free which could be added to the catalogue if they allowed it. One could argue that they believe that if they were to add regional priced games that they would lose all of their customers from backlash and go out of business as a result and that by not adding regionally priced games they are making a greedy business decision.

So whether or not they do this or not, one can spin them as being an evil profit seeking company that cares about themselves and not their customers. In fact, no matter what decision they make someone can paint a picture of them being evil and selfish even if they ended up going out of business from making decisions people say they want.

You know, it is possible for companies to make decisions with good intentions which they fully perceive to be in the best interests of *both* their customers and themselves long term. Every decision isn't just made one way or the other in every company. I worked for a company before in a similar position where internally the decisions were made for the greater good and to try to change the world to be a better place for everyone. The company often made decisions for the greater good of the customers even at the expense of the business, where they could have made decisions that brought in tonnes more money instead by doing something else, but they decided to do what they thought was right and in the best interests of the customer due to a firmly held set of beliefs and values. That company regularly got lambasted by their customers for being an evil Microsoft clone. It's hard to be an employee at such a company where you do nothing but try to do what you think is right and what is good, and there are people out there who have an agenda against you convinced with their conspiracy theories that you're evil.

The sad thing is, that even if a company like GOG just gave all the games away for free and only made money from advertising placed on the website, people would complain about the advertising and that GOG was only giving the games away for free to make money off of the advertising on the website. No shit! That's how a business works, you do stuff to make money! The desire to make money isn't evil, nor is the quest to make money nor the actual making of money, nor are having to make decisions about how to make more money. The values and principles in which you go about conducting business and your overall intentions are what defines whether you are doing good or evil, and even that is up to the interpretation of others who may or may not have good intentions themselves in painting you in a given light.

Let's be honest here. GOG started out as a company to bring DRM-free games to customers. One can totally say "yeah, but you did that so you could make more money". Indeed, that is absolutely 100% correct. Businesses go into business in order to make money. The premise that they /only/ go into business to make money and every decision that makes them more money is automatically at odds with doing good and they should be suspect for it is irrational in my eyes. I believe that GOG's long term reputation and decision making tells its own tale and their track record stands for itself as to what they stand for and who they are "in it for", and it is possible to both be in it for the customers they hope to reach and also be in it for themselves to be rewarded financially for their efforts and to do so without guilt.
Posted February 27, 2014
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Blegh! I just over ate MCDonalds and Now I feel Sick!
Posted February 27, 2014
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Selderij: <span class="bold">Business strategy meeting at GOG.com headquarters.</span>
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jfanno: One of the most amazing works of art I have seen in a while.
OMG, it's brilliant, can't stop laughing. Thanks for the link.
Posted February 27, 2014
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skeletonbow: When we see AAA titles from all the big studios starting to show up at least once a month on their own first day of release, we'll know we've won the war on DRM. At that point, make a list of the other wars including regional pricing to fight, and rally the troops.
Or...

When we see AAA titles from all the big studios starting to show up on Steam only as usual on their own first day of release, we'll know we've lost the war on DRM. At that point, make a list of the other wars including regional pricing that we've previously lost, and weep silently.

EDIT: Removed quoting of skeletonbow in the last paragraph. Those are my words, not his.
Post edited February 27, 2014 by Wishbone
Posted February 27, 2014
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ydobemos: ...
Wow... that is the best post of this thread. I was myself unable to express my feelings flatly but you managed. I wholeheartedly agree with everything that has been said.

+1, +rep and waiting for an answer of this letter from the gog staff.

I applaude, you, sir.
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General discussion (archive)<b>Letter from the M.D.</b>: About Regional Pricing(5517 posts) (5517 posts) 
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