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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
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dhundahl: I'm not too worried yet. The 5 dollar games will probably go into the 5.99 category and get priced as a 4.49 euro game. That's what's been suggested, at least. The more expensive indie titles will have to be dealt with on a case by case basis but how GOG deal with those is indeed going to be very interesting. I don't think they'll do a flat euro to dollar thing but I guess we'll see. If that's what the market does then GOG may not have that much of a choice beyond not getting to sell those games.
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Matruchus: The problem here is that gog is already bulshitting us with fair priced regional locked classic games, but current real currency conversion is 5.99$ = 4.37€ and yes cents do matter as not everybody is rich.
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dhundahl: No, it doesn't tell us that at all. It tells us that they're going along with it, which is an entirely different thing. I don't agree with farmers pumping their animals full of antibiotics but I'm still buying their meat, since even though superbugs are a huge problem, I still have to eat. And meat is so tasty, isn't it?
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Matruchus: It tells they are folding, they should just leave regional priced games and forget about them, cause now they want to regionaly price everything which is not fair.
1) GOG games are not regionally locked. You can buy your game in Russia and play it anywhere else in Europe. Heck, you could probably even buy it in Russia and download it anywhere else as well.

2) If you're really going to make a fuzz about 12 freaking eurocents then you're so poor that you shouldn't be wasting your money on computer games. By the way, what's the conversion fee? More or less than 12 eurocents? For some it is, for some it might not be. But complaining about those 12 cents when you're being something as inherently bloody useless as a computer game is beyond mad.

Oh and I'm not rich either. I police my expenses, though.

3) No, it tells us that they compromised in a single situation where they'd rather accept a bullshit pricing and offer a DRM-free version than reject the lame pricing and deny people everywhere a chance to get a DRM-free version at the same price as the crapware'd version. Accepting a compromise is not a surrender.

If you want a historical example, think of how Russia dealt with Napoleon's invasion back in the day. The goal was to repel the invaders but the immediate action was a retreat. Surrender? Folding? Not at all. Merely a strategic compromise that ultimately led to Napoleon getting his ass handed to him on a platter. Morale of the story, a compromise is not a defeat. It's not a surrender. It can be but it isn't always.
Posted February 27, 2014
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zels: They already have a client that requires logging in to download your games - the gog downloader. I don't see your point.
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JudasIscariot: Yes, it does require logging in but the Downloader (because that's what it is) is entirely optional i.e. no game actually requires it to run. You can freely download all of your games via your browser from your account shelf :)
I've given GoG some criticism that I felt deserved in this thread, but I will say that I've been a GoG member for several years, have over two hundred games on my GoG bookshelf (most bought on sale for "someday"), and have downloaded all of them and installed and played a rare few. I have never installed or used the GoG downloader and have instead done direct downloads for all games and all special content in those games. It worked and I have them all. Direct downloads did happen to be buggy last weekend, but I'm not going to call one weekend of bugginess out of a few years, especially when a lot of people savvy enough to care about no DRM are mad at them, as anything but a coincidence.
Posted February 27, 2014
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dhundahl: No, it doesn't tell us that at all. It tells us that they're going along with it, which is an entirely different thing.
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Ichwillnichtmehr: So GOG.com is not ripping us off, they just let publishers rip us off, on their own site.
You're butchering the quote, Ichwillnichtmehr. That's not a nice thing to do. :-(

I trust that you speak English well enough to know the difference between "agree with" and "go along with", which really should be all the answer you need. You can go along with something you don't agree with because the alternatives are worse and that doesn't mean you actually do agree with it.

By the way, GOG is very much ripping us off on behalf of the publishers, it's a ripoff that happens to anyone buying AOW3 on release day. GOG couldn't prevent that ripoff from taking place in any imaginable way, they could merely decide not to be a part of it. And if they made that choice then there'd be no DRM-free version, would there? So GOG could achieve absolutely nothing by refusing to compromise or they could provide the world with a DRM-free AAA title on release day if they'd compromise on their pricing model. Those were the choices and please don't tell me that you're an expert in business reasoning or ethics and therefore know better than GOG what GOG should choose. Because let's be honest for a moment, you're almost certainly not and you almost certainly don't. Just like I'm not and I don't.
Posted February 27, 2014
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TheEnigmaticT: Mostly, we couldn't keep up with the number of comments and also figure out sensible replies, so rather than post something sort of coherent late yesterday, we're regrouping and working on this now.
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PaladinWay: Not being able to keep up with the number of comments on a thread like this is...well...just human. Anyone who expected you to read and reply to everything clearly isn't being rational. Personally, the thing I'd expected you to do is open the forum and look for comments on the current or last page or two and start replying. Saying, "I can't read as fast as all of you are commenting" is very human and very valid and any reasonable person would accept that as valid. No comments at all, when you've already lost trust and know you've lost trust and started the thread because you lost trus, and not starting to comment until AFTER someone points out how to find all the staff comments in a thread...well, that's not going to inspire additional trust.

Can I believe your above statement might be true, sure. Does your above statement reassure me and make me feel that I can rest easy that you haven't slid too far down the slippery slope, not in the slightest. Would statements in the middle of the firestorm have made me believe you were magically sincere, no. Would statements in the middle of the firestorm have made me believe you gave a damn even if people didn't notice that you didn't and were still trying even if you'd perhaps lost your vision and your way, yes.

As a note, this reply is coming from me going through all the staff replies from the above link.
What cracks me up about this is T is supposed to be their marketing and PR guy.

So you can only imagine how much worse the responses would be from anyone else at the company :)

Marketing and PR 101 is something GOG staff obviously should have taken years ago as none of them seem to have a clue about what to say and do to keep your customers, as oppose to how to piss them off so badly they will never buy from GOG again.

Every comment I read from GOG staff now just convinces me the company couldn't give a flying damn about their customers, as long as they're still spending money here.
Posted February 27, 2014
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MoP: But again, is that really on the even remotely visible horizon? Personally I'm mostly interested in adventure games, so just a very random stat - MobyGames has 1721 DOS & Windows titles in the adventure category up to the year 2000. Of course that's an exaggerated, unreliable number, there's bound to be duplicates, errors or other "false positives", many won't be "worthy" of reviving, many won't be attainable. And it's obviously not just a matter of picking it up, lying on the ground (but that's like, gogs job and stuff).
But that's a number to start with, only up to the year 2000 (without other potential platforms). In one genre alone. GOG has 92 if I counted correctly.

And again, I'm not questioning expanding into indies and newer games (anymore). They're a business, everybody wants to be rich and grow, understandable, whatever. Yes, "that's behind us now".

But don't pull out a "we'd have to just fire everyone and keep selling the same limited catalog after LucasArts, Microsoft, Take2 and Bethesda are signed". TET said that "We could, I suppose, settle into our niche as 'that place that sells old games', and let it be." By "settling in", did he also mean firing everybody and stagnating the catalogue?

"You have bigger dreams than that". Grow, live long and prosper, I wish You the best of luck.
But 1629 potential adventure games and I_can't_be_bothered_to_count_other_genres_on_MobyGames potential games from other genres, along with the "aging" line of when a game becomes a "classic" as dirtyharry50 put it, and other potential platforms like Amiga, and indies, and the newer games You wouldn't have to bend over to release, are not enough for You to prosper and continue Your holy crusade? There was no other venue to sustain You, that You had to go for regional pricing, breaking another aspect that got many people here in the first place?
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TheEnigmaticT: The challenge here is that:

1. Many of those games you're talking about are rubbish. Our back catalog of classics isn't just old games.
2. The ones that aren't rubbish are exceedingly difficult to sign, or else you would see them here already. Trust me, we've been trying.
I trust that the number is, as the original poster stated, probably inflated with useless crap and that you've been trying. However as to the point that there are still plenty of potential old games out there to expand your catalog without compromising your principles, you didn't really answer that.

Just today you released The Guild 2 (2006 release date) and Guild 2: Pirates of the European Seas (2007 release date). Three days ago you released (2000 release date). On 18 February (9 days ago) you released[url=http://www.gog.com/game/7th_legion]7th Legion (1997 release date). That's just what I can see clicking "Show more news" only once on the front page. I looked at all of those releases and thought "business as usual" and none provoked a "Wow! They managed to find another old game somehow!!!" type response.

I can appreciate, and have no issue with, you wanting to grow your business. However, I hope you can appreciate how your choice to grow your business in ways which compromise your previously stated principles, makes us wary and concerned.
Posted February 27, 2014
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dhundahl: They've softened up on a policy but that doesn't mean they've lost all principles. The world isn't black and white. Publishers see that GOG will now differentiate on the price of new release AAA titles but the change in that is that GOG is offering a new release AAA to begin with. They're seeing that GOG is differentiating on the prices of classics but the level of differentiation is so far quite minimal and GOG hasn't done anything to indicate that they'll do anything more extreme than that.

How do you say no when you've opened the door? The same way you always do. "No". It really isn't any harder than that. The hard principle is broken but that doesn't mean GOG can't always decide that the terms aren't acceptable. It could be that GOG has turned away from principles. That they've sold out. But we don't know that just yet, and until we do, it really is premature to give them too much of a shitstorm.
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Matruchus: Look the thing is gog had the principle of fair price written on this site with all the other and now it has been erased. You can look it up on the main site and this is what really makes me worry.
Yeah, I get that they've deleted that principle, but it would have to be rewritten anyhow, would it not? The AOW3 pricing makes that necessary. So it makes sense, at least to me, that they don't advertise with a principle that they're not following the letter of anymore, even if they're still trying to follow the spirit of the principle. At some point I'm sure GOG will have to sit down and figure out who they are and what they want and just how far they're willing to compromise and what their values are and so on and so forth, but having to go through a few of those identity crises is actually normal for growing companies. For now, until they actually demonstrate that they've lost the qualities they used to have, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

If I have to pay 10 euro for a 10 dollar game or 20 euro for a 20 dollar game then I'll get just as grumpy as you seem to be, but that hasn't actually happened yet. What has happened are two things.
1) I can buy a new release AAA title at the same price I'd pay on Steam but with no DRM whatsoever.
2) Instead of paying $5.99, I just might end up paying €4.49.

Those are the only things that have changed so far. More things might. GOG might have turned into complete dipshits and might be on the verge of screwing us customers over big time. But it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it won't happen at all. All I'm really saying here is that we shouldn't be drowning GOG in feces before all the bad things actually happen. That way, if they don't happen, then we'll not look silly and GOG won't have to dig through a huge pile of nasty comments.
Posted February 27, 2014
Look, as long as the games are DRM free and the prices are reasonable I don't mind about regional pricing, is not as if they realy had much choice.
However, I wonder how will the regional pricing affect Mexico.
Posted February 27, 2014
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mozzington: I also feel as though the MD has made himself look a little silly with the contents of the letter and use of the word SHIT in it. It's not professional and if I had done that here I'd be sacked.
There's no right or wrong opinion about this, everyone has their own and that is how it is for them but I personally appreciate people at GOG giving straight up down to earth replies in postings, or announcements which sound like they come from a real human being - over something that looks like it was printed on company letterhead after going through proof reading and grammar correction, political correctness filters and passing through a legal team the size of a football team, making 10 rounds through the whole circuit and then getting blessed to be printed and sent to customers like a form letter.

It tells me that the person is human and speaking from their heart and not trying to fluff things over. They're being real and not fake. There are some risks in doing so of course too, but everything is a risk. You can be all cold and "professional" and sound like a chain letter approved by a legal department and upset 10 times as many people for sounding like a superficial machine spitting out cookie cutter responses just to please people too. I'd actually have been much more concerned if the announcement sounded like a lawyer at Microsoft wrote it personally.

That's just my personal interpretation. Others will feel differently and rightfully so for their own reasons, but perhaps someone might feel the same after considering my thoughts. I definitely appreciate seeing the human side of GOG employees and feeling like they're someone I could invite into my home and both they and I would feel comfortable having some laughs or gaming or whatever. I couldn't have that feeling from someone in an 8 piece suit with pointy hair and a spreadsheet under their arm.
Posted February 27, 2014
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Matruchus: Its not a principle anymore since it has been erased from gog. Does not exist anymore. We can now talk only about light and heavy regional pricing that is all - fair pricing is gone.
Principles don't have to be written down to exist. What, you thinik illiterate people can't have principles?

By the way, a rule is a hard thing that is meant to always be followed. A principle is simply a general rule that you try to follow whenever possible. This distinction is fairly logical but it doesn't work in terms of marketing, since it confusers the living crap out of customers, so of course GOG can't advertise with a principle they're about to technically break big time. Even so, the principle might well remain unofficially. We don't know.

We can be harsh and say angry words but the truth is that we don't know. Not yet, at least.
Posted February 27, 2014
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Bloodygoodgames: What cracks me up about this is T is supposed to be their marketing and PR guy.

So you can only imagine how much worse the responses would be from anyone else at the company :)

Marketing and PR 101 is something GOG staff obviously should have taken years ago as none of them seem to have a clue about what to say and do to keep your customers, as oppose to how to piss them off so badly they will never buy from GOG again.
I'll agree their response has been far less than savvy. However, I can't completely criticize them for that. At work we were looking for some computer hardware, and IBM was selling it for over $3k. We looked around more and found a small company with good reviews we'd never heard of that had a more modular and repairable product that met our requirements for under $1k. When we tried to buy from them, their sales department was slow and far from polished, but we got the product and it's been solid. My conclusion from that is that the small company spent their money on their product and not on their sales department, and as much as that was irritating when I tried to buy it, I still appreciated it in the end.

By the same token, I will not hold ham-handed marketing and communication against GoG in even the tiniest degree if they manage to prove that they're after a good product and simply put most of their money in their product and skimped on PR. Granted, at this point, I'm not sure what would "prove" that other than deciding to not release any of these games. And from the stance of wanting to be reasonable I don't like saying that, as it's effectively saying, "No negotiation, capitulate or you're scum." Unfortunately, that's pretty much where my level of trust is with GoG just now, and I can't even honestly say that them doing an immediate 180 would restore all the trust they've lost (in fact I'm pretty sure it wouldn't, though it would certainly help).
Posted February 27, 2014
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Mr_Chaos: Look at the new thief. Even the developers are saying that it will not a very good game.
Sounds like something that should be backed up by a URL or a video or something that shows the developers saying that. May or may not be true but I find it rather hard to believe the developers of a major new presumably AAA game are going to bad mouth their own game. A video or interview with them actually saying that in a serious tone (ie: not trying to be humourous) would certainly clarify and confirm it though.
Posted February 27, 2014
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TheEnigmaticT: I don't want to eat my hat. ;__;
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PaladinWay: I can accept that you might not want to eat your hat, but if you tell me that eating your hat would be harder than dealing with this thread, then I'm not going to believe you.
Punishment suggestion: A fast forward recording of this topic being read aloud end to end with a clock in the background to ensure they're not cheating? Well, it's almost too cruel, isn't it?
Posted February 27, 2014
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Ichwillnichtmehr: So GOG.com is not ripping us off, they just let publishers rip us off, on their own site.
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dhundahl: You're butchering the quote, Ichwillnichtmehr. That's not a nice thing to do. :-(

I trust that you speak English well enough to know the difference between "agree with" and "go along with", which really should be all the answer you need. You can go along with something you don't agree with because the alternatives are worse and that doesn't mean you actually do agree with it.

By the way, GOG is very much ripping us off on behalf of the publishers, it's a ripoff that happens to anyone buying AOW3 on release day. GOG couldn't prevent that ripoff from taking place in any imaginable way, they could merely decide not to be a part of it. And if they made that choice then there'd be no DRM-free version, would there? So GOG could achieve absolutely nothing by refusing to compromise or they could provide the world with a DRM-free AAA title on release day if they'd compromise on their pricing model. Those were the choices and please don't tell me that you're an expert in business reasoning or ethics and therefore know better than GOG what GOG should choose. Because let's be honest for a moment, you're almost certainly not and you almost certainly don't. Just like I'm not and I don't.
I agree, I'm no expert in the business.

Let's listen to some experts, shall we: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6P3yOTR2Vc&amp;t=1194
Posted February 27, 2014
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TheEnigmaticT: So we promised an answer for you guys today, and I've been hanging out at the office late in hopes it would develop; sadly, it seems that a few answers are still hung up on confirmations. Sorry about this, but we are going to be having a final go at it first thing tomorrow morning our time and will hopefully get all your questions answered by then.
You do realize that post 2,589 expressing hope for getting all of our questions answered tomorrow seems to be some degree of an overstatement, don't you?

I'm being harsh in the above statement, but trying to do so to point out how these things are being perceived.

For your answer first thing tomorrow your time, I'd like to add another statement requesting that your answers cover the questions posed in this comment: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing/post438. There are certainly other concerns to address too, but I think the ones in that comment should be part of the set of questions that are answered.
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PaladinWay: I can accept that you might not want to eat your hat, but if you tell me that eating your hat would be harder than dealing with this thread, then I'm not going to believe you.
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dhundahl: Punishment suggestion: A fast forward recording of this topic being read aloud end to end with a clock in the background to ensure they're not cheating? Well, it's almost too cruel, isn't it?
Yeah, we shouldn't suggest anything that'll violate the Geneva Conventions.
Post edited February 27, 2014 by PaladinWay
Posted February 27, 2014
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dhundahl: That's so German of you, Ichwillnichtmehr, arguing that if they're not following a hard rule that is written on high quality paper in just the right shade of ink with a sharpened feather, then what they're doing is irrelevant. :-)

I don't agree, though. Making it a hard rule didn't work out for GOG but that doesn't mean it's not still a general principle. It's not a hard rule in my life that I always go with morality over profit, but I'll do so quite regularly anyway.
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Ichwillnichtmehr: - GOG.com made the rule.

- GOG.com promised to follow the rule.

- GOG.com made a point about how bad it is to not follow the rule.

- GOG.com made a point about how great they were for following the rule.

I guess that means that the folks at GOG.com are "so German" too.

And they didn't break the rule, they removed it.
Yeah, GOG made the rule, promised to follow it, argued that not following it is bad, argued that following it made them awesome, and now they're revising the rule somewhat while apparently still trying to the spirit of the rule.

And meanwhile you're arguing that if they can't follow the rule then it totally doesn't matter what they want. But what they want matters because they're a major DRM-free digital distributor that generally sells games relatively cheap. They certainly have their retail competition in my country soundly beaten and if they stick with that so-called "fair regional pricing" then that will continue to be the case. What GOG wants matters to me, and I'm guessing it matters to a lot of their customers, regardless of whether they're following their own rule to the letter.
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