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General discussion (archive)<b>Letter from the M.D.</b>: About Regional Pricing(5517 posts) (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 March 01, 2014
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PixelBoy: As far as service goes, it is not what it used to be.

Back in the day, every game was patched to latest official version. It was written on the game cards too. That 's no longer the case. Many of the games are latest versions, yes, but some are not. And some games have an installer, which is not the latest version, and a patch has to be installed separately.

One can argue that this is how things have been for as long as PC games have existed. True. But when GOG started, they tried to always offer the best, latest version, and also made that one of their selling points, like mentioning it on game cards.

Also, historical GOG was always trying to offer the most complete editions of games, with no extra costs. Then they started to sell DLC.

And let's talk about extras. What used to be GOG's another forte was that they offered a bunch of extras with no extra cost. Like soundtracks, and stuff. With AoW3 this has apparently changed too. There's one basic version, and another version with soundtrack.

So I'm not sure which part of that service is remaining so great, at least when compared with what it used to be.

There are some things that GOG does well, for instance their installers are decent when compared with competition, like DotEmu's sucky installers. Also FLAC soundtracks were nice recent add-on, although they were not the first ones to offer those, but rather tried to catch up with Humble Bundle and others.
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JudasIscariot: Age of Wonders 3's extras and their availability is not dictated by us, just so it's clear :)

With the latest version, we add the actual version number on the game card. Just look for the words "Patched to version <version number here>" if a game has a visible version number somewhere in the menu or elsewhere. On top of that, I believe there is a FAQ item that explains that all of our games are patched to their latest versions (I'll have to double check on this as I am writing all this from the top of my head, so to speak).

I've already talked about the general availability of extras and such, feel free to PM me if you'd like me to point out where I've stated this :)
When are you going to add martian? We martians want to play more games in our native tongue ;D
Posted March 01, 2014
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JudasIscariot: Age of Wonders 3's extras and their availability is not dictated by us, just so it's clear :)

With the latest version, we add the actual version number on the game card. Just look for the words "Patched to version <version number here>" if a game has a visible version number somewhere in the menu or elsewhere. On top of that, I believe there is a FAQ item that explains that all of our games are patched to their latest versions (I'll have to double check on this as I am writing all this from the top of my head, so to speak).

I've already talked about the general availability of extras and such, feel free to PM me if you'd like me to point out where I've stated this :)
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JinseiNGC224: When are you going to add martian? We martians want to play more games in our native tongue ;D
When Mars joins the Federation of Planets :P
Posted March 01, 2014
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Ichwillnichtmehr: The "main mission", as I understood it, was following their core values.

Abandoning one of their core values, and then saying "We still follow our (now reduced) core values" sounds disingenuous.
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adamhm: They've always been about DRM-free first and foremost, although "fair pricing", bonus content (whenever possible) and guaranteed compatibility/support have undeniably also been very important parts of their "core values". They've had to make a compromise on their fair pricing policy in the name of their DRM-free goal, in order to allow them to bring more brand new releases here DRM-free, but that doesn't mean they've dropped it completely.

As I said before these new price points for classic releases aren't really that bad; they're roughly the same as the USD prices with rounding in the local currencies accounting for the small inconsistencies between them... even with that rounding, in a sense we're all still paying less than US customers considering that GOG are taking the hit on VAT for us. If you deduct VAT from their current pricing then they're currently selling the $5.99 games to us at $4.99 and $9.99 games at $8.33 etc. If they passed the VAT on to us as any other company would then we'd instead be paying $7.19 and $11.99 (which is substantially higher than the "fair local pricing" they have proposed).

Unfair regional pricing is an issue, although that will primarily affect new releases (like AOW3) where the pricing is well out of GOG's control. But when it comes to older games GOG will still have at least as much influence as they do now... if they didn't have such influence already, then a lot of the more anticipated games here would have released at higher price points than they did and there'd be far fewer $5.99 titles here.
I would point you to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6P3yOTR2Vc&amp;t=1194 , where they said things like "No compromise." and "The moment we'll betray our values, the whole GOG will explode and that's the end of it."

But I guess they were wrong, as you and others don't seem to have a problem with their compromise, and no problem with them betraying their core values.
Posted March 01, 2014
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JinseiNGC224: When are you going to add martian? We martians want to play more games in our native tongue ;D
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JudasIscariot: When Mars joins the Federation of Planets :P
You mean to say it isn't?! :O
Posted March 01, 2014
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adamhm: As I said before these new price points for classic releases aren't really that bad; they're roughly the same as the USD prices with rounding in the local currencies accounting for the small inconsistencies between them... even with that rounding, in a sense we're all still paying less than US customers considering that GOG are taking the hit on VAT for us. If you deduct VAT from their current pricing then they're currently selling the $5.99 games to us at $4.99 and $9.99 games at $8.33 etc. If they passed the VAT on to us as any other company would then we'd instead be paying $7.19 and $11.99 (which is substantially higher than the "fair local pricing" they have proposed).
Actually, if the 1$ = 1€ rule gets applied to all games, current exchange rates would mean Europeans can look forward to paying $8.26 for a $5.99 game, and $13.78 for a $9.99 title. I guess that's the VAT right there plus a little extra, hidden behind over-simplified currency conversions. If they don't pass along the VAT to us, I would expect to pay the exact same amount in $ as a US customer.
Post edited March 01, 2014 by XzavierHyde
Posted March 01, 2014
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adamhm: As I said before these new price points for classic releases aren't really that bad; they're roughly the same as the USD prices with rounding in the local currencies accounting for the small inconsistencies between them... even with that rounding, in a sense we're all still paying less than US customers considering that GOG are taking the hit on VAT for us. If you deduct VAT from their current pricing then they're currently selling the $5.99 games to us at $4.99 and $9.99 games at $8.33 etc. If they passed the VAT on to us as any other company would then we'd instead be paying $7.19 and $11.99 (which is substantially higher than the "fair local pricing" they have proposed).
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XzavierHyde: Actually, if the 1$ = 1€ rule gets applied to all games, current exchange rates would mean Europeans can look forward to paying $8.26 for a $5.99 game, and $13.78 for a $9.99 title. If they don't pass along the VAT to us, I would expect to pay the exact same amount in $ as a US customer.
Yeah the new pricing scheme is not fair which ever way you can twist it. So we will pay more anyway. Especially with fixed regional pricing for classic games.
Post edited March 01, 2014 by Matruchus
Posted March 01, 2014
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silentbob1138: Few eurocents???
http://www.gog.com/forum/age_of_wonders_series/post_your_regional_price_for_aow3/page1
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dhundahl: Yeah, a few eurocents on the classics. The games that GOG can influence the pricing on.

It's so easy to just throw around those AOW3 prices but it's a new release and GOG is selling it at the same price as every other distributor. It sucks that the market has new releases on a ridiculous regional pricing scheme but what on Earth would you have GOG do about that, short of denying honest gamers the chance to get the game DRM-free?
You do realize that the complaints here have very little to do with the price for the classics, don't you? Sure, people complain a bit about those, too. But they do it for two reasons. One is that TeT said it would be cheaper, which is not the case and the other that people like you always try to steer the discussion towards the classics. Changing the prices for classics is mainly a completely unnecessary step taken by Gog. At least it is unnecessary as long as regional pricing for classics isn't the next step.

What makes you think that Gog can influence the price of the classics? For now there are contracts that guarantee a flat price. But when those contracts expire they have no more influence on the price for classics than they have on the price for new games. Sure, they can urge publishers to stick with flat prices, but the decision is for the publisher to make. Previously they could have insisted on flat prices, but now the publisher can point to every game with regional prices and demand the same for his game.

I still don't believe that we wouldn't have seen the games here DRM-free without the regional pricing. I explained that in more detail earlier today.
Posted March 01, 2014
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silentbob1138: Few eurocents???
http://www.gog.com/forum/age_of_wonders_series/post_your_regional_price_for_aow3/page1
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dhundahl: Yeah, a few eurocents on the classics. The games that GOG can influence the pricing on.

It's so easy to just throw around those AOW3 prices but it's a new release and GOG is selling it at the same price as every other distributor. It sucks that the market has new releases on a ridiculous regional pricing scheme but what on Earth would you have GOG do about that, short of denying honest gamers the chance to get the game DRM-free?
Sure. Now multiply those few eurocents for the numbers of people buying. And suddenly it's no more few eurocents.
Posted March 01, 2014
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dhundahl: Yeah, a few eurocents on the classics. The games that GOG can influence the pricing on.

It's so easy to just throw around those AOW3 prices but it's a new release and GOG is selling it at the same price as every other distributor. It sucks that the market has new releases on a ridiculous regional pricing scheme but what on Earth would you have GOG do about that, short of denying honest gamers the chance to get the game DRM-free?
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Shendue: Sure. Now multiply those few eurocents for the numbers of people buying. And suddenly it's no more few eurocents.
Exactly.
Posted March 01, 2014
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dhundahl: ...what on Earth would you have GOG do about that...
I would have proposed full compensation by store credit on GOG's costs for all prices higher than $40 for the pre-order AoW3 and a big apology for this unsatisfactory situation. I think the situation with digital being screwed by retail, some region screwed in comparison to others, requires bravery and boldness, not just giving in and doing nothing.

To summarize: Full compensation by store credit on GOG's costs for the most awkward out-of-line prices. That would have done the trick.
Posted March 01, 2014
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dhundahl: Yeah, a few eurocents on the classics. The games that GOG can influence the pricing on.

It's so easy to just throw around those AOW3 prices but it's a new release and GOG is selling it at the same price as every other distributor. It sucks that the market has new releases on a ridiculous regional pricing scheme but what on Earth would you have GOG do about that, short of denying honest gamers the chance to get the game DRM-free?
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Shendue: Sure. Now multiply those few eurocents for the numbers of people buying. And suddenly it's no more few eurocents.
If we assume ten cents per sold game then ten thousand units add up to one thousand euros. Now keep in mind that we're talking about a business. What practical difference is a mere thousand euro going to do for their overall revenue? And now imagine that the euro weakens relative to the dollar. Suddenly Europeans will be paying half a percent less than what the equivalent dollar price was. How is that going to boost GOG's revenue?

And changing the goalposts by suddenly talking about the aggregate pricture won't change that the biggest difference for users expected so far is a few eurocents, as long as we're talking about the classics.
Posted March 01, 2014
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Shendue: Sure. Now multiply those few eurocents for the numbers of people buying. And suddenly it's no more few eurocents.
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dhundahl: If we assume ten cents per sold game then ten thousand units add up to one thousand euros. Now keep in mind that we're talking about a business. What practical difference is a mere thousand euro going to do for their overall revenue? And now imagine that the euro weakens relative to the dollar. Suddenly Europeans will be paying half a percent less than what the equivalent dollar price was. How is that going to boost GOG's revenue?

And changing the goalposts by suddenly talking about the aggregate pricture won't change that the biggest difference for users expected so far is a few eurocents, as long as we're talking about the classics.
Sorry doesnt hold water.

This at the moment what would be reality:

Post from XzavierHyde: Actually, if the 1$ = 1€ rule gets applied to all games, current exchange rates would mean Europeans can look forward to paying $8.26 for a $5.99 game, and $13.78 for a $9.99 title. If they don't pass along the VAT to us, I would expect to pay the exact same amount in $ as a US customer.
Posted March 01, 2014
Regional pricing, regional availability, DRM. That's how it's worked on every other site, and every other store. What makes GOG different? If I'm paying more for being born in a certain place (new game costs 40USD, 100AUD, regardless of AUD to USD ratio), and I accept that, will I also need to accept regional availability in the future? Will you be adding DRM? Exclusives started here but now all the soundtracks are on Steam, will you keep getting something to go along with the higher prices and lack of content?

So is this site worth staying with as someone currently in Australia? And should I move, will the price go down or am I region locked for life like some other sites do?

EDIT:

Screw it, give me a working version of Command and Conquer Generals with soundtrack and expansion, the Jedi Knight series, Age of Empires 1, and all those grognardy games like Achtung Panzer and you can do what you want with the site. Although I would like to at least have the option of getting soundtracks here instead of having to go to Steam and I'm willing to pay the Australia Tax and DRM free tax, and even pay a "deluxe version" tax to achieve that.

Although deluxe version is a bit of a laugh, a good CD/DVD/Game/etc comes with glossy liners, soundtracks, maps, and miscellaneous paraphernalia like coins and figurines. Make buying something an experience and no-one will pirate. Also make it available to everyone and don't charge more than an import fee over prices elsewhere, that's always nice too.
Post edited March 01, 2014 by FraggingBard
Posted March 01, 2014
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FightingFurball: Well I understand Age of Wonders and Divinity, but isn't The Witcher their game? So why do they need to region-price their own game?
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Vestin: Because they're only its publisher in Poland (and maybe a few neighbouring countries). As far as I can understand it - they had the choice between not having Witcher 3 on GOG, region-pricing it, or getting sued x_x.
They could still release it here with a single worldwide price... but that would mean having to give it the highest price anywhere in the world in order to avoid breaching any retail distribution agreements. I doubt there'd be that many buyers if they did that (and there'd most likely be a huge outcry over being ripped off as a result).


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Ichwillnichtmehr: I would point you to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6P3yOTR2Vc&amp;t=1194 , where they said things like "No compromise." and "The moment we'll betray our values, the whole GOG will explode and that's the end of it."

But I guess they were wrong, as you and others don't seem to have a problem with their compromise, and no problem with them betraying their core values.
Well, they're right to an extent. If they compromised on DRM then I'd absolutely never buy anything here again. But I don't have a problem with this compromise on regional pricing (although they could have handled it much, much better), and nor do I see it as a betrayal of their core values either. Partly because they've always been about DRM-free gaming to me, partly because I have faith that they'll continue to push for worldwide pricing (they just won't keep it mandatory), but also because I see it as more of a strategic move on their part which will ultimately be of more benefit to us than if they were to continue to stick so resolutely to worldwide pricing.

The way I see it, the end goal is to have both DRM-free and fair pricing. Now they can't do anything about the pricing issue for newer games because it's completely out of their control & will be for quite some time. DRM however is an issue that's both more important and relatively easier to get developers/publishers to compromise on.

So it makes sense to compromise on the price issue for now in order to make greater advances in their fight against DRM while still doing their best to maintain fair(ish) pricing for their classic games, and to push harder for fairer pricing later when the time is right to do so.


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adamhm: As I said before these new price points for classic releases aren't really that bad; they're roughly the same as the USD prices with rounding in the local currencies accounting for the small inconsistencies between them... even with that rounding, in a sense we're all still paying less than US customers considering that GOG are taking the hit on VAT for us. If you deduct VAT from their current pricing then they're currently selling the $5.99 games to us at $4.99 and $9.99 games at $8.33 etc. If they passed the VAT on to us as any other company would then we'd instead be paying $7.19 and $11.99 (which is substantially higher than the "fair local pricing" they have proposed).
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XzavierHyde: Actually, if the 1$ = 1€ rule gets applied to all games, current exchange rates would mean Europeans can look forward to paying $8.26 for a $5.99 game, and $13.78 for a $9.99 title. I guess that's the VAT right there, hidden behind over-simplified currency conversions. If they don't pass along the VAT to us, I would expect to pay the exact same amount in $ as a US customer.
They've already specified their pricing policy for classic games and it's not $1 = €1, but closer to proper exchange rates, rounded to the nearest .49/.99 (most likely so they can have fixed prices to advertise):

$5.99 --> £3.49, €4.49
$9.99 --> £5.99, €7.49

With both their current and planned pricing we pay less pre-tax than their value in USD. Which doesn't seem particularly unfair to me (although as was already noted, no matter what the prices will always be unfair to someone somewhere).


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silentbob1138: What makes you think that Gog can influence the price of the classics? For now there are contracts that guarantee a flat price. But when those contracts expire they have no more influence on the price for classics than they have on the price for new games. Sure, they can urge publishers to stick with flat prices, but the decision is for the publisher to make. Previously they could have insisted on flat prices, but now the publisher can point to every game with regional prices and demand the same for his game.
The same influence they have had previously and have now regarding pricing? If they didn't have such influence regarding classic releases then I'm sure we'd be seeing a lot more of them priced at $9.99 and above and the $5.99 tier would hardly be used. I actually suspect that their plan to have fixed "fair local pricing" for classic games is partly intended to provide some defence against publishers demanding $1 = €1 pricing for them.
Posted March 01, 2014
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hedwards: I take it that your English is getting in the way here. The GPP is being forced to pay the price if he wants to buy a copy. As in either pay this vastly overpriced sum of money or don't buy at all. We typically refer to that as "highway robbery" in the US.
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dhundahl: The vastly overpriced sum of money that is a few eurocents? Yeah, I'm sure you typically refer to that as "highway robbery" in the US. Unless it's related to healthcare, in which case it's the most natural way of doing things and doing anything imaginable to reduce the overcharging is a violation of both the constitution and the human rights of big pharma corporations.

My apologies for the sarcasm, by the way, but until we know how much we're actually going to get overcharged on the classics, it seems very premature to talk about highway robberies.
We already know that this is 1 dollar is 1 euro for the new games, the other games are somewhat less overpriced, but they're still overpriced and use a favorable exchange rate for GOG. Granted having constant prices is a necessity, but it's a few eurocents right now with no reason nor is there any guarantee that it will always be like that.

Anyways, don't you have better things to do than to troll the forum?
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)<b>Letter from the M.D.</b>: About Regional Pricing(5517 posts) (5517 posts) 
(5517 posts)