Humble Store is a competitor to GOG, too, with regards to indies. Partially they only sell Steam keys, especially for the AAA titles, but quite a few indies come with both DRM-free version and Steam key.

EDIT: I overlooked the "consistently", sorry. But then again, hedwards didn't say anything about "consistently DRM-free". Fact is, GOG isn't the only store anymore that sells DRM-free games, and when all the idealistic incentives to buy at your store of trust are gone, it all comes down to comparing the best offers.

Me too, I'm here since the beginning, and seeing them making this awful choice, makes me very sad... :(
Fallout was the reason I joined. I became a huge fan of GOG because all the games -> DRM free, and the price were fair (if you had any idea how much I have to pay for games, in the stores of Brazil, you would have a heart attack!)
The community is great, so I'll continue to browse the forums, and post occasionally.
But I won't give more money to GOG, this is the last time they show the middle finger to this customer.

I mostly gave up on Humble after HIB 4, since we seemed to have vastly different definitions of "indie." Firing up an "indie" game (Shank) and seeing a big "EA" pustule show up on my screen when they're on my "No Buy" list was not, to put it lightly, a pleasing experience.

Realistically, we're over a bit of a barrel, but if we refuse to buy DRMed games, I'm not really sure it matters how consistent the shop is as long as those games are clearly marked.

There's also degrees of consistency, GOG is 100% DRM free, but I'm buying more games from the Humble Store because they're DRM free and actually offer Linux support.
The bundles are bullshit, but the store itself is a lot more credible these days.

I've not been here as long, but pretending to be fair and fighting for us while at the same time just looking for maximum profits for themselves is something I will not tolerate.

I'm not sure it's GOG greed we're seeing, to be honest. If you look at the blog post about how they plan to keep the current tiered-pricing model, the conversions are pretty close. I mean, yeah, the Age of Wonders pricing is utter bullshit, but I'll lay 2:1 odds that that's publisher-dictated pricing. Triumph seems to be playing every scummy publisher trick in the deck (except, perhaps, microtransactions): bogus regional pricing, day-one DLC, etc.

I'm cautious as all hell, but I think we might be looking at Hanlon's Razor here -- "Never attribute to malice what can adequately explained by incompetence." Or, to be perhaps a bit more charitable, a well-intentioned but poorly considered mistake. Looking at their list, I personally don't see anything Triumph brings to the table that is really worth the loss of goodwill GOG is suffering on their behalf; a handful of cookie-cutter strategy games and a quirky Pikmin clone.

I think someone's too worried about getting more "AA+ games" that they're making the same mistakes that have kept the games industry in the grim state it's in: caving to the overreach of publishers. Just like I never expect to see any Zenimax games on GOG, because they'll go under before giving up their DRM, I'd rather GOG stand their ground on their core principles and disqualify this crap. Especially given these games, we really wouldn't be losing out on much compared to what we'd be keeping.

That CDPR is part of it, though... that's utterly mindboggling to me.

How good the series were is never an indicator how good a sequel is. Especially 11 years after release. And hugely overblown release expectation with pre-order bonuses on such a title doesn't sound that trustworthy to me. Also, I said probably and merely suggested to collected titles to buy instead. I didn't use it to argue about anything.

Exactly. Triumph is clearly banking on the success of the past AoW games - and while they were good games, that's no indication that AoW III is going to be as good, or better (and there's no indication that's it's going to wind up like Duke Nukem Forever).

Still, the fact that it's been released on GOG in the way that it has doesn't leave a good first impression. IMHO it wasn't a good decision to start their regional pricing scheme with a brand new game like this, versus a classic heavily in demand like Grim Fandango. If they had, I'd guarantee you that the community would be far more forgiving.

yeah, the classic pricing seems reasonable OK. But why do they do it? To sell day 1 releases at 1$=1€. That's business.

On the topic at hand, I defended GOG back when the Omerta DLC thingy on grounds that yes, DLC is not nice, but as long as they eventually release a "gold" edition with all DLC bundled up and such. Those who want the game day 1 buy it day 1. Those who want the DLC as it comes out, they can buy it. Those who want the classic style of complete release, can buy it once it becomes a classic. And if the game you bought day 1 gets upgraded to classic release (for free, ideally) after a few years, that would be perfect. However that was when my trust on GOG was high, and it's been getting lower as of late.

Yeah, but that's under the assumption that they keep the excess, rather than it being sent back to the publishers, who have been doing that garbage for years. The response intimated that it was the publishers setting those terms rather than GOG which isn't too hard for me to believe, since it's right out of their playbook. If that is the case, though, I do think that GOG deserves to be criticized, and harshly, for agreeing to terms like that, and doubly so for a B-list niche game at best. I really wish I could say I disagreed with that sentiment. :(

Well, the "publishers" so far are Larian, who was OK with the flat pricing on Dragon Commander; Triumph, no idea about them; and CD red themselves. But even if that wasn't the case, they take a % of the sale. Higher sale value, higher %. Simple as that. to me at least.

Just for those that don't want to convert themself.

Age of Wonders Delux will cost 44.99 USD in the US and 61.99 USD in Europe. 17 USD more. For that we could choose between 6 games that have the normal price from 5.99 to 9.99 USD.

There is still a price difference. But that is better than nothing.

How does this regional pricing work anyway? So, if I gift a game to someone in Europe, do they have to pony up the extra $17 or is it just transferred. Or do they charge me the extra $17 when I gift it to them?

Just transferred, but if this results in lots of gifts from US citizens to Europeans and hardly any European buying the game at the Euro price, the publishers might force GOG to do something about it.

Source: TET: "To my knowledge, there's no plans currently underweigh to change how gifting works."