You are in Italy. You get paid in bloody Euros. Try living in a country that pays European Union prices on everything but still earns money in their local currency that is worth nothing against the Euro then come crying.

Besides, it's paying the same price in dollars no matter the currency. I get charged in PLN the equivalent of 6 dollars (around 19 or so PLN on a given day) someone in Germany pays the same amount only in Euros but it's still 6 bucks (not counting the various fees that banks charge for on-the-fly currency exchange).

The mistake you're making is in thinking that regional pricing would make things fairer. If GOG allowed regional pricing then it would become no different than all the other stores that allow regional pricing and see customers from certain regions getting utterly shafted as a result.

Ultimately, regional pricing would only be fair if the people controlling it were fair. That means publishers. Who aren't at all interested in fairness.

the real issue with trying to price based on cost of living (as is the case with trying to say that the price of a big mac should equal 1% of a consumers daily income, should that be $100 per day or $10 day) is that with a big mac you can't eat the thing after logging in from the US as an East African and pay their 1% cost of living price for the thing.

who wants to make a guess at how much proxy traffic in mexico increases after Blizact announces that they will start charging Mexican WOW players 15 Pesos a month instead of 15 dollars?
(hint: fifteen pesos equals one us dollar and seventeen cents)

There would a lot of "mexicans" on WoW all of a sudden? :D

You realize the price differences at most shops are meant to bilk people and GOG is refusing to do that, right? Many "poor" countries have high piracy rates for a reason and many folks do not begrudge them that.

The problem with using Domestic purchasing power is there is no really good metric for it because it varies so much depending on the item being purchased.

For instance, the Big Mac index is different from the Starbuck's latte index is different from ..., etc ...

The exchange rate while partly an indicator of the purchasing power of a particular currency is not completely correlated with it and different geographical regions even within a country may have different purchasing power.

However, the exchange rate is easy to use as there is a clear number associated with how much a currency is worth relative to another currency in the international market. There is no such easy relationship with purchasing power because there are simply so many more variables that go into it that it becomes very product specific.

Essentially it's more fair, but impractical to the point of unusable for an international seller like GOG to use DPP, domestic purchasing power, as its standard because there is no actual standard. Exchange rate is about as fair as they can make it while still keeping the conversion simple and easy to do.

ewww

Many years ago some mates and I brought greasy fried chicken from a shop in Slough. it was so woeful, KFC in comparison would be considered haute cuisine ☺

Ive done that, there was a place in Edinburgh in the shopping centre. Got some chicken and it basically went straight in the bin.

I got charged $12.50 for Dungeon Siege complete pack on Steam daily deal the other day, while people from the mighty ol' US of A got charged $10. Fairness in inequal pricing, indeed.

That's what we made you think...

*evil laughter*

Thanks Germany for giving us German prices! *thumbs up*

I'm confused. Am I now supposed to send Big Macs to GOG to pay for games? Or can we just send MacDonalds gift cards?

GOGcom doesn't control exchange rates.

Besides, what GOG mean by fair pricing is that everyone, regardless of location, pays the same base price (W2 is slight exception due to legal reasons).

Take ME3 for example:
US - $59.99
UK - £34.99 ($55.66)
Japan - 7665 JPY ($92.73)

(Prices for US and UK based on GamersGate pricing for PC version. Price for Japan based on RRP of PS3 version (PC version is 5,800 JPY [$70.17] based on Origin JP pricing - not available anywhere else to my knowledge)

That pricing simply isn't "fair". It's regional pricing for the same product. If it were sold on GOG, it would be $60 for everyone. So people in Japan would be paying around $33 less, and those in the UK around $4 more. Which is a lot fairer for everyone (except perhaps those in the UK).