Definately this. Which is one more reason why region restrictions and DRM are two sides of the same coin.

But it is kind of stupid to up the price if there is piracy. Lower prices and no drm = lower piracy i think.

What do you care what someone else paid if you're getting a good price? It's a video game, not a human rights-related necessity.

Honestly, people who are making/selling the thing have all the right in the world to price it how they like, unless there are laws which prohibit them from doing so. So, if you care about this issue so much, then strike it at the source- appeal to your country's lawmakers about "unfair" pricing practices of digital goods.

Also @ itchy01ca01:

So, don't buy it for a price which you don't like- no one is forcing you to spend your money, and there are other games to play. Or there are also other hobbies to take up if you can't afford video games.

I don't appreciate the DRM and regional pricing comparison because I think it's a false equivalency- DRM stays on my PC even after the transaction is done, and I can't avoid DRM like I can avoid a bad price for a game.

I for one know games that haven't gone down in price for literally years. The new indie ones don't seem to be going down in price very fast at all.

That is why they do the reverse. Pirate more in your country and get better prices. Try to get a copy from a cheaper country and get locked out by DRM just like filthy pirates. Region locks and DRM are strongly tied together.

Maybe I am wrong but I think pirates will pirate no matter what is going on with prices and drm. They might use these issues as excuses to pirate because it all sounds so just but they'd be hoisting the sails and collecting the booty in any case I am pretty sure. After all, people pirate GOG 5.99 specials all the time. They pirate any and all digital media every single day, terabyte after terabyte and then some.

The logic for the prices going down was the box retails. When the boxes disappeared from the shelves, you could not sell the game at all, so the prices dropped before that to allow for more sales.
However, in the digital era, this is useless...so you can actually cut the price right away because there is no need for publishers (granted you had the funds to make the game) and the game never disappears from online platforms.

Some will, but some people won't. I already have pirated games because i thought their price was too high...only to buy them later on when the price dropped.
Not everything is either black or white...a lot of greys in the world. And i do think having lower prices encourages sales and people won't pirate a game they like if it's 3 or 4 times cheaper.

But what if you need to download the game again and it goes wrong? And can't you avoid DRM just as much by not buying games with DRM? I don't understand your argument.

Currently they are only doing it for three new games. Games we theoretically would not have otherwise. If they were doing it across the board then maybe I would better understand, but the idea someone would boycott the entire catalog over something that couldn't really have been considered fair in the first place seems like an over reaction, if not a little ungrateful. As it stands GOG is still the best shop buy from, and if they can't earn someone's dollars, then there really isn't anywhere else to go. There may be other shops that haven't recently pissed people off, but they sure won't have any better values to be rewarding if that is what the point is.

I'm sorry for people that get screwed a bit in this, and I'm sorry it's probably not a super popular or sensitive thing to say, but if one has to choose battles then regional pricing wasn't one worth fighting if is keeping games off the store. Maybe Gog would have been better off never trying flat pricing or making a big deal about it, but I'm personally interested in seeing if there is a positive side of this in terms of greater content. For their sake there better be some humdingers lined up, because they are paying a price for the opportunity.

Well, they don't have to disappear from online catalogs, but many have disappeared and more are still being held off from being sold anywhere for no good reason that I can think of. Human beings can be silly sometimes

Until disc releases go away for every platform we're going to have retailer agreements. That's just life.

That doesn't mean they have to apply to digital goods... x)

We Aussies will probably be paying more for games now.

On the flipside, we will also get bigger discounts.

Whilst a 50% discount only means $5 for someone who would otherwise be buying the game for $10, for Australians, a 50% discount will mean that we get a whopping $10 off a purchase of the same game (reduced from $20).

Unlucky for those living in other countries, I say.

I agree with this.