Heresy, we all know conjecture = reality.

You're just saying that because you don't like being gouged with the EU customers.

Harsh, but it is the reality. But GOG has served me well, that's why I keep coming here. I have no interest of their agenda. Just strictly business.

I seriously think it's not worth the emotions that are being invested here. My hope is that this will lead to getting the more sought-after games in the wishlist and that it does not lead to the entire catalog being regionally-priced but I can't say if it will or not. For the time being I don't find it useful to dwell on it; que sera, sera.

Sigh, it's not really conjecture, they're going to have to change other things in order to make this work. DRM, changes to the gifting policy and how they determine which region you're in are all possible things to deal with that. I have a hard time buying the notion that the publishers are going to be satisfied with a secondary market developing selling gifts from the cheapest region to folks in the EU and AU.

Calling it conjecture implies that there's no good reason for the suspicion that there's going to be some enforcement mechanism at play here.

It might be awhile before another company "core value" is scrapped. The reason being is a lot of people came here for old DRM free games, not AAA titles. The problem with changing over to DRM besides angering the majority of GOG's fanbase/customers is that Steam and Origin play the game better than anyone else in that arena. Their client/server software may not be perfect but it's one of the best in the industry for providing DRM and constant updates on all games you buy. As of now GOG has a problem with letting people know what has updated in a game. It would be a tremendous resource strain to get something close to Steam or Origin for GOG. I'm not too worried, only a handful of games are not going to have a universal price. While GOG may not have any obligation to champion DRM free, it's what they are known for, and to decide to make a change would knockout a lot of their customers and cost a lot of money to try and figure out how to do it better than Steam/Origin. By sticking with their current business model, they won't lose money trying to out do Steam/Origin. DRM free is here to stay, at least for a long while.

As a customer I have both Steam and GOG games. I pick the GOG games over Steam for non multiplayer games (with exceptions on occasion) for two reasons, DRM free and extras. I imagine a lot of people that are customers here do the same. If DRM free is scrapped, why would I buy the game outside of Steam or Origin? They have flash sales just as often for the same games.

If regional pricing means that prices for me will be the same + 24% (that's VAT for Romania) then this is ok for me. VAT should be payed by me, not by GOG. If there is anybody I should be upset it's my own country legislation.

I doubt that's what they mean. The reason being that they would have just said that's what they were doing. It would have cut out a ton of the angst and it would have given people a clear sense of what the region pricing was going to be like.

I'll be shocked if this results in any meaningful reduction in pricing for anybody. It's just not something that publishers demanding region based pricing are known for.

Not an Steam user, are you? There IS a secondary market on Steam, even with a regional priced store. Sure, sometimes there are games region locked (especially Germany, Russia or China), but that doesn't stop people to gift or trade games between different regions.

Why would GOG be different?

Many of us are understandably upset about the regional pricing, whether it affects us directly or not, however, let’s try not to lose our heads, and be more rational. Take a moment to think things through. Pricing is going to ultimately be decided by sales, our voting with our wallets, and pricing will be adjusted over time.

If we are ever to move the DRM free Revolution forward, then we must get the big AAA Developers and Publishers on board with us, in the DRM free distribution markets. And this isn’t just about Gaming, we can expand the cause to Movies, Music and Literature or reference materials as well.

GoG has made a compromise in their pricing principles to make this happen. The AAA Devs and Pubs have made a compromise on their DRM policies to make this happen. Unfortunately the current structure of the large business models are bound to regional pricing and content restrictions, but that doesn’t mean that it will always remain so.

We must be constructive in our criticisms, expressing our influence as a community to be more forward thinking. Let’s welcome these new Devs and Pubs that release their Titles on all DRM free sites.

When it comes to restricted access to content, that is something we can petition Governments and businesses to ease up on, if we make a compromise with possible posted warnings and/or age restriction guidelines, to let individuals decide whether the content is appropriate for them.

Yes, I did. This is about DRM, not regional pricing which has its own thread or threads. I mention it here but it is obviously not the focus of the topic. By all means allow me now to add that yes, I agree with you that Apple is no better as far as DRM goes. The App stores are locked down tight. :D

I am writing this on an iMac because I like Macintosh computers and their operating system. I could just as well have written it on a PC which also lives in a world with plenty of DRM. I'd feel the way I do about the masquerade going on here regardless of what I was typing on.

I honestly don't think GOG is going to abandon DRM-free, at least not anytime soon. They're making DRM-free their own PR flagship, sacrificing everything else on its name, and as such they can't back out on that at this point.

That said, I don't think there's a DRM-free revolution either. There's no way suddenly tons of AAAs are going to be coming DRM-free. I would be OK if this turns out on all games being made DRM-free sometime around 5 years after release, though.

Honestly I think the very best we can hope for is that more AAA games become DRM free after a few years. But even that's being a bit optimistic.

There is a more realistic fight for indie developers. The lure of Steam is quite strong...

Something you need to realize, though, is that the business and "principles" of GOG aren't particularly separable. A large part of GOG's success is due to a massive amount of gamer goodwill- that goodwill is what made them, and loss of that goodwill could very easily unmake them. In terms of the product being offered GOG doesn't have a whole lot of advantages over their competitors- neither price nor customer service is particularly competitive; the extras can be nice at times, but I suspect they're rarely a deciding factor in people's purchasing decisions. DRM is the main differentiating factor in the product being offered, but this is often offset by updates and multiplayer being much clunkier on newer titles from GOG (while I hate to admit it, Steam actually does a really good job on these aspects). The biggest thing that GOG has had going for them is the goodwill they've fostered among gamers through the impression that GOG is always looking to treat us fairly. Take that away and there's much less incentive for people to purchase games through GOG as opposed to their competition, especially newer games where other distributors are handling multiplayer, patches, and DLC management much better than GOG is.

So in a sense you're right that it is all just business when it comes to GOG, but that business is a bit more complex than you make it out to be, and I suspect that stepping away from some of their "principles" will have more of an impact on GOG's business than they expected.