If it was a question of VAT, gog would have been forced to apply vat to the price by LAW, not by the publisher.
That is the biggest proof we need.

If you need another proof a game cost $20 in Russia and $60 in USA.
If VAT is the reason, that mean USA put a 200% VAT on the price which is insane and simply doesn't exist anywhere in the world.

We're all out. It's fish for you, enjoy.

Okay. I may have misunderstood Stoic's question.

Ummm... I just did a quick search. It might not be right, but it looks like Australia does have a VAT.

We do pay different prices in the US, based on our state taxes. We do it when we buy the product at the store, or when we do our taxes, if it is online.(many people just do not do it though lol)


The way I read the gog post, it just sounds like some publishers want to work with gog, but are not willing to commit to a flat amount for every place around the world.

It does not mean that there will be different prices everywhere, just that they want the option.

It sounds like it very well could be VAT related. They want the option to pass the VATs onto the people who live in those areas. Does not really sound unreasonable.

Now, if the prices are WAY different, and out of the range of VAT differences, I would be more than happy to bitch with you guys on the forums about it. I still think they have the right to do it though.

Once you give that option, every company will systematically do it. They might not at first, but within a year or 2, they will.
Plus you might bitch about it once you will see a huge price difference but it will be too late.

Ummm, just because the prices were the same does not mean gog was not playing the VATS, it just means that they were passing the costs along to everyone, and artificially keeping the prices the same. That was probably happening for sure... lol.

There could be lots of reasons for the difference between Russia and USA. They could accept a lower price because of piracy in those areas. They might make a deal with the govt itself where they keep the price lower, but get some kinda kickback from the govt. I would not be surprised if part of it is because of some tax we have in the USA.

It does not bother me that I pay $60 for something someone in Russia pays $20 for. If the prices get too high I will just stop buying, and the prices will go lower.

And that it would make copies on other platforms more expensive. They want to keep their Steam pricing on GOG, while GOG used to require a flat rate. GOG worries about GOG customers, while publishers worry about their titles and their customers.

It makes sense that to get more publishers that they would need to compromise on this point. I'm still waiting for their response on my regional trading question. As a trader I know all of the ins and outs of that, so that will be very interesting to see how they handle it. :)

I am just saying that EVERY time I have seen something like this online, when I looked into it, it was ALWAYS VAT related.

Nothing has actually happened here yet, but I could certainly see how it could be VAT related as well.

If greed was just the issue, they could just start charging $200 per game, or whatever they want.

It is not that I do not think people are greedy, because I KNOW they are. I also know that the market will dictate the prices. A company can not get whatever they want for something, because someone else will come along and cut their throat with lower prices.

It's not VAT related. Regional prices are an attempt to cover different currencies with different purchasing power and are geared towards the countries with high PP that have the largest consumer base, but they make large regions that end up covering lots of different countries.

A lot of the people who are really upset are in Eastern Euro zone countries. They are often incorporated into paying the same price as France, Germany, etc ... but have much, much lower purchasing power. But because they are a smaller market, publishers choose not to differentiate them and offer lower prices. It's not worth it to them. So they end up paying much higher prices as a result. Same thing with NZ ver Aus. Australia has high prices on physical games and until recently didn't have an adult rating for video games. NZ had such a rating but still would get many of those games on offer because they were banned by Australia and gets sucked into Australia's price range. All because of geographical proximity to Australia.

In other words, the way regional pricing works now shafts a lot of people who live in poorer countries and are too small of a market for publishers to care about.

Now maybe GOG will try for something different, so I'm not ready to vote to ban regional pricing. I'll wait to see what the first regional pricing deals actually are. But if they follow the same pattern as the rest of the industry, then it is demonstrably unfair to those countries. Right now certain european countries like France, Germany, UK, etc ... get a better deal than they should, but given that a lot of other countries who normally get screwed by publishers were now slightly better off, overall I thought the one world price was a worthy pillar for GOG to have.

that and it will also start to introduce a different release date for different regions too. Another problem that will come into play later on.
All of those problems already exist on steam so why letting it happen here too?

While GOG is offering free games as a preorder, for the TW2 GOG and CDPR did everything they could to circumvent the regional pricing, including games to make up the difference in price, and even got taken to court over it by the distributer (and lost). CDPR and GOG won over the DRM-free aspect though.

My guess is that experience is why they were willing to sign such deals - many AAA studios and smaller publishers sign such physical distribution deals which force them to accept regional pricing on digital games to match physical games and since they are AAA, they want to sell physical copies too so they take the deal. That means a lot them can't sell AAA games with one world pricing even if they wanted too.

gog has missed out on launch titles because of regional pricing frequently, we've seen it a lot lately. Cant fault gog for changing, they need to be able to release at the same time as other distributors if theyr going to compete at all with new games.

Though what you are saying is true, it basically means that we would have to accept to pay a transportation fee on digital media that doesn't need physical transportation.
If many people refuses that, then the AAA publisher themselves will be forced to adapt and not us.

Am I nuts or did both of you miss my 'Airplane' reference?

Well that just won't do.

BRING ME THE COMFY CHAIR!