This is the main thing that has me worried, the regional pricing I can accept, even though I don't like it, but censoring/region locked games I can't.

I'm moving back to New Zealand sometime and we always get stuck with censored Australian games, even though we have a R18 rating system for games, therefore we don't need to be censored. This happened with the Witcher 2 on your site.

I will not buy a censored game if you try to sell it to me and my opinion of gog will drop greatly if you do implement regional censoring again.

You guys impressed me by providing a solution to the Wither 2 censoring and patching problems (i.e removed the that you could only patch with the client, which I considered DRM). You have also impressed me with your values and treatment of customers thus far. But the answer to the question above gives me no confidence anymore. I hope my fear is just paranoia and will be proven wrong by gog. I can only hope.

I think people from countries that get hit hardest by regional pricing would disagree with you that it is only a minor issue ;)

It's easy being from the US and Canada to say it isn't important. We don't pay the price for regional pricing pun intended. Although to be fair those from Western and Northern Europe are typically paying the right amount due to regional pricing (that is who the EU regional pricing is aimed at after all) - it's those from NZ, AU, and Eastern and Southern Europe (probably parts of Asia too though not as clear to me) that get hit hard.

I think the market for freshly released AAA titles that just came out of the oven would produce GOG more revenue on my city block alone (let alone globally) than the galaxy-wide sales of C64, Amiga, Atari ST games would have throughout the Milky Way. Yes I'm trying to be funny but behind my humour is a truth that's hard to deny.

Freshly released AAA games make gigantanormous amounts of cash. C64/Amiga/Atari ST games made 25 years ago... well, not so much. Given comparing the two as potential opportunities to evolve a gaming distribution platform on I'm going to have to go with the AAA titles with regards to both customer interest, and shareholder value. ;o)

Aside from that though, they're not mutually exclusive either.

This was not unexpected.

I had expected that gog would implement regional pricing at some point. They cannot sell newer large games with what are essentially launch discounts over the competition. Other services will not like that. And besides, that means publishers make less money than they would otherwise, all to sell a game here at a cheaper price than a larger distributor with more users. That just won't happen. The game just would not be here.

Something similar to this happened at the time of Sword of the Stars: The Pit Gold. And I felt that the gog community didn't do right by gog. Especially with that being indie. But I'm not here to talk about that.

But this is different that not bundling new DLC. Very different. This is not good. And the fact that it was pretty obvious there was a good chance it would show up doesn't make it sting less. The same rip off practices that are elsewhere, now are here. Another thing. Something I didn't mention before but I will now. What business does Red Faction have being a 9.99 game when it came out in 2001 and was just average? There are better games here for 5.99. You can make the argument for the sequel, given that it's a bit newer, but it's still a weaker game than the first. Yet Red Faction 1 came out at 9.99. Not too bad but it was something. But now a digital copy of Red Faction 1 could very well have a price from near to $15 USD to over $15 USD for people in Europe. Interesting. But hey this will just be for the new bigger games, right... right? Gog?

Yeah. And the sooner you get the currencies properly implemented the better because I imagine those getting exploited by their regional price will not appreciate paying a conversion fee on top of their already inflated price. Though what's better? A conversion fee or a bullshit sales tax for a digital game?

You seem to encourage the customer with your principles. It's more than that but I won't go into details of how I think about it here. I am not the typical guy here that buys new releases all the time. I am a newer user to this site. And I look for the sale. But I also buy from gog.com quicker than Steam because of what you are. But now you start to become just as dull as the rest. Can you afford that, with Humble out there? What happens if Steam, with its own worries, decides to make itself just a bit better on principle. Where are you?

I expect regional pricing to trickle into the older titles. It is a matter of when. I do not know whether implementation of regional pricing would interfere with gog's current agreements on titles. If not, then it will roll out sooner than later. It's just when the publisher thinks they can manage it. But it will come to all titles here eventually. And that is what I think about the question of whether this would apply to just the new releases.

When I saw Steam releasing old games I got worried. I think the publishers could play your two services against each other to each of your detriment. That's not a good thing either. But don't be too quick to charge high for old games. Already, money spent on them goes to publishers, and likely not the developers who made them. On a few of them, there is a compromise or two with regards to compatibility. Though you have really made great strides there and have improved many of them over time and you are to be commended. That's a ton of work. So good. But charge too much and people will not be too quick to buy an old game without some other reason on top of it.

The problem with the greedy publishers is that in their unending pursuit for profit they will ruin a good thing. You would sell well despite your small size, quite a feat. What will you do when people start to perceive you as being just like the rest? And the publishers will be responsible. It's what they want. Not today, but eventually they'd have all of you out of it.

I get that you couldn't get these new, large, games without these new pricing structures. But we'll see if this is good on the whole or not. I don't see it being that way.

How to do this right, without costing the publishers an outlet that makes them more money by default, makes them look good, makes all games look better, and something they could likely not replicate with marketing

Leave the regional pricing on the new competing large games only (unlikely)
Keep 5.99 - 9.99 price tag on the old game releases(unlikely)
Get the currencies fixed (or not)

On coming to the site today I noticed you hit 700. Congratulations, gog. A milestone and one you have reached quickly from where you were a little while ago. The other goalpoints after it may not look as good. But I hope anyway. Good luck with this.

Congratulations on reaching a ton of games priced fairly, DRM Free, with compatibility, support, and goodies included. 700 of them. Congratulations on it and I hope all of the new features and the other stuff just goes well for the site and community.

Not too happy about this.
But for the time being il wait and see.

Same here, Ubisoft haven't absolutely lost me, but I really doubt they'll be changing their idiotic practices anytime soon. Hell, even EA could theoretically turn it around. Of course at this point EA, after all the times they've ripped me off, would have to do some bribing to get me back.

Now, BiowEAr, they've lost me. At least for new games. I'll still pick up some of my missing pieces from back in the day.

Grand news indeed!
Can't say I like the region pricing even if I am unlikely to be affected by it. But as long as it is clearly stated when the price differs from the norm(be it up or down) I guess it's a smaller evil that can be avoided/accepted.
I do hope that all that get hit by a price increase DON'T buy the games that way, so maybe someday the industry will get the hint, fair price or no sales!
Also maybe GoG can help us by publishing sale stats where it hopefully will show a massive decrease of sales on affected games to those areas.

Totally disappointed with this first we lost the tag good old game to just gog
then we sold our souls to sell dlc separately
and now this :(

if this continues it will look like a more hassle to get the drm free version of a game then the drm one soon in future....

Patronizing and disrespectful? There are legitimate massive upsides to this, so it's not out there to suggest it's a good thing. If it was a pure negative then yes, it would be shitty to pretend otherwise, but this is not a pure negative. Some of us have been asking them for years to loosen their worldwide policy because it was blocking many games and partners from coming here.

I don't know either way about that one, however they released The Witcher 2 DRM-free here, but with DRM on Steam and elsewhere I believe, and then at a later date decided that the DRM was bad for the game and gave everyone who bought the game the ability to come to GOG and get a free DRM-free backup copy of the game including all of the bonus extras, along with The Witcher original game as well. This is somewhat of an inverted version of the above, and on an issue far more important (IMHO).

So now you will be offering all those great, new AAA titels here on GOG.com:

Region locked, censored and at an inflated price, because that is the "industry standard".

Good news indeed.

cant say im particularly pleased about region pricing mostly because I know Australia usually gets screwed over by region pricing typically. We will see I just hope its a rare brief occurrence and doesn't become the norm otherwise I'll be rather sad :(

on a more positive note.

might and magic x

it's gonna be one of the two. I bet it is

I am fine with regional pricing. In my opinion it is fair to offer a digital product in countries like Russia or in Eastern Europe for less, because the income is (in generel) lower than in Western Europe or in the US. But "Regional Pricing" means for Publishers "lets screw Europeans and Australians"... And the result is 1$=1€. Or in case of Deadalic Games like Memoria in Germany1$=2€.

I see the problem for GOG, I see that GOG is often the last store to offer newer games and that they want to do something about it - but I did not like it.

But i can vote with my wallet. Publishers like Daedalic will be very pleased with this development, now they can charge extra for german versions. But after the mess with Deponia 3 and the lack of german language in the GOG release I decided, that this company will not earn one single cent from me in the future. So i didn't buy Blackguards nor Deponia 3 and I will not buy any future game, where Deadalic is involved. And if other developers decide to rip of customers in this way I will do the same with their products.