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General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
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Posted February 21, 2014
The DRM-Free Revolution Continues with Big Pre-Orders and Launch Day Releases!

Good news! GOG.com is going to bring you more fantastic launch day releases, preorders, and other exciting new content from some of our favorite developers. We've lined up 3 big titles that we will be bringing to GOG.com in the next couple of months for sale or preorder that we think will be hits with all of our gamers; and we have more equally exciting games coming up soon.

If you've been a member of the site for a long time, you may recall that when we launched sales of The Witcher 2 on GOG.com, we had to add in regional pricing. The game cost different amounts in in the US, the UK, the European Union, and Australia. We're doing something like that once again in order to bring you new titles from fantastic bigger studios. Since we don't accept currencies other than USD on GOG.com right now, we'll be charging the equivalent of the local price in USD for these titles. We wish that we could offer these games at flat prices everywhere in the world, but the decision on pricing is always in our partners' hands, and regional pricing is becoming the standard around the globe. We're doing this because we believe that there's no better way to accomplish our overall goals for DRM-Free gaming and GOG.com. We need more games, devs, and publishers on board to make DRM-Free gaming something that's standard for all of the gaming world!

That brings with it more good news, though! As mentioned, we have three games we're launching soon with regional pricing--two RPGs and a strategy game--and while we can't tell you what they are yet because breaking an NDA has more severe penalties than just getting a noogie, we're confident that you'll be as excited about these games as we are. For a limited time, we will be offering anyone who pre-orders or buys one of them a free game from a selection as a gift from GOG.com, just like we did for The Witcher 2.

If you have any questions, hit us up in the comments below and we'll be happy to answer (to the best of our ability).

EDIT: Since we've answered a lot of the common questions already here (and lest you think that we've ignored you), it may be handy for you to check out the forum thread about this and search for staff answers by clicking this link here. (hat tip to user Eli who reminded us that the feature even exists. :)
Posted February 22, 2014
I don't think they expected this kind of shitstorm to follow the announcement. They did try to portray it as "good news". That didn't go too well.

People wouldn't be complaining so much about this decision if they didn't care about what GOG does.

I'm disappointed that instead of trying to change the way things are done in this apparently rather sick industry, GOG decided to go with the flow and follow the standards set by others. I understand it's easier to do that than try to change the shitty standards, but I'm still disappointed.

After all, they did succeed at making a good business out of games without DRM. Why give up now?
Posted February 22, 2014
Will there please be some more of the good old games like Civilization 1 & 2 , Warlords 1 & 2. Dune 2, Command & Conquer, Scorched Earth, Colorado, Firepower, The Horde ? Hope so :-)

Keeo up the good work! GOG forever :-)
Posted February 22, 2014
Remember the shitstorm that happened after the Curst 'partnership' was announced as good news with no explanation? True, nothing bad came of it, but that's just showing how terrible GOG's PR has gotten.
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argonath21: Will there please be some more of the good old games like Civilization 1 & 2 , Warlords 1 & 2. Dune 2, Command & Conquer, Scorched Earth, Colorado, Firepower, The Horde ? Hope so :-)

Keeo up the good work! GOG forever :-)
Ah, the old Scorched Earth! That was the first computer game that I played the crap out of.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by vulchor
Posted February 22, 2014
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N3xtGeN: If some publishers want to artifficialy raise the prices, the others will too, coz jews are gonna jew.
I agree with most of your points, but would you mind not conjuring up these antisemitic stereotypes? I don't care if it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek or just figuratively speaking or whatever, it's inappropriate. And it's also a bit hypocritical, just like all the talk about "greed" I've seen in other posts, seeing that most of us live in countries whose economies are based on capitalism. In that regard, trying to get a good discount on a game could be considered "greed", too. It's just the way capitalist economy works, of course companies are trying to maximize their profit within the accepted limits. And apparantly many gamers in Europe and Australia or wherever accept the higher prices (even if grudgingly), so why would they set them lower? And at least in this case it has hardly anything to do with morals (noone is going to starve because they can't play the latest greatest RPG); it's a conflict of interest. I'm all for strengthening the position of the consumers and criticising anti-consumer practices, but with rational arguments.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Leroux
Posted February 22, 2014
I always thought that not agreeing to GOG's core values was the publishers' loss when their games didn't appear on the GOG catalog. Now it's apparent that GOG was more after the money than the publishers were themselves.

In case someone feels an inexplicable surge of indebtedness toward GOG, let's remember that after the initial consolidation of their user base, GOG has been in no need of anyone's goodwill money and everything they've done has been for profit. The company being registered in Cyprus (a tax haven popular among shady Russian businessmen) instead of Poland should be enough circumstantial evidence that it's not an altruistic charity except for its owners. The company's already using every trick in the book to keep a maximum amount of money to itself, so I'm loathe to see regional pricing as a necessary evil to keep this thing afloat.
Posted February 22, 2014
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Turjake: After all, they did succeed at making a good business out of games without DRM. Why give up now?
Maybe the business is not going so well anymore? Sometime ago GOG had exclusive access to classic games working on modern OSes... now these keep on appearing on Steam and other places (and often as the same versions as these on GOG). When it comes to indies - let's be honest, HiB or even Steam is doing much better job there (HiB sales wise, Steam features wise - GOG doesn't even offer multiplayer unless dev builds it themselves and most use Steam for that). On top of that, I haven't seen any new big publisher on this site for 18 months or so...

So, yeah, surely they had a good business, but doesn't seem like it has many years perspective in it's current form. Unless everybody here is fine with GOG declining into a small museum with some classics... I bet a many of people wouldn't mind it, but from a business point of view, it strikes me as a slow death.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by d2t
Posted February 22, 2014
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hedwards: I'm a bit surprised they haven't gotten a new PR guy because this is just the latest in a series of half arsed announcements without adequate foresight for damage control. People going ape shit over this should have been expected, but I get the feeling it wasn't.
I don't know what else TET can do... He doesn't sell us any bullshit in this topic (like a shitty PR guy would) and doesn't pretend it's something everybody should be happy about.
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Selderij: The company being registered in Cyprus (a tax haven popular among shady Russian businessmen) instead of Poland should be enough circumstantial evidence that it's not an altruistic charity except for its owners. The company's already using every trick in the book to keep a maximum amount of money to itself, so I'm loathe to see regional pricing as a necessary evil to keep this thing afloat.
Cyprus is a kind of tax paradise...
But Poland is most certainly a tax hell.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Novotnus
Posted February 22, 2014
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Turjake: I don't think they expected this kind of shitstorm to follow the announcement. They did try to portray it as "good news". That didn't go too well.

People wouldn't be complaining so much about this decision if they didn't care about what GOG does.

I'm disappointed that instead of trying to change the way things are done in this apparently rather sick industry, GOG decided to go with the flow and follow the standards set by others. I understand it's easier to do that than try to change the shitty standards, but I'm still disappointed.

After all, they did succeed at making a good business out of games without DRM. Why give up now?
They *are* trying to change the shitty standards - they're trying to make DRM-free a standard thing, albeit at the cost of dropping their worldwide pricing policy (for now at least).

The way I see it, this is a case of GOG picking their battles, with the "end game" being both DRM-free releases and worldwide pricing. But as I said before, regional pricing isn't going to go anywhere as long as physical retail remains a big factor and there's absolutely nothing GOG can do about that. It would appear that they can make big progress with regards to big DRM-free releases (especially AAA releases), however it seems this only possible by dropping their worldwide pricing policy.

So it makes sense for them to drop worldwide pricing in order to advance their main goal of getting more DRM-free releases, and to try to deal with the regional pricing issue later when the industry is in a more favourable situation for that. The alternative is for them to carry on as they were before, in which case the big/AAA titles will continue to have regional pricing and remain locked down with DRM and will never show up on GOG.
Posted February 22, 2014
I'm expecting a video from Iwinski about this. some nerves need to be calmed, people are proclaiming GoG is in league with the devil...
Posted February 22, 2014
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Asturaetus: What has the average income of specific regions got to do with anything? Shouldn't a product be priced based on its value?
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vulchor: It absolutely should be, and I've mentioned it here before too to try to correct those that think this is a good thing because of the differences in average income around the globe. Regional pricing has very little to do with average income or strength of the economy, and in many cases it is the exact opposite, and the richer countries are charged less than poorer ones.

Really, it's just the US and usually Canada that see the lower prices, and Australia sees the worst. The EU countries and the UK have to pay much more too.
Same with South America, and the UK is an EU country FYI.
Posted February 22, 2014
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mrking58: I have a feeling the games that use these regional prices will get slammed in the reviews.

I do think this is just another step towards some form of DRM on some games then gog will be just another steam
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Future_Suture: Let's hope they do. They better suffer poor sales as well. Giving up core principles isn't the way to go, GOG.
I think this could be a valid approach.
As I said earlier, buying such games won't settle fine with me : I want to support GoG and show my support for big developpers on GoG, but I can't be fine with the regional pricing. So I think if I buy such games, I'll make an honest review but slam the stars depending on the pricing method (a 1$=1€ equivalent would get a 0 star for sure).
Post edited February 22, 2014 by Potzato
Posted February 22, 2014
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hedwards: I'm a bit surprised they haven't gotten a new PR guy because this is just the latest in a series of half arsed announcements without adequate foresight for damage control. People going ape shit over this should have been expected, but I get the feeling it wasn't.
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Novotnus: I don't know what else TET can do... He doesn't sell us any bullshit in this topic (like a shitty PR guy would) and doesn't pretend it's something everybody should be happy about.
That's definitely a point, I'm not sure who exactly is at fault here, but somewhere in marketing they've screwed up rather royally here. I'm guessing that we aren't getting LA or MS as a result of this and that whomever they've managed to sign isn't likely worth it.

If it were LA or MS, I don't think they'd be bothering to preannounce the bad news, I think they'd have waited until the games were ready to preorder.

I also think that over the years they've compromised themselves so badly that much of the goodwill is already gone and a lot of us have lost faith in them to do the right thing. I'm curious as to how much they can piss us off before it's a serious problem. That insomnia sale and the time machine promo pretty much turned me off of buying games here for the foreseeable future. sure the promos were successful, but I'm not sure that pissing people off like that is a viable long term strategy.

I know I'm far less likely to recommend GOG when I have other options just because I don't respect the sleazier tactics that have been used in recent times.
Posted February 22, 2014
74 pages.

Shit. So even though it says ask a question below in the comments and you'll answer, I'm guessing you'll ignore this one, but I'm going to ask it anyway. And please, only a blue text answer or a link to a blue text answer. Anyone else and it's just speculation. If I wanted speculation I could read 74 pages.

WHEN THESE NEW RELEASES AND BIG TITLES COME TO GOG, WILL THEY OR WILL THEY NO REMAIN DRM FREE???

Not now, THEN??
Post edited February 22, 2014 by OldFatGuy
Posted February 22, 2014
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Turjake: I don't think they expected this kind of shitstorm to follow the announcement. They did try to portray it as "good news". That didn't go too well.

People wouldn't be complaining so much about this decision if they didn't care about what GOG does.

I'm disappointed that instead of trying to change the way things are done in this apparently rather sick industry, GOG decided to go with the flow and follow the standards set by others. I understand it's easier to do that than try to change the shitty standards, but I'm still disappointed.

After all, they did succeed at making a good business out of games without DRM. Why give up now?
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adamhm: They *are* trying to change the shitty standards - they're trying to make DRM-free a standard thing, albeit at the cost of dropping their worldwide pricing policy (for now at least).

The way I see it, this is a case of GOG picking their battles, with the "end game" being both DRM-free releases and worldwide pricing. But as I said before, regional pricing isn't going to go anywhere as long as physical retail remains a big factor and there's absolutely nothing GOG can do about that. It would appear that they can make big progress with regards to big DRM-free releases (especially AAA releases), however it seems this only possible by dropping their worldwide pricing policy.

So it makes sense for them to drop worldwide pricing in order to advance their main goal of getting more DRM-free releases, and to try to deal with the regional pricing issue later when the industry is in a more favourable situation for that. The alternative is for them to carry on as they were before, in which case the big/AAA titles will continue to have regional pricing and remain locked down with DRM and will never show up on GOG.
I don't know about that. They had region free pricing that they've chucked. I'm not sure how burning down the house to save the house makes much sense. I'm not sure that having AAA games here is worthwhile if they have to piss off the loyal customers in order to have the same deal available elsewhere.
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OldFatGuy: 74 pages.

Shit. So even though it says ask a question below in the comments and you'll answer, I'm guessing you'll ignore this one, but I'm going to ask it anyway. And please, only a blue text answer or a link to a blue text answer. Anyone else and it's just speculation. If I wanted speculation I could read 74 pages.

WHEN THESE NEW RELEASES AND BIG TITLES COME TO GOG, WILL THEY OR WILL THEY NO REMAIN DRM FREE???

Not now, THEN??
I think that they're imminent, and that this news would have gone down a lot better with an LA or MS game to go with it. Also, we're just about to page 30 with 50 posts per page.
Post edited February 22, 2014 by hedwards
Posted February 22, 2014
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vulchor: It absolutely should be, and I've mentioned it here before too to try to correct those that think this is a good thing because of the differences in average income around the globe. Regional pricing has very little to do with average income or strength of the economy, and in many cases it is the exact opposite, and the richer countries are charged less than poorer ones.

Really, it's just the US and usually Canada that see the lower prices, and Australia sees the worst. The EU countries and the UK have to pay much more too.
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Future_Suture: Same with South America, and the UK is an EU country FYI.
Yeah, I know the UK is but they use the pound so I thought they should be included seperately, since theirs is even costlier a problem if you go dollar=euro=pound
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAnnouncement: Big Preorders & Launch Day Releases Coming!(4041 posts)(4041 posts)
(4041 posts)