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General discussionConclusion of the Fair Price Package program(910 posts)(910 posts)
(910 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 26, 2019
On March 31st we are going to discontinue the Fair Price Package program. Let us explain the reasoning behind this decision.

We came up with Fair Price Package (FPP) as a way to make up the price difference between various countries. Some games on GOG.COM have regional pricing, meaning the price of the same game in one place can be higher compared to its price in North America. In countries where the game is more expensive, we give users the equivalent of the price difference in GOG Wallet funds. In actual numbers, on average, we give users back 12% of the game price from our own pocket. In some cases, this number can reach as high as 37%.

In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller. However, we look at it, at the end of the day we are a store and need to make sure we sell games without a loss.

Removing FPP is not a decision we make lightly, but by making this change, we will be able to offer better conditions to game creators, which — in turn — will allow us to offer you more curated classic games and new releases. All DRM-free.

We wanted to make sure you have some lead time to still benefit from the Fair Price Package. The program will last until the 31st of March, 2019, so if you would like to take advantage of it, now is the time. The funds you gather from the program will keep the 12 months expiration date from the moment you’ve been granted your last funds.
Posted February 26, 2019
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First of all, thank you for your support. This was not an easy decision to discontinue the FPP program and we're grateful to you for understanding the reasons behind it. We see that quite a few of you raised concerns about GOG's future. As a part of publicly traded company, we can't comment on any financial results until they are officially reported, but we want to ensure you everything is good with GOG. Being part of a big gaming company, some reports - especially some given by significant media outlets - can often sound much scarier than reality.

You've been also concerned about your access to the games you’ve purchased on GOG. We've covered this topic years ago and it's been in our User Agreement for a long time (please check the section 17.3). This is not only a legal obligation to you but a core part of our ethics as a company.

But don’t worry, all is good, and we have a great plan for the future of GOG. We can’t wait for you to see some of the exciting things we have coming very soon.

EDIT: pinned
Post edited February 26, 2019 by elcook
Posted March 08, 2019
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HypersomniacLive: My stance on the matter of regional pricing is not to make any devs/pubs (and as a consequence the store/stores) any money, and let them know. So whether it stayed or goes makes no difference to me personally, I've never benefited from the FPP, not once.
Same, said it from my first post in this thread even, if a game has a price above base I'm boycotting it by default, so whether FPP exists or not makes no difference for me personally. And since GOG gives those money back it makes no difference for publishers either, so there's no fighting the practice involved in it. However, even if various discussions definitely said that they weren't doing much of that to begin with, the FPP did make it be in GOG's best interest to do whatever they can to persuade publishers to apply such pricing with prices above the US one as little as possible, and make the difference as small as possible. Now they won't even have whatever interest in doing so that they had so far, so the ratio of games with higher prices for some regions is very likely to increase even more, and the amount of extra charge may increase as well.
Post edited March 08, 2019 by Cavalary
Posted March 08, 2019
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Graymatter: Thanks GOG for the feedback. Still my go to store for games. The only DRM free store.
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Yummy: But they also went back on that and sell games, that have serials, a need for external accounts or require the GOG client.
I understand the reasoning behind some of that, but I feel that GOG is slowly becoming just another store.
After bowing to social media outrage, I started to stop considering GOG as my go-to shop.
The only thing that keeps me interested atm, is the optional client, because I really don't want stuff running on my system
I must be missing something. All of my 170 odd games can be downloaded from the site directly and are DRM free. Which ones aren't?
Posted March 08, 2019
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Yummy: But they also went back on that and sell games, that have serials, a need for external accounts or require the GOG client.
I understand the reasoning behind some of that, but I feel that GOG is slowly becoming just another store.
After bowing to social media outrage, I started to stop considering GOG as my go-to shop.
The only thing that keeps me interested atm, is the optional client, because I really don't want stuff running on my system
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Graymatter: I must be missing something. All of my 170 odd games can be downloaded from the site directly and are DRM free. Which ones aren't?
GWENT comes to mind.
Gremlins Inc.'s DLC was locked to online authentication (the whole game was removed by now), same for some other DLCs at least for a while although that was mostly fixed.
Many multi-player modes need Galaxy and/or third party accounts, actually.
I have started gathering information about that but it was too tedious to do it alone:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/lists_games_that_need_galaxy_for_multiplayer_and_the_ones_that_dont/page1

Some examples:
Age of Wonders III + Eternal Lords + Golden Realms (multi-player needs serial registration and regular authenticity check)
American Conquest + Fight Back (multi-player needs serial registration)
Battle Worlds: Kronos (multi-player needs serial registration)
Chaos Reborn (multi-player needs serial registration)
DEFCON (multi-player needs serial registration)
Din's Curse + Demon War (multi-player needs serial registration)

Absolver locks away most of the game's content behind the online multi-player thanks to its level-up system and unfortunately that needs Galaxy (which isn't even on Linux and closed source due to its authentication mechanism, so can't be ported properly by the community).

That's just what I know of.
The list of games where the multi-player needs Galaxy is much longer of course.
Post edited March 08, 2019 by Klumpen0815
Posted March 08, 2019
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fronzelneekburm: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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chandra: Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listen...
It's been a loooooong time since I played this. o.O
Posted March 08, 2019
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Klumpen0815: GWENT comes to mind.
Well technially Gwent is not "sold" here and Thronebreaker, the single player version, is DRM-free

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Klumpen0815: Gremlins Inc.'s DLC was locked to online authentication (the whole game was removed by now), same for some other DLCs at least for a while although that was mostly fixed.
Gremlins DLC was skins for the multiplayer, and the multiplayer was online only.

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Klumpen0815: Many multi-player modes need Galaxy and/or third party accounts, actually.
That's the case since the beginning of Gog, single player part is DRM-free, no guarantee the multiplayer part. And that was the case long before Galaxy was even a thing, Two World, that was released on Gog nearly ten years ago, require online activation if you want to use its multiplayer.

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Klumpen0815: Absolver locks away most of the game's content behind the online multi-player thanks to its level-up system and unfortunately that needs Galaxy
This one is definitely a more problematic case, while it can be argued that this part was in the "endgame" and didn't impact the "story part" it hurt the replay-ability of the games for no real reason.
Posted March 08, 2019
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elcook: And thank you for that! The day is coming. By the end of this week everything will be clear, I promise :)
Okay I was hoping for a big site change (new feature or fixing the redesign) or Galaxy 1.3 over just another game release... but having Diablo here and Blizzard on GOG is still pretty damn cool. So I can't be disappointed.

But really don't you guys think it's past time Galaxy got a major update. :P
Posted March 08, 2019
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Same, was hoping for something more revolutionary than a good release
Posted March 08, 2019
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Pheace: Same, was hoping for something more revolutionary than a good release
It's a pretty big deal. Blizzard/Activision with a new deal...
Other Blizzard games next, but could we also see the early Call of Duty games if this is successful?
Posted March 08, 2019
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Pheace: Same, was hoping for something more revolutionary than a good release
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RWarehall: It's a pretty big deal. Blizzard/Activision with a new deal...
Other Blizzard games next, but could we also see the early Call of Duty games if this is successful?
I get that it's a big deal for people waiting for those games but long term it just means a couple of good selling games were added. I would've preferred to have seen something that would've changed the store for something different/better.
Post edited March 08, 2019 by Pheace
Posted March 09, 2019
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Pheace: I would've preferred to have seen something that would've changed the store for something different/better.
Changing the store and better don't go together for GOG. Or for the vast majority of places for that matter.
Different, yeah, but not the good kind of different.
Posted March 09, 2019
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Pheace: I would've preferred to have seen something that would've changed the store for something different/better.
Can you elaborate on why you care? (pardon my bluntness, I didn't mean for the sentence to sound rude) Do you want an easier browsing experience?
Posted March 09, 2019
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Pheace: I would've preferred to have seen something that would've changed the store for something different/better.
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tfishell: Can you elaborate on why you care? (pardon my bluntness, I didn't mean for the sentence to sound rude) Do you want an easier browsing experience?
I'm more at a level where I'm curious how the different stores improve over time, especially lately with the Epic store mixing things up. We've seen somebig changes here and there, I was hoping GOG would pull something interesting as well, particularly to compensate for the loss of the FPP. Hence I was hoping the big news was something more store wide. A few good selling games doesn't really measure up against the loss of FPP.
Posted March 09, 2019
I'm not too happy with the move. It basically makes games more expensive for me here (and GOG already wasn't really cheaper than Steam) and it makes regional pricing even more unfair in my eyes (I already didn't really like it even with the fair price package but without I really hate it). It definitely won't make me want to buy more games here, rather less and I don't know if this move really will help GOG in the long run.

There was a reason they started with flat prices and it's a long way to go from there to here. GOG changed a lot in the last 10 years.

But what also annoys me quite a lot is the wording of the blue post in this thread and especially "But don’t worry, all is good, and we have a great plan for the future of GOG."

This is so silly. I wonder what GOG or at least the author of the lines thinks of the customers? When ever was "all good"? I'm sure Marcin or someone else would have found better, truer words in the good old days.

Anyway. Let's see where fate will lead GOG to. I don't really feel involved anymore, more like a somewhat interested spectator.
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OldOldGamer: ... The world economy is contracting, and these are simple consequences. ...
Are you sure? Many good sources seem to say the world economy is not contracting, but growing.

For example the UN report on "World Economic Situation and Prospects 2018". Figure I.1 for example displays the growth of the world cross product and 2018 seems to have been pretty average, even slightly better than the years before.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and-prospects-2018/
Post edited March 09, 2019 by Trilarion
Posted March 09, 2019
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tfishell: Can you elaborate on why you care? (pardon my bluntness, I didn't mean for the sentence to sound rude) Do you want an easier browsing experience?
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Pheace: I'm more at a level where I'm curious how the different stores improve over time, especially lately with the Epic store mixing things up. We've seen somebig changes here and there, I was hoping GOG would pull something interesting as well, particularly to compensate for the loss of the FPP. Hence I was hoping the big news was something more store wide. A few good selling games doesn't really measure up against the loss of FPP.
Thanks for explaining.
Posted March 09, 2019
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Trilarion: I'm not too happy with the move. It basically makes games more expensive for me here (and GOG already wasn't really cheaper than Steam) and it makes regional pricing even more unfair in my eyes (I already didn't really like it even with the fair price package but without I really hate it). It definitely won't make me want to buy more games here, rather less and I don't know if this move really will help GOG in the long run.

There was a reason they started with flat prices and it's a long way to go from there to here. GOG changed a lot in the last 10 years.

But what also annoys me quite a lot is the wording of the blue post in this thread and especially "But don’t worry, all is good, and we have a great plan for the future of GOG."

This is so silly. I wonder what GOG or at least the author of the lines thinks of the customers? When ever was "all good"? I'm sure Marcin or someone else would have found better, truer words in the good old days.

Anyway. Let's see where fate will lead GOG to. I don't really feel involved anymore, more like a somewhat interested spectator.
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OldOldGamer: ... The world economy is contracting, and these are simple consequences. ...
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Trilarion: Are you sure? Many good sources seem to say the world economy is not contracting, but growing.

For example the UN report on "World Economic Situation and Prospects 2018". Figure I.1 for example displays the growth of the world cross product and 2018 seems to have been pretty average, even slightly better than the years before.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and-prospects-2018/
I always take these numbers with a pinch of salt.
Economy (global market) always seems to grow, until it does not.

You can have perfectly healthy companies closing down at a blink of an eye, millions on unemployed people in central Europe, buying capcity going down, still have Mobile market growing, to crash the next year.

I genuinely think that no one has a reall, deep, understand of economy, like no one really understand weather or earthquakes.

I'm sure I'm wrong, and I don't really care if I am.
I believe GOG have difficulties in achieving a profit, so they do what a company needs to do.
Post edited March 09, 2019 by OldOldGamer
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Community
General discussionConclusion of the Fair Price Package program(910 posts)(910 posts)
(910 posts)