Psyringe: Checked - yes, you are correct. In any case, a misunderstanding has happened. I strongly doubt that GG _or_ IGN ever thought of the term "permanent discount due to your IGN Prime membership" as "life-long even if the IGN Prime membership has expired", but several people - me included - had arrived at the conclusion that it would, or at least might.
bansama: I made my feelings known to GG via Angie. But suffice to say when you use the terms "always" and "permanent" without any clarification that it actually meant "on all games for a limited amount of time", it's highly misleading. So it should come to no surprise to them that a lot of us are annoyed over this.
I just think they should now be offering that or a similar discount directly to their loyal customers - those of us who have purchased enough from/driven enough sales to them to reach the highest level several times over.
Now though, they can no longer compete with GMG's price cutting, Steam's sales, or the download speeds from both Steam and Origin. Meaning that any incentive to purchase from them is no longer there.
And given that GG obviously knew this promotion was going to end at some point, they should have already planned ahead to provide a similar discount to keep people around. Even if that meant cutting out the sub to IGN and subbing to GG in a similar vein as Amazon's Prime service (or one of the other ideas I since sent them following my annoyance yesterday).
My issue with them ending the discount isn't that they lied or anything like that. I'm bothered by it because it's dumb. I'm no mathematic wizard and I'm only still taking business classes but having a preferred selection of users who get extra discounts is beneficial. It means people who had the discount are far, far more likely to buy at GamersGate then any other place. It also breeds loyalty to the brand and increases positive public feedback.
A large portion of my purchases this year have been at GG due to that discount. That means more revenue for them. I've bought brand new games (or newish) due to the extra 15% off. Games I would have waited on or not bought at all until the prices were driven down.
It's a pretty simple situation. More purchases at a small discount within the user base equals more revenue overall. Without that discount I'm going to shop around even more, and I'm going to be more selective. It drastically reduces my purchasing at their store and will for others resulting in a loss of revenue.