Preposterous!

Exactly, if its only a few cents, no reason for publishers to insist on regional pricing... :)

As far as I can tell, GOG has opted to do right by us, and I am thrilled. If this is the case, I will resume supporting them at every opportunity. This means buying games even if I'm not sure I'll be into them, gifting and doing giveaways to spread games I already like far and wide, and not least of all contributing to the forums.

THANK YOU, GOG!

So...is anyone still not happy? Because this seems pretty damn fair to me. Bold move GOG. I don't envy the negotiation you'll have to do here on out.

Along with the announcement of regional pricing they also announced three games that wouldn't have come here without it and one can expect that this would have been true for more games.

When it comes to interactions where other companies and their products are involved, such business dealings almost always are under non-disclosure agreements for a variety of really good reasons, and sometimes potentially required by law directly or indirectly (such as some matters concerning Sarbanes-Oxley for example), but also not tipping off competitors, etc.

Aside from concerns regarding legal matters and related to competitors though, when one conducts matters too publicly too early, the public can go with it and take it in any random direction with violent emotion, misconstruing plans, misreading or misunderstanding things and eventually causing a massive amount of havoc in the process that could negatively effect a project in ways that are unpredictable. In contrast, not communicating anything at all about things in advance can have a similar effect. A company or even an open source project for that matter - needs to very carefully weigh the pros and cons of announcing anything at all beforehand as once it is out in the wild, the media, the customers, the followers and their imaginations and emotions can really put all kinds of spin on things which can come back in a negative light which is definitely something you want to avoid. It's often less damaging to say less now and more later than to say more now and wish you had not later.

Also, sometimes enough information simply isn't known and giving people some information only seeds their desire for more information, and then more, and then more and in the process forming various ideas in people's heads about what is to come, when it is going to come and they develop expectations which may or may not be realistic and then later are angry when their expectations aren't met. Additionally, one might have plans to do A, B, and C, and announce it, give a date of April 10, 2014 lets say, and then in the process of actually doing it realize that "B" was just a totally bad idea but enough information wasn't known about it until 2 months after B was announced to the public, and C turns out to be more complex to do within the timeframe estimated and wont be available in time for April 10 so you get egg in your face because your words are often interpreted as "promises" to people instead of a snapshot in time of current intentions which are subject to change in the future. People in general hate change (I think everyone can think of many examples for this) and so one needs to be very calculated about discussing future plans, especially if such plans involve changes to the way people are used to things.

People always want more information. No matter how much information us humans get about something - we want more information because more information is better for us to form opinions and make decisions about things. It's totally natural to want the information. It's just not in the best interest of the information holder to divulge that information in an ongoing stream of completely open transparency all the time for reasons I cited above amongst many others. Communication is a sensitive thing, and easy to mess up. Explaining things to people tends to make people want you to explain more, and then explain more again, and people who disagree with you and your position will take whatever explanations you give them and knowingly or unknowingly try to use them against you as fuel, demanding more explanations, etc.

Sometimes less is more, and more and more businesses learn this over time to choose the things they announce publicly very carefully and at an appropriate time, erring on the side of caution of not giving info unless they feel certain it can be done in a way that gives everyone including themselves a good experience. When they get it wrong, it can explode in their faces (both too much or too little info/communication). This is for example, game companies like Valve, Blizzard don't say much of anything involving future game projects they might or might not be working on, don't give out release dates for games until the last minute, etc.

Being privy to sensitive information is a tricky business to decide what to share and what not to share, because if you get it wrong it can have serious consequences and silence is often a much less risky prospect compared to oversharing more often than not.

It goes both ways. Some people think that it's the end of getting bigger titles, some people wanted to think GOG would be adding DRM since they wanted to go the regional pricing route, and some people would undoubtedly throw crying, screaming fits if GOG decided to increase prices by a dollar a game across the board to make up for them eating costs involved with trying to even out region pricing for people who would get a bad deal. There is no way to win when it comes to making so many disparate people happy. All I can hope for is that GOG won't get their collective throats cut by their own customer base if they have to go the price increase route, and that their profitability will still be sufficient with them choosing to spend so much on each person who buys a game with an inflated price. Going to start taking part of my gaming budget and buying a few things when I can for face value rather than always waiting for the 75 or 80 percent off sales.

Good, but the food left something to be desired, I miss airplane peanuts. :-P
Why? Isn't this more or less the same negotiation that they had before, but with the knowledge that any regional pricing won't be accepted by the customer base without concessions to us?

If anything, this is probably going to make it slightly easier for them to negotiate.

This sounds alot better.
My wallet is open again and il buy some games as a reward.
Thank you.

I've been saying the policy wasn't going to stick and I was right. :P

All is forgiven.

hehe your funny u made my day

Shut up and take my Witcher 3 preorder money (and give me also a Steam key please)!

Oh I agree, but it doesn't seem to be big enough of an issue for gamers outside of GoG to have any affect on industry practices at large. I'm just disappointed that we didn't get to see what other games were in the pipeline that will now likely not appear. DRM-free is the only non-negotiable as far as im concerned, and sometimes you have to be a bit pragmatic to get what you really want. I can't honestly see GoG chasing new release titles hard now that regional pricing is going to fall back on them. I just cant help but wonder what we're going to miss out on...

I have to admit, I'm kind of saddened that a post about getting back to your roots doesn't include a single mention of classic games, especially after the last open letter pretty much said you'd sewn up all the classics that were possible to license. I'm here for the games that I can't legally acquire anymore, or that benefit from the extra effort of making them compatible with modern systems. No one else is really serving that segment of the market.