I agree with what StingingVelvet said. Except regional pricing, but for a different reason. The issue here is not whether you support regional pricing or not. Personally I'm slightly against it for the reasons paladin stated, but mostly I'm indifferent. I don't feel strongly about it: if something is worth to me the price I'm asked for it - I buy it; if it isn't - I don't buy it. I don't really care how much others are asked for the same thing - it's between them and the seller.

But the issue hare is that regional pricing was one of GOG's core principles. At first they introduced fair price package which was acceptable; in fact it was good to see GOG stand by their principles that they're willing to cover the difference out of their own pocket. But then came real regional pricing with some regions paying less than others a difference that fair price package doesn't cover. Unless the fair price package covers the whole difference between what you pay and the cheapest regional price, GOG abandoned one of its core principles.

And what's worse is the fact of how they went on about it. They still flaunt it as one of their core values. "Fair Price Package - because $1 is not €1". So what? What about all the other users in those regions that still have to pay different prices for same game and the difference not being covered by Fair Price Package. I'd have had a much easier time accepting regional prices being introduced if GOG were open and honest about it and openly state: "Look, we are abandonig our no-regional-pricing principle because so and so. Replacing it with fair price package like so. Other regions will still pay different prices because so and so." But instead they tried sneaking in this change through the backdoor under the guise of more good news.

Other than that, spot on (both to you and StingingVelvet).

Sure, the publisher set prices that they think will bring a "good enough" profit overall, and if the Brazilians were content with paying $35, they'd just make a greater profit, because they can.

Given the same exact game (not different packages with extras or whatnot). For $500 per copy, yeah, they'd make more per copy, but they likely wouldn't sell that many because relatively few people, even in the "richer" countries are prepared to pay that amount.
For $50 per copy, they likely make a lot more In Western Europe, Australia, and North America, because people are much more prepared to pay that price, still not too many copies are sold in South America, Eastern Europe or Russia.
If they lower the price to $15 in SA, EE, and RU, they may very well make more in those markets than if they had kept the price at $50, because a fuckload more copies are sold.
If they'd lowered the price to $15 in NA, WE, and AU, they likely would not have sold enough copies to make up the lower income per copy.

Each publisher calculates what they think they'll earn at different price points in different locations, based on available earlier statistics, and they set prices that they think will maximise their profits. There may very well be some that go "yeah, people may very well pay this much, but... nah, we really think it's a bit too high", but without statistics, I think those are far and few between.

It's not exactly like that. As Maighstir stated, the price of the game is (generally; though not always!) inversely but non-linearly proportional to n the number of copies sold. If price is higher; less people buy it and vice versa.
The publisher's job is to find such an optimal X, that X * n is maximum in order to maximize their profits.

But of course X is going to be different depending on the subset of their potential customers. You're going to get a different value X for males, females, people over 50, people earning more than 100k per year, students, people with children... etc. It's going to be different for rich people in Europe vs rich people in China vs poor people in Europe vs poor people in China. The subset could also be temporal: X is going to be different for people who buy the game on day 1 compared to those who buy it a day later or during summer sale.

It's in the publisher's interest to divide the potential customers into as many subests as possible, because for 2 subsets for example (X1*n1)+(X2*n2) is going to be equal or greater than (Xoverall * noverall). That's why you have different prices on day 1 and five years later. And while it's not possible to set a separate price for a lot of these subsets (you can't have a price depending on your income or marital status because you can't check that for every customer), you can check the country from which the customer is buying online and so you can set a different price for them.

So while being stuck in a subset for which X is higher can feel sucky, you can't really say that you're subsidizing the games for people in China or Russia any more than saying that by buying the game on day one, you're subsidizing it for people who buy it during a sale.

they aren't going they're already there and got even further then steam already!!!!!!!!!!!

and no to both of your questions!

Many people who were here, were here because gog wasn't steam. So I would argue your first sentence is wrong.

To all of you defending gog and galaxy, I've pointed out how they've gone back on their "core values". That's what makes me believe they will, eventually, turn their back on being DRM-free. Galaxy is just the first step, the signs are plain for all to see. But as the saying goes..."You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink". I'm done wasting my time.

Maybe initially. Though even then I'd say many people who were here, were here because GOG offered old games. Later however, most people came here because of The Witcher 3.

However that's neither here nor there. StingingVelvet's first statement has to be right. The number of people who wanted a client and profiles has to VASTLY outnumber the ones who did not. Because otherwise GOG wouldn't have made it in the first place. GOG isn't stupid and wouldn't have spent so much of their resources developing something their customers didn't want.

Not steam and old games that work on modern OS's go hand-in-hand to my way of thinking.

My belief is that gog made a client in the hope of luring some customers to the site that are used to that sort of thing, similar to using The Witcher 3 as "bait".

Originally, yes. But with the influx of new people from the release of Witcher 2 onwards, there has been a shift in the clientele. Most don't even cruise the forums here, where many of us DRM-free die-hards and anti-client proponents hang out. So, yeah, the majority did/do want a client with all the Steam-like features.

I love how many times this happens: someone disagrees with the doom-and-gloom outlook and they're hand-waved away as sheep that just don't see the light. You know, there's room for a different outlook on GOG's future. If they ever do turn to DRM, I'd certainly be done with them. But if I even remotely believed they're actually actively planning on it, I'd be done with them now. I don't understand why the forum dwellers that honestly think GOG's going to abandon DRM-free and feel betrayed by GOG are even still around. If a store pissed me off that much or I felt they were going to betray me I'd just simply wash my hands of them and move on.

There's still people here I communicate with, I don't usually participate in the forum anymore. I quit spending my money here when we had to fight to keep galaxy out of the offline installers.

Understood. I didn't mean to come across harsh, as you (as far as I've seen) aren't one that's constantly complaining about GOG now. It just more of an overall comment/observation.

I didn't take it as harsh, it's all good. :)

But regional pricing and DLC aren't really comparable to DRM free.
Allowing DLC was pretty much the only way to include modern games, who would want to buy an indie game that they knew they couldn't get expansions for?
Sure they could have tried to broker deals for complete versions but that means paying more to get unreleased content of unknown quality or waiting possibly years for a finished version.
As indie games are now a sizeable portion of GOGs catalogue it's clear this move vastly increased their sales and marketing reach.

Regional pricing is less clear, there certainly seems to be more Russian forum users since they first introduced regional pricing and Russian language but it's hard to know how many customers they gained.
Similarly it's hard to know how many developers or publishers were withholding games here because they couldn't regionally price. But it seems that the issue there was often the case of contracts with Steam (or price fixing issues) where they couldn't charge different prices on GOG then they were on Steam, as was the case when Nordic had to remove their stuff temporarily.

But add DRM and what do you get? More new and AAA titles sure, but a lot of the big players won't even release their new stuff on Steam now so why would they release here?
And what do they lose? Their USP, the one thing that makes them stand out in a sea of key resellers.
It makes absolutely no business sense to drop DRM free as it wouldn't increase sales or profits.

Even here on the forum there were several threads before Galaxy arrived, complaining that it was too difficult downloading one or a few files and run an installer, and that Steam was better because it has a one-click download-and-install and achievements. This forum is a fairly small part of the GOG customer base, and though I don't have accounts over at Twitter and Facebook, or follow anything on Reddit, I'd be stupid not to believe them when they say that they've received loads of comments through various channels about wanting an easier installation process, achievements, cloud saves, and in general a more Steam-like experience (perhaps not those exact words, but that's the general sentiment).

GOG built Galaxy because they need(ed) a larger customer base in order to grow and continue to compete and gain developers' interest, and in order to grow a larger customer base, they needed a platform that could provide the features that people were asking for. Whether that's luring them, or simply providing what was asked for, is up to you.

Of course, not all customers (and certainly not all forum dwellers) asked for Galaxy, most of us were (and are?) happy with installer files, but us forum dwellers are the vocal minority, we're the elite, we're the fanboys (all relatively speaking), and you rarely get far if you only cater to the elite and fanboys.

If that would be true, why is GOG not telling us, how many users use Galaxy, just like Steam does. Wouldn’t it support their and your claim, that they are doing it for „almost all“ customers? Until that happpens, me saying only 50-100 people use Galaxy is as (in)correct as your „many“ or „vastly more than not“.

And besides that, was removing the offline installers and abandoning their core principles like „one price worldwidee“ desired by the big majority of customers? Or what about that pr stunt when they invited 6 people, told them a lot of things they would change and about a year later, not one thing has changed. Was that also the wish of the majority of customers?

While I‘m at it. With your line of arguments, then creating Steam, Uplay, Origin, Battlenet and other clients was what all their respective customers wanted. Yeah right.

For the same reason I know that if my baker is selling raisin bread then it's because people must be buying it. I don't need him to publish the number of his customers to tell me that.