It is to my advantage. Even with the inflated exchange rate of 0.75 instead of 0.73, I won't get hit by conversion fees, overseas fees or the even worse Paypal exchange rate. Not to mention that I'll no longer have to ask myself "Is it better to buy today, or should I wait in case the $->€ rate changes? What if it changes the other way?".
It may not be to everyone's advantage, but the same is true for all cases, even keeping the $ only prices.

Now, if your country (not bank, country) charges more to exchange to euros than it does to exchange to dollars, yes, your country is hit harder. If it's your bank that does that though, the answer is the same as we've been giving the UK so far. Switch banks.

Visa charges more for euro conversion than usd. However it's marginal. Still if this change has to happen then why not into each country's currency or no change. Why just change for the sake of change.

So it is to the benefit of any € using country. Not to the advantage of non-€ using ones as it seems though.
For the same reason they were only using $ at the beginning. Logistics and infrastructure. Not to mention that they'll either have to use a standard conversion rate, or be unable to quote their prices.

Right, so that being the case, it really doesn't make sense that the price of a game should be the same everywhere. I'm not saying that the 1 dollar = 1 euro approach makes any sense, but it's not rational to expect a publisher to accept less money for their product because a country has a more aggressive taxation scheme. In the U.S., if I buy something online from a company that does not have a physical presence in my state, I pay no sales tax. So, my 1 dollar spent is 1 dollar gross revenue for a publisher (if they are in my state it is the purchase price + tax). If GOG and the publishers are required to collect VAT for customers euro countries, then their gross revenue is 1 dollar - VAT, which is supposed to be a consumer tax. If I was a publisher and thought my product was worth 1 dollar, I'd advertise a price of 1 dollar for U.S. customers and 1 dollar +VAT for Euro country customers. It just seems like this is really more about regional taxation, which publishers and GOG have no control over. Of course, what they should do, though, is have a transparent way of demonstrating that the local pricing is just a reflection of local tax requirements.

Except that no EU country has a VAT of 37%+, plus if it was about regional taxation then countries within the EU should be presented with different final/ total prices (which was also proposed a good number of times as an acceptable change).
Regional pricing has nth to do with regional taxation, you need to look no farther than the list compiled for AoW3 - we have absolutely no idea what sort of local taxation African and South American countries have in place, if any for digital content, (and frankly, I doubt that the devs have a clue either), yet they get hit pretty hard.

I really think there needs to be separate terminology for the two different pricing schemes, both of which are being referred to interchangeably as "regional pricing". My suggestion:

Regional Pricing - Prices which are significantly different between regions when converted to a common amount. The best example at the moment is AoW3, the value of which varies wildly depending on where you live.

Localised Pricing - Prices which are translated into the local currency but which are intended to be the same amount for all customers (except for inevitable minor differences due to exchange rate changes). An example of this is the proposed fixed local prices for classic games.

While there will still be differences between what people pay via localised pricing (given that your fixed price of GBP3.49 may vary from the equivalent USD5.99 on a particular day), it is no worse than the current scheme which requires some folks to pay to convert their amounts to USD. What is worse is regional pricing, which is just flat-out unfair to consumers across the board, even if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who gets it cheaper.

I am fine with localised pricing, though I understand it will still be a disadvantageous change for some folks who were used to getting a better deal paying USD. What I am not fine with is regional pricing, which is nothing more than price gouging gussied-up as "standard market practice".

I'm fine with the localised prices existing (although it's still a clear betrayal of the one price thing), but what I'm not ok with is people being forced into one localised price or another depending on where they live. If this is supposed to be about making things better for the customers then choice is key.

I'm not sure I follow. For the localised pricing argument, people were already locked into one price, now it will just be another fixed price, just in a different currency. If at the end of the day X amount of value is taken from your bank account, what does it matter if it was taken in dollars or pounds or euros if the amount is the same?

I'm not trying to be confrontational or dense, I just don't understand why there is such adamant resistance to localised prices. Granted, as an American, I have no practical experience with why this change might be an issue. That's why I'm trying to get folks to unpack it for me. Why is paying $5 USD okay, but not the equivalent of $5 in euros or pounds? Is it that in some countries your banks are set up to handle paying in dollars without a problem, but now you are being switched to paying GOG in a currency that is a problem? Or were you getting a better deal when you paid in dollars than you will in your new assigned currency?

Right, the whole point of the policy was that there was one price. They're proposing forcing people into one of several different prices and currencies depending on where they live in the name of convenience. Some of the prices are slightly lower than their US counterparts and some higher, but the point is that they're different.

They claim they're doing it for our benefit and convenience so we can pay in our own currencies and that the prices will all be equivalent. So if this isn't an exercise in regional pricing, why not just give people a choice of the currency to be charged in?

Obviously for the newer games where the prices are vastly different we won't get a choice, but I really can't understand GOG forcing us into buckets for the existing catalogue if the prices are meant to be the same. The reason I'm against the "localised pricing" is the lack of transparency. All I'll see is prices in GBP and it won't be obvious what is priced equivalently (localised) and what regionally priced and this is something I want to know because I refuse to buy any regionally priced games on GOG.
So if I'm forced to use GBP then I won't be buying anything on GOG, because forced localised pricing is just regional pricing.

EDIT: Oh yes, and I do have a USD balance in my paypal account as well as a GBP balance.

I suspect they can't do this for some legal reason, though I have no hard fact to back that up with. It seems since all their transactions are technically in Cyprus, then they should be able to stay with things the way they are. But perhaps the global marketplace is clamping down more and more on that "loophole" (i.e., a way around said governments getting a bigger cut of your money).

That makes sense, the idea that truly regional pricing could be hidden in the localised prices. Other folks have mentioned the idea of a site that tracks the actual prices for each region, so something like that will probably evolve out of this decision. Sad that we'd need something like that.

I figured a number of folks did, so I can see where it would be convenient if they stayed with the dollar in that regard as well.

I think I understand the objections to localised pricing a bit better now. While still not as evil as regional pricing, it does mark a decline in GOG's service.

SirPrimalform and I had a similar discussion in another thread; this is my take on GOG's plans for localised pricing.

Given that they never laid out any plans (nor seem to intend to) on how localised pricing will be done for games under the flat pricing model (existing and future) that don't fall into the $5.99 and $9.99 categories, I do think that basically, yes, the point is to prevent you from distinguishing between priced equivalently (localised) and regionally priced, making it harder to avoid (boycott) regionally priced titles.

So, definitely a decline in GOG's service and one more hit to customer trust.

I fear you may be onto something here. So it seems more and more likely that a "GOG price tracker" site is likely to spring up in the wake of this, flagging up the obvious discrepancies. And your average GOG visitor won't check that site, or even know of its existence, thus rendering it largely moot to GOG overall. So I suspect they'll be able to chalk this up as a "win" in the long term, even if it leads to a defection of their original user base.

If GOG gains enough popularity, the existence of such a price tracking site will be made known in time.

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to think that most of recent (and other upcoming) GOG changes target mostly new customers that come from other digital stores/ platforms (primarily Steam) and thus are already trained and used to all the stuff we are not - of course I have nth more than bits and pieces of selective info given to us, so not sure if it's wise to lay out my theory openly on the forum.

One thing I'm not sure that GOG has taken into full account is this though: Steam users have a number of alternative places to purchase their keys with better deals than on Steam and though these purchases don't bring in any direct profit for Steam, they help increase their user base. GOG codes, otoh, can only be purchased on GOG, so one needs to first find their way to GOG for whatever reason and the only "better" deal they'll eventually get is through GOG's own sales. The only folks that will choose GOG over Steam every time are those that value DRM-free above anything and everything else, and frankly I'm not so sure that this is the "absolute majority" of GOG's user base as someone claimed in another thread (no way to tell, since the forum is hardly representative of the total user base). And even if it currently is, the question is how many of them are interested in pre-orders and day-1 releases and within those, how many can afford them at these prices. Not to mention that there's no guarantee that the "absolute majority" won't shift to another type of users over time.

There's little doubt that GOG counts on the US based users (not affected) who represent by their own data about 50% of their user base (not clear if that's paying customers), the few European countries also not affected and a rise in sales in Rusia (where they've also admitted to not having a market share till now). So, yeah, it probably will be marked as a "win" and "success".

All in all, I can understand (from a business POV) that they want a piece of the larger pie, but it seems that they haven't planned their moves thoroughly enough to go ahead with the changes; the fact that they're also slow to react and fix/ adjust things is another thing that works against them in this race they entered. They need to demonstrate that they can be ahead of the game and so far there's little (to no) evidence that they can.

To make things a bit harder, I read today that Steam added another feature for devs that allows them to set their own sales independent of and/ or along side Steam's planned/ scheduled sales. Sources and [url=http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1yy56p/steamwork_developers_now_can_self_discount_their/]here. GOG needs to get a lot more flexible to compete with stuff like this, it's not enough to simply accept and implement regional pricing.

It's in my own best interest that this change works out, because I do value DRM-free the most, but then I'm also no sheep to shell out $55 - $62 on a pre-order just because somebody thinks that since I'm in the Eurozone I have (by definition) chests full of gold coins stashed under my bed. Not to mention that even if it works out in the name of DRM-free, the doubt that this may also be up for negotiation if and when conditions are ripe won't leave my mind.

Rise from your grave, with a new addition to the GOGmix!

It's 59.99€ and drops to 43.79€ for having both TW1 & TW2. It also nets me two $5.99 games of my choice.

What's interesting is that I'm only presented with and charged directly in EUROs.