Agreed, especially now that everyone can get games for a third of the price by receiving gifts from Russia.

Right, like I'm going to read all of those posts! :P Would it kill you people to not use so many words and use a few more pictures!?

Maybe GOG also opened Pandora's Box with their "DRM-free revolution". A few years back DRM got really insane and games were hardly playable without copy-protection. Now GOG showed that there's actually a lot of money to be made without DRM. Indie Developers are also happy, because it's less efford to them.
Now other stores are jumping on the train and GOG is in a difficult situation. Either they stick with fair pricing, and therefore be the most restricted shop which in long terms will throw them back at the marked or they get rid of it and so loose something that differs them from the others and is a reason for customers to buy here. Lose-Lose Situation.

http://media.twirlit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/its-not-about-the-money.jpg

I see it a bit differently, there's no binary choice between money and principles, money is just resources - it's something everyone needs to survive, including both individuals and companies. I mean do you think an individual who goes to work at a business instantly stops having any principles or ideals because he's working for money?

A company CAN earn lots of money and at the same time have principles, or rather I'd say it's like this: By sticking to your principles, you make those principles your selling point, so the principles become the reason you make money.

It's a shame GOG made this decision because I think it's the wrong decision, the most valuable commodity GOG has is the goodwill of it's community and customers, if it loses those it loses the base upon which all it's revenue comes from.

GOG seems to have forgotten what it's niche is and is just pursuing the road to becoming a mass-market distributor like Steam.

Which games? I've seen this happen like 3 times in my life when buying indie games which used really weird distribution methods. Humble bundle allows you to infinitely redownload anything you own, especially the DRM-free version. Steam allows for infinite redownloads. Desura does, again along with DRM-free. Origin. It's extremely difficult for me to find a widely used platform which doesn't allow for that. Accessing from anywhere? Again, Steam, Desura, Origin, Humble Bundle, they all have that. As for accessing your games from multiple computers, well... Given legality of that, your friend might as well just pirate the game as far as I'm concerned, it makes no difference. I'm not condemning by the way, it's just a little technical sidenote. Not to mention that I've played Dawn of War: Dark Crusade from my Steam account from 6 computers stimultaneously. How? Offline mode. Ditto. Sadly, it seems that catalogue of old games of Steam is growing faster as of lately than catalogue of old games on GOG. Their decision to also focus on indies seems to have taken away the incentive for GOG to hunt down those really obscure, good old games. There are a couple of rencet examples, but they seem to be getting increasingly rare. Applies for all online distributors. We'll see how their pricing works out. If it actually does remain fair as opposed to EUR = USD, I will have incentive to keep shopping here as that automatically means 30% off all titles. If it does get EUR = USD, well, GOG will suddenly sell me less product. Again, not just GOG doing that, everybody doing that. Uh... I don't think that works when all products have precise number attached to them. Or, you know, I can not bother and shop elsewhere since I can no longer count on better deal appearing here. Well used to be, when I still trusted them. Like 3 years ago :-P Why? Trust has to be earned. If you honestly believe that games on GOG are DRM-free because of trust, you're wrong - they're DRM-free to gain audience. When I have joined GOG, I have trusted them to build a big collection of old games without regional pricing, and completely DRM-free. So... Then GOG starts doing weird shit, like the entire site shutdown stunt, and CD-project starts doing weird shit, like the blackmail letters to perceived pirates. That sort of hurts trust. Then they take away the old games and go "IT'LL BE AWESOME, WE SELL INDIES!" And now, in spite of promising to never do that, they introduce regional pricing. I'm fairly optimistic and I think just about anyone knowing me will tell you that I always give second chances, but there's only so many broken promises, weird decisions and principles withheld that I can forgive. Now GOG is a store, so I never felt particulary attached to it per se: But I did hold the store in a relatively high regard, which they just continued to chip away at. Other ideal. One. There's also the money-back guarantee, buuut... I'll rather lose 10 bucks than to go trough the entire process of back and forth with support. I'm not saying GOG support is bad, just that the 'money-back guarantee' would be too much hassle. It's also not why I have joined GOG. Yes, that's exactly the issue. This is not the only place to get DRM-free, and now, GOG has very little advantage over the other platforms - they don't even offer Linux versions for crying out loud.

Edit: Not to mention that IIRC GOG never started out with the fair pricing in the first place. When GOG started, Steam didn't have regional pricing and ... Well it just wasn't a thing in the digital world. Then all the other distributors introduced regional pricing. If GOG just kept quiet and carried on, I would have sort of expected to regional pricing being introduced sooner or later, seeing it's an industry-wide trend. But no, GOG made a big deal out of it and went "Oh yeah, we don't have regional pricing, look how much better than everybody else we are!" Well... Yeah.

Very well put letter, and I hope like you that GOG will manage to grow from this and pull in more large publishers and many more good games DRM-free.
I feel that actually the flat price system, although universal and "fair" was in its own way a little unfair and I am actually less torn over regional pricing then I feel I should be.
As I keep repeating across the GOG forum, so long as the regional price is a fair conversion of the original price including any relevant taxes or VAT then having the price of games adjusted regionally would indeed be fair as people would be paying a more leveled price and not being hit for all the banking charges / conversion fees.

We have members from countries where they were under the flat pricing model paying an equivalent of twice the price for myself because their earning power is less and their currency is not as strong as the pound to dollar. So for those members a lower price will make the games more appealing to buy. Those willing to use IP shifting technology are welcome to do so in my eyes and will do so anyway.
If GOG can keep the publishers pricing their games at a moderately flat price then I will be happy. New releases might be a bit screwy, but the older games should not end up with vast pricing differences, and publishers that I find doing such pricing strategies will only sell games to me on TPB. :) I do not think that running for the hills would do me any good either. GOG is able to pull in bigger and bigger games because publishers look at them and see another way of pulling in revenue on their games, even if they have to loose the DRM they love so much.

I was and I am still not pleased that GOG dropped their statement of fair pricing. This could have been kept under the banner that they would keep the prices competitive and fair for members across the board, but the outright dropping the commitment does still leave a bitter taste for me.
I am here because I like games and I like to feel that I own what I have bought. So for me a game without DRM is the best idea. I can live with CD keys for installation I guess because I grew up with them, but any time I need something I cannot keep on my computer to play a game I do not like it.

Like many others here I can live with the change over to regional pricing, once GOG get their act together and actually charge me in pounds and not dollars (very poor show that they had not gotten this ready before implementing regional pricing).
The day they begin selling real DRM games, or even Steam keys I will drop them into the same basket of retardation I have dropped HB and GG into. Having to sort the DRM-free for the DRM-filled gets on my nerves and really does eat into my willingness to actually bother buying games from them.