GoG going regional with pricing

Communities Gaming
1

So I know GoG had regional pricing for Witcher 2 that you could subvert by changing your country in your profile but now it seems to becoming an official thing.

To get bigger triple A games they are adopting regional pricing that will mean the UK, Australia, NZ etc will pay more for games.

It bugs me as GoG was one price for all as much as DRM free, which is why many people loved it.

Here is where I heard the news which includes links: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/02/australia-included-in-gogs-regional-pricing-for-new-games/#comment-2423277

There is a response from one customer of theirs on the GoG forum which sums it up nice for me.

Well I hate to say it GOG but you've lost me.

I could manage to just be very disappointed to read that you didn't get the sound bug in full spectrum warrior fixed despite it being a documented and serious problem (making the game totally unplayable for many people as it occasionally broke progression) for at least 4 years that I'm aware of. At least with the guarantee it's borderline justified selling it in that state since it might work for people and they can get a refund if it doesn't but regional pricing, seriously? Way to steam it up.

I could forgive that for the witcher 2 since you had multiple international distribution contracts to honour and you couldn't undercut them by selling it cheaper yourselves. Yet even then you "accidently" broke the regional detection system for a month or more and made a news post about it apologising for the "error" and in no way encouraging those amongst us who were being discriminated against due to our location to just say we were in America or wherever and get the cheaper price, wink wink .

Remember those days GOG? You were cool back then. That was the kind of customer service that made people form an emotional attachment to a shop on the internet. Sure people can get excited over steam sales, sure people can really dig a greenmangaming 25% off coupon code but people loved GOG.

When I first signed up in '08, I remember there being a banner on the FAQ page touting what made GOG different, it had 3 points: DRM Free, Same Price Everywhere, Games Are Yours Forever. One of those is already compromised, how long will it be until the others follow suit? Will you one day get Trials Evolution Gold and in the announcement say "Yeah we'd have liked to sell this without uplay but ubisoft insisted and it turns out we liked the money more than we like you". The thing that annoys me the most is that from a business perspective this is an entirely justifiable position but its just not what I was hoping you'd grow into. It feels like an angry, rebellious, smash-the-system, socialist, street poet getting a job at a bank.

I've gotten some great games here, spent lots of money here, had a good time talking to the nutters who populate this place over the years but I'm afraid this is where I get off.

Sorry GOG, you've lost me.

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They were probably getting dinged with taxes/tariffs whatever you want to call em. 

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We wish that we could offer these games at flat prices everywhere in the world, but the decision on pricing is always in our partners’ hands, and regional pricing is becoming the standard around the globe. We’re doing this because we believe that there’s no better way to accomplish our overall goals for DRM-Free gaming and GOG.com. We need more games, devs, and publishers on board to make DRM-Free gaming something that’s standard for all of the gaming world!

Sounds like they may have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've never used GoG, but reading through some of this announcement stuff I'm getting the understanding that GoG is doing this for people like me who enjoy a wide-variety of games from AAA titles to Indies to Classics, but don't want to go hunting them down. Some of these Seasonal sales on Steam and GoG are prime examples, I know GoG has pretty good deals, but I already have Steam, I already know how to use it, I already check it fairly regularly, it has most of the games I like, it has sales I like, and I generally like the platform as a whole. I don't know GoG hardly at all, I almost never check it, it has significantly less of the games I like, and the sales are fairly similar to Steam for the games I like. Those first three things pretty much are the causes of themselves. Yes, I could probably solve all of those issues with GoG within a reasonable amount of time, but I don't see the need to with Steam already covering 95% of them. Yeah the DRM-free thing is a great idea, but it doesn't effect me much at all. If I happen to want to play two things at once, which I never do, I either don't or I simply switch to offline mode on one system. But with GoG potentially getting a wider variety of games available, I would much, much more likely to check them out, and I think my opinions aren't unique for the gaming community. They might be on this specific forum, but as a whole, I think there are a lot of gamers who will think the same way.

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What erks me about the rock and a hard place situation is they should not of put themselves in it perhaps?
What I mean is that GoG's was a place to get out of print games hence Good OLD Games. They were there to fill a niche and they did not use it as a sole source of income for CD Projeckt which is why they sold there Witcher series of games despite that being new and triple A. They are not even owned by shareholders hence they do not need to make as much as possible.

So why would they compromise on their ethics like that annoys me.

Logan, I am very interested to hear your well thought out thoughts (huh?) as you love GoG too and prefer it to Steam as mentioned in the Tek vids. 

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Being between a rock and a hard place is never a fun place to be. Unless that rock is gold and the hard place a wall of whatever sex/gender you're attracted too. That probably wouldn't be so bad.

Anyways, it does sound like GoG is going back on a core statement, but at the same time I don't place all the blame on them, just some. The rest I would place on their partners since it seems like these partners are the ones being jerks to the rest of the world. I'm not an expert at anything other than counting money and putting on my clothes in the morning, but I can't think of any reason why something that costs $50 USD should cost $75 AUD or whatever. To me I would think that the $50 USD game should cost roughly an equivalent amount of money in a foreign currency. Language translation I can kinda see why that might increase costs, but for places that speak the same language I don't see why it would matter.

Regardless, to me it sounds like they are trying to grow and spread out to a larger market, but unfortunately they are losing some of their current market.

6

Exactly. Why can't it just be the same amount everywhere and the exchange rate does the rest. So, $50USD and I buy it on steam so everyone that receives the money as part of the transaction gets there cut of $50 USD and the card I use to pay for it converts it to my local currency.
So on my credit card I get hit say $56AUD as that is the conversion plus whatever conversion fee my Aussie bank charges.

Why should the game publisher get $50US from a US citizen and get $80US from an Australian citizen when it is sent digitally. My ISP don't charge a data collection fee. It is a load of frog shit.

7

What a sack of crap. I am so tired of paying more for digital content in Australia. If I was paying for shipping and the like, well yeah, I'd sort of understand, but not for a download.