Good Old Games: Regional Pricing? We'll make up the difference out of pocket

Gahars

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Good Old Games, if you didn't already know (shame on you), is one of Steam's best competitors, offering a huge catalog of games DRM-free. All the prices are equal no matter the region - or, at least, that's how it's supposed to be. Unfortunately, like the everyone to our Tommy Wiseau, GoG "betrayed" that promise.

Well, everybody can chill. It's cool now.

One: DRM-free forever. Abandoning fixed regional pricing means it will probably take longer to get some games, but you've made it clear that sacrificing fair pricing for more DRM-free games isn't acceptable.

Two: We will adamantly continue to fight for games with flat worldwide pricing. If that fails and we are required to have regional prices, we will make up the difference for you out of our own pockets. For now it will be with $5.99 and $9.99 game codes. In a couple of months, once we have such functionality implemented, we will give you store credit instead, which then you will be able to use towards any purchase and cover the price of it in full or partially. Effectively gamers from all around the world will be able to benefit from the US prices.

This will apply to every single game where we do not have flat pricing, such as Age of Wonders 3 (full details here), Divinity: Original Sin, and The Witcher 3. If you remember the Fair Price Package for The Witcher 2, this will be exactly the same.
:arrow:Good Old Games, in an open letter to its customers

[prebreak]Continue reading...[/prebreak]
Also, because the people dosh protest too much, customers will have the choice between paying with their local currencies or basking in the glory of US standard dollary doos, whatever's most convenient to them.

So yeah. It's really nice to see companies take feedback to heart and treating matters like this so seriously. It's a nice gesture on their part, one I doubt anyone else (even Valve) will replicate. We're getting something really nice here.

Of course, as with any Faustian bargain, there's a catch...
 

Mario92

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If publishers reeaally want to milk euro that much why not just raise US price marginally?

Would really want to support GOG more but with modern games it's just so much more convinient to get them to steam. With older titles I have bought several from them as they usually just work.
 

Pleng

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This is a great PR stunt... but the only way they can possibly afford to do this is by inflating the prices they charge for US versions of the games.
 

JPhantom

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Agreed, I won't use GOG until they stop this as this will force them to raise prices for the US market, the only one I care about.
 

Qtis

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Agreed, I won't use GOG until they stop this as this will force them to raise prices for the US market, the only one I care about.
Yeah, the scum. Digital distributors such as GoG are worse than thieves! How else would they benefit from sales? All those sales have been growing the US marginals too, I presume? :P

Seriously though, there is one thing that affects European prices other than regional pricing: taxes. A general VAT in Finland is 24%, which makes up for a large part of the price difference. (Who wouldn't like to pay for the games without VAT..)

I will keep supporting GoG for as long as they keep up the pricing and distribution at even a relatively close level as they are now. There aren't that many places where you can get so many games for the prices they're asking, DRM free and with no restrictions to future downloads. If this changes, I'd have to reconsider :mellow:

PS. Competitors such as Steam and the Humble Store both use regional pricing.
 

Veho

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Seriously though, there is one thing that affects European prices other than regional pricing: taxes. A general VAT in Finland is 24%, which makes up for a large part of the price difference.
But even when you take tax into consideration there's a large discrepancy remaining. One Euro is 1.39 dollars, so if a game is $9.99 in the US and €9.99 in Europe, it's a 39% price difference.
 

Qtis

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But even when you take tax into consideration there's a large discrepancy remaining. One Euro is 1.39 dollars, so if a game is $9.99 in the US and €9.99 in Europe, it's a 39% price difference.
True, but isn't the US tax added to the price? That would make the difference even smaller..? :unsure: but I digress
 

Gahars

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This is a great PR stunt... but the only way they can possibly afford to do this is by inflating the prices they charge for US versions of the games.

Agreed, I won't use GOG until they stop this as this will force them to raise prices for the US market, the only one I care about.


Not necessarily. GoG still intends for the majority of the games on their service to be price neutral from the get-go, so it's not like they'll have to do this for every single title. Plus, they'll eventually be offering the difference as credit for the GoG, which serves as an incentive to make more purchases from the store, and if customers never use the credit, then they lose nothing.

Besides, considering their competition (Steam, Amazon, etc.), it's not like they could really afford to drive up American prices anyway.
 

Patxinco

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Seriously though, there is one thing that affects European prices other than regional pricing: taxes. A general VAT in Finland is 24%, which makes up for a large part of the price difference. (Who wouldn't like to pay for the games without VAT..)

In Spain we have 21%, that's why i buy games in other countries, like the UK (Zavvi helped a lot and The Game Collection too)

So, sorry for the US costumers, but the others needed it too ^^
 

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GOG aways did a good service, they aways awnser my requests in a reasonable time, and give a reasonable solution. The DosBox games aways come with perfect configs, there is huge sales and sometimes good free stuff. I'm happy with their letter, so it is a good store after all, FOR REAL.

About other stores...

I dont know how many time it will take until they disable it, but despite the hoax around, I can buy Xbox One games any time at any regional store that I like. It is perfect for now, but I bet that they will change it soon...

I dont have a PS home console, but on PS Vita, the Brazilian PS store the prices are far from acceptable, so I use USA account + Amazon gift cards. There is an almost total region lock on current Vita firmwares that is almost impossible to change regions.

Steam still is aa solid store, but now everything is falling appart. Coupons has expire date, regional price locking, and the delays on family sharing keys.

Apple allow us to have multiple accounts on same device, but they allow it in a annoying way, with pop ups and stuff

Amazon allow me do everything I want with real and not real info, they're limitted, but they are customer friendly when you lie about your residence...

So, from stores that I use, GOG is the best one by a huge margin, and seens that they will keep that way...
 

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...
Seriously though, there is one thing that affects European prices other than regional pricing: taxes. A general VAT in Finland is 24%, which makes up for a large part of the price difference. (Who wouldn't like to pay for the games without VAT..)
...
PS. Competitors such as Steam and the Humble Store both use regional pricing.

Finland does have one of the highest VAT there is but why then apply same price to every EU country? If I remember correctly some united states doesn't have VAT at all if I'm not totally incorrect.
I did order few games from Åland many years ago and didn't know they were VAT-free, just bought them as they were cheaper.

When Steam got regional pricing some of beta participants actually though that $1=1€ was just error. Humble Store introduced regional price quite recently and as quietly as possible.

Steam still is aa solid store, but now everything is falling appart. Coupons has expire date, regional price locking, and the delays on family sharing keys.

Coupons have expire date because you can basically make new coupons by crafting badges. Even now I have 10 coupons and those couple Toki Tori 2+ coupons keeps renewing themselves...
Family sharing is now open to everybody but they are super careful with it as it basically lets users to play other users games without paying so if they mess it up it'll be huge lost for them.

At least for me Steam has became just place where I activate my games which I have bought elsewhere as Steams own sales aren't always lowest anymore and almost every game activates on Steam anyway.
 

Qtis

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Now if only they could remember they used to release classic games fixed to work on modern systems

Are there many games not working on Windows 8.1/OS X 10.9.2? Linux distros are a different matter, but the other two "major" OS's work quite well. I've yet to encounter a game that doesn't work at all and I'm using a 2010 laptop. Current game library is already over 100 titles, but as you can imagine, I've not tested all of them to a sufficient level. Mostly the "problems" I've had have been settings related for screen sizes and such (things that you'd have to do in any case, but the options are usually not built into games from the 20th century as they are today).
 

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