GOG News and Updates 2014

Status
Not open for further replies.
sirfairfax said:
Regional pricing works when you have different products, shipping costs, taxes, etc. In other words, it's reasonable and works when you're talking about physical goods.
Treating your consumers equally is a good principle, charging more because of your IP address is bullshit.
According to your reasoning, companies should charge cars differently in tollbooths based on the average income in the city where the license plate is registered. Does that sound right to you?
Click to expand...
In stevewinwood's magical socialist utopia, yes I would say that's fair. Or more specifically, most good and services priced at a percentage of income on a per person basis (with ceilings of course). Works for the most part with tax brackets no?
Arthea said:
That's what most people believe, that regional pricing is needed for those that can't afford full price, but that's not how economy works, any economy unless we talk about
charity or non-profit organizations. If you sell something at a loss, you have to make up for a loss in other areas, meaning you take from someone and give it to another. And there is no way around it. Now that wouldn't be unfair, if richer countries paid a little more than they supposed to and poor ones got their games little cheaper. But that's not the case. Eastern Europe by large aren't nowhere near rich, and they all pay more. How is that fair? Or small countries, that nobody cares about, these have no real impact on sales or profits, they don't have even region attached usually, just buy in nearest bigger economic zone. Who cares about how poor they are? nobody.
Do they get cheaper cars? Or computers? or anything at all? Besides what produced internally.
We aren't talking fair, we are talking about rippoff, that's how I see it. Fair? It doesn't exist, not at large and not in economics, if it existed we wouldn't have poor people, would we? If it doesn't exist in any branch of human life, I don't see how it can exist in gaming.
Shortly, regional pricing is ripoff, plain and simple.
Click to expand...

It does not work like that right now (taking/giving). Publishers pay for some AAA game. They focus Europe, NA, Japan. If that sells well, great! If/when they release it in Brazil, Russia, and India, these are bonuses. Especially in digital distribution when this shit is pennies to do (barring translations).

And in my post I specifically talked about people on the fringes, being screwed right now since the regional pricing hasn't kicked in yet, see: south america being stuck with shitty pricing because it doesn't go off of a locked brazil price yet. In theory when they get targeted, they're prices would be better right?

And yes of course, because poor people are poor in all other aspects of life, this means that yes video game distributors should also treat them poorly. As per your second to last sentence.
 
but that's not what I mean at all, let's see gmg situation, does it have cheaper regional pricing for any region, just because they rip off all Europe and Australia? or humble? And why the hell mostly Europe has to pay more, anyway. Well, if I remember correctly all retailers are saying that regional pricing policies come from publishers. If that's true, you surely agree that's not about poor people.
There are people that are starving, right about now in every city in the world, kids included. What it has to do with digital distribution of games? We are not talking about why poor people can't afford games, we are talking about regional pricing isn't helping them, you agree yourself, instead we are paying more for no reason at all.
 
Chacranajxy said:
Well, I mean... it is the publishers' fault.
Click to expand...

Too bad most publisher doesn't know how to sell stuff. And DD platforms are letting them dictate the rules as if they know. They should have said, "look, this stuff doesn't work like you imagine, here is how we sell it". Instead they go with the opinion of people who think that including five different layers of DRM and incomprehensible pricing and DLC, without even saying "wait a second, they already ruined optical media and they are coming to DD because it works" and understand that DD exist because it isn't under total publisher control.
 

778TLGS.png


of39NLs.png


zfvUrTM.png


Small batch this week... I'll blame the ever annoying winter weather and well lack of downtime to get more done. Hopefully next week can be larger than normal!

Anyway, Dungeon Keeper stood out to process because of the recent promo (DK1 being free), and DK2 also easily fits the bill for recommended games, so those are both out of the way now.

Continuing on with the Week 7 releases brings us to Steamworld Dig. Quite a bit of positive impressions for that one, with only a few people that didn't enjoy it / get it. Overall, it really impresses people in the short amount of time it plays out, and most people are left wanting a sequel. So definitely worth looking in to!
 
I'd heard a lot of good things about Steamworld Dig from a couple of ex-EGMers, which has made me want to play the game ever since. And I bought it, too! When I get back home next week, I'll probably hook my computer up to the TV and dig in.
 
Teknoman said:
Is there anything keeping Neverhood from appearing on gog?
Click to expand...

This is a post by the creator in response to questions about a sequel, but nevertheless the rights lie with EA, who have been pretty good with releasing old games on GOG.

https://www.facebook.com/TheNeverhoodGame/posts/10151798608889466

I'm reposting this for those who wonder why I can't make an official Neverhood game:

I've explained this before, but I'll be very thorough now. Intellectual Property rights are no different than you owning and controlling your couch. Once you buy it, I can't come into your house and take a picture of it, then sell that picture to make money. You own it. So back in the day, we needed one point something million dollars to make the first Neverhood game, and publishers would pay you the money, but you HAD TO assign the character rights to the company. I did that with Earthworm Jim and Neverhood, so I own and control neither one of those characters or worlds. It was the price of admission to getting to do a game.

So Dreamworks Interactive paid for the game to be made, and own the Neverhood characters (I own the name Neverhood, but can't make a project that represents itself as that game). Dreamworks Interactive was sold to EA. We've tried for years to work out a deal with EA, but it never made sense to them to do it for a number of reasons. They never fully understood the fanbase for the game, but that's not my problem.

But if I put Klaymen, or Ottoborg, or any other character from the Neverhood in this new game, even in the tiniest way, I've effectively used EA's "couch" without their permission. They have the right to THEIR intellectual property and could instantly cease every asset of the game and demand it not be sold. It would tangle the game up in a way that would be stupid to even try.

I want to note that EA is not being bad in protecting their property, and they have no obligation to make an iPHone port or to let me use the character... I sold them the couch after all when I assigned the character rights to Dreamworks Interactive. If it was up to me, I'd make 800 Neverhood sequels the same way that I would make 800 new Earthworm Jim games. It's not my decision, and it's not my place. It's MUCH easier (and frankly, funner) to create something new!
Click to expand...
 
Chacranajxy said:
That's the thing. Fair pricing has been a nicety, but GOG has never competed on price. The differentiator has always been that the games are DRM-free, the bonuses, and the focus on old games. They still do all of those things. Yeah, they release indie games and some more modern titles these days, but they've still been consistently pumping out old games, and I hardly think anyone's being disserviced by them releasing a DRM-free version of STALKER. At the end of the day, it's a store that's always been focused on giving you a better product, and, based on what they've been saying on their forum, this really was the only way to get a GOG-style release for some of those bigger titles, largely due to all the legal red tape involving pricing.

Introducing region pricing, while unfortunate, hardly indicates that GOG's going to go back on something else, like offering DRM-free games. It was a nice bullet point, but hardly a founding principle that they're suddenly negating.
Click to expand...

I don't think GOG would go back on the DRM-Free portion, because selling DRM'd games pretty much means selling Steam & Origin Keys at this point, and they could correctly point out that to do such would mean promoting a competitor's service over their own service.
 
sirfairfax said:
Regional pricing works when you have different products, shipping costs, taxes, etc. In other words, it's reasonable and works when you're talking about physical goods.
Treating your consumers equally is a good principle, charging more because of your IP address is bullshit.
Click to expand...

The problem you run into here is sales to regions where people still use digital content but have dramatically different incomes. Russia is the classic example -- people have computers there, many people like to play computer games, but prices that are easy to pay for Americans become quite unreasonable when converted directly to rubles. Regional pricing can make things available to Russians at a reasonable price without having to dramatically undercharge other audiences.

However: the dark flipside of regional pricing is when people get stuck with a price that's less generous given their relative incomes, which is unfortunately quite common especially for pricing in GBP, EUR, or AUD.
 
charlequin said:
The problem you run into here is sales to regions where people still use digital content but have dramatically different incomes. Russia is the classic example -- people have computers there, many people like to play computer games, but prices that are easy to pay for Americans become quite unreasonable when converted directly to rubles. Regional pricing can make things available to Russians at a reasonable price without having to dramatically undercharge other audiences.

However: the dark flipside of regional pricing is when people get stuck with a price that's less generous given their relative incomes, which is unfortunately quite common especially for pricing in GBP, EUR, or AUD.
Click to expand...
The "dark flipside" is always there. If it's cheaper in any region, it's more expensive everywhere else, and nothing makes that reasonable. Nothing will ever convince me that people should pay more or less for the same download because of the GDP per capita in their country.
To make things worse, Steam has added region locking in order to enforce this.
I wonder how much shit people are going to put up with before any backlash occurs.
 
sirfairfax said:
The "dark flipside" is always there. If it's cheaper in any region, it's more expensive everywhere else
Click to expand...

Yes, technically, but that's a pretty narrow analysis. There are two different elements in play here -- absolute price, which is how much you're paying once you convert to some general purpose "universal" currency, and relative local price, which is how much someone is paying relative to other goods sold in their own country and the incomes people make there.

When most people complain about regional pricing in, say, GBP, they're not mad about how the price in GBP converts in that particular day's USD-to-GBP conversion rate; they're mad because companies pick some standard "conversion" into GBP that has no basis of comparison to local goods in the UK (and therefore the games in question are overpriced.)

and nothing makes that reasonable.
Click to expand...

I feel like it's pretty unreasonable to look at something that you previously considered to be reasonably priced and suddenly get mad about it because its publisher gave a special low price to people in one particular region.

Again, the situation of offering a lower price in developing regions is very different from trying to squeeze extra cash out of Europeans and Australians.

I wonder how much shit people are going to put up with before any backlash occurs.
Click to expand...

You're never, ever going to see a major backlash over the generalized concept of regional pricing. If a lot of people get upset, it's going to be about being asked to pay specific prices that are unreasonable.

Ultimately, pricing differentials only really start to cause big problems when they're large and there are no good ways to get around them. For products that are cheap enough or frequently discounted enough, the base price becomes less important to people.
 
Whoomp! There it is.

Age of Wonders III, the long-anticipated continuation to the fan-favorite, award-winning strategy series, set in a robust and beautiful world that becomes the scene for diverse, complex, and engaging gameplay, is available for pre-orders on GOG.com. Depending on your location you'll be charged $39.99 or the USD equivalent of £29.99, or €39.99. An extended Age of Wonders III - Deluxe Edition, featuring a full soundtrack and the Dragon's Throne standalone scenario, is available for $44.99, £34.99, or €39.99. As a special pre-order bonus, both versions include the Elven Resurgence, a standalone scenario DLC.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, 1:1 Dollar to Euro conversion, how I missed it.

(the Deluxe Edition is €44.99 btw., going by the link)

Edit: So, currently that's $39.99 for the US and $54.99 for Europe ($50 for the UK)
 
Teppic said:
I guess I will buy less GOG games now.
Click to expand...

Do you buy games digitally on Steam, PSN or any other service (isn't like every other service the same with regional pricing)?

Is this out of principal or just on the games that are priced differently? Like I'm imagining only a few games a month (the brand new ones) will be priced regionally, and most releases will continue on like normal, right? So it really shouldn't change your habits too much unless I'm mistaken and their whole catalog is undergoing price restructuring, or the vast majority of releases use it all of a sudden.

Reading over the release thread for AoW3 is pretty damning (vast majority hates Triumph for doing it, and also thinks GOG didn't deliver a trump/AAA game worthy of lowering their values), but I think it's just a welcome to the rest of the world sorta thing... Will be interesting to see if people care less later on (4+ months from now), especially after these €45 games go on sale for €9.99 or so down the road in a promotion like any other release would go on sale.
 
Gothos said:
€23.99 here in Poland. Not bad, not bad at all...
Click to expand...

Might be an error, release note mentions €39.99 price.
OTOH, €23.99 is the current price on Steam, maybe the GOG team just doesn't want to overpay (rest of Europe is reporting €39.99).
 
Minsc said:
Do you buy games digitally on Steam, PSN or any other service (isn't like every other service the same with regional pricing)?

Is this out of principal or just on the games that are priced differently? Like I'm imagining only a few games a month (the brand new ones) will be priced regionally, and most releases will continue on like normal, right? So it really shouldn't change your habits too much unless I'm mistaken and their whole catalog is undergoing price restructuring, or the vast majority of releases use it all of a sudden.

Reading over the release thread for AoW3 is pretty damning (vast majority hates Triumph for doing it, and also thinks GOG didn't deliver a trump/AAA game worthy of lowering their values), but I think it's just a welcome to the rest of the world sorta thing... Will be interesting to see if people care less later on (4+ months from now), especially after these €45 games go on sale for €9.99 or so down the road in a promotion like any other release would go on sale.
Click to expand...

Well, don't know about the new ones, but...

Can you promise that only new, big publisher releases of new games will be affected by regional stuff?

No, I can't; contracts come up for re-negotiation all the time, and when they do there's no telling what may happen. I can promise that we did not go into this change with the intent of re-pricing swathes of our catalog of classic games in a manner that's unfair to gamers around the world. I can promise you that we will strive our utmost to keep things fair for gamers everywhere in the world. But I'm not gonna make a promise on something like this and then find in 18 months or 2 years that things turned out differently than we had thought they would.
Click to expand...

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/announcement_big_preorders_launch_day_releases_coming/post909
 
Letter was well-done, and I think it should go a long way towards assuaging (most) people's fears about where GOG might be headed.

Was slightly disappointed that the other 2 big titles were Divinity Original Sin and The Witcher 3. They're not some huge game from a publisher that's not on the store yet, and that's kinda what I was hoping for.

Not that I won't be buying both of those games day 1 anyway. Divinity in particular.

Anyway, I think this is a good thing, especially after reading that. I like DRM-free games, and if GOG's able to get more new stuff so that I can buy it here instead of on Steam, that's good news in my book.
 
inm8num2 said:
Extensive letter from GOG's managing director to the community regarding the policy change.

It's much too long to post here and I don't want to selectively copy/paste parts, but if anyone's interested to read it see the link above.
Click to expand...

I'll do the selective quoting!

So let's talk about the pricing for classics that we're shooting for. For $5.99 classics, we would like to make the games 3.49 GBP, 4.49 EUR, 199 RUB, and $6.49 AUD. For $9.99 classics, our targets are 5.99 GBP, 7.49 EUR, 349 RUB, and $10.99 AUD.
Click to expand...
 
Age of Wonders 3? Oh dear. One would think CDPR was doing this for something bigger than that.
charlequin said:
Yes, technically, but that's a pretty narrow analysis. There are two different elements in play here -- absolute price, which is how much you're paying once you convert to some general purpose "universal" currency, and relative local price, which is how much someone is paying relative to other goods sold in their own country and the incomes people make there.

When most people complain about regional pricing in, say, GBP, they're not mad about how the price in GBP converts in that particular day's USD-to-GBP conversion rate; they're mad because companies pick some standard "conversion" into GBP that has no basis of comparison to local goods in the UK (and therefore the games in question are overpriced.)



I feel like it's pretty unreasonable to look at something that you previously considered to be reasonably priced and suddenly get mad about it because its publisher gave a special low price to people in one particular region.

Again, the situation of offering a lower price in developing regions is very different from trying to squeeze extra cash out of Europeans and Australians.



You're never, ever going to see a major backlash over the generalized concept of regional pricing. If a lot of people get upset, it's going to be about being asked to pay specific prices that are unreasonable.

Ultimately, pricing differentials only really start to cause big problems when they're large and there are no good ways to get around them. For products that are cheap enough or frequently discounted enough, the base price becomes less important to people.
Click to expand...
It is narrow, but only because it is a very simple issue. There's no way you can look at something being cheaper in a region without it being more expensive in the rest, and the average income reasoning that some are mentioning is a load of crap.
Publishers run a business and want to maximize profits. I think that's good, but it doesn't make price discrimination and region locking right.

iPEgJMQ2Rvzzj.jpg


Regions with lower prices amount to less than 10% of sales. Publishers don't want a smaller profit in the larger markets, so instead of trying to price games more reasonably and let the market sort itself out, they lock the trade between regions and make those in the top 3 regions pay more.
(it's a completely different thing with physical goods, where such a practice is necessary, but this is bullshit.)
 
Sinatar said:
Summoner is kinda... ehhhh... eh. There are a ton of far better RPG's one could get on GOG before ever having to stoop to that level.

Never tried the sequel though, don't think it hit PC.
Click to expand...

The sequel was a much better game. I'd skip the original though.
 
Hopefully GOG can get more publishers on board. I didn't expect to see The Witcher 3 though, I thought that was pretty much guaranteed.
 
inm8num2 said:
Extensive letter from GOG's managing director to the community regarding the policy change.
Click to expand...

This definitely seems to align with my reading: that GOG's management considered DRM-free releases fundamentally much more important than avoiding regional prices.

sirfairfax said:
Regions with lower prices amount to less than 10% of sales. Publishers don't want a smaller profit in the larger markets, so instead of trying to price games more reasonably and let the market sort itself out, they lock the trade between regions and make those in the top 3 regions pay more.
Click to expand...

These are two different issues, though. For example, I don't think you can really make the claim that the US market (where most of these prices are being standardized) is paying "more" here when the prices are just set by the long-term trend of US pricing. The people getting screwed -- and GOG is pretty open about this -- are customers in Europe and Australia, where US-based companies would rather hike prices to pass VAT costs on to the purchaser.

That decision is pretty garbage, but it's not the same as starting with a standardized US price and discounting it for the Russian or Latin American market. The whole reason those markets are 10% of that Steam graph instead of 0% is because many games are priced to match the cheaper physical copies in those regions to give people an alternative to mass piracy.
 
Chacranajxy said:
Letter was well-done, and I think it should go a long way towards assuaging (most) people's fears about where GOG might be headed.
Click to expand...

Maybe on here, but on the forums it's only made things worse.
I personally consider the DRM-Free tenant to be more important than the pricing, but apparently most people don't care.

Page after page of
"I feel betrayed"
"Goodbye GOG, you've hurt me too much"
"I knew I made the right decision to not buy from you"
"I will no longer buy your games GOG"
ect...
 
Well, it's pretty normal day 1 reactions, I'd worry more if their forums are still plagued with those comments a few months down the road.

I'd wager most of those people complaining barely buy a dozen games a year, maybe not even 2-3 non-sale games at that.
 
Joezie said:
Maybe on here, but on the forums it's only made things worse.
I personally consider the DRM-Free tenant to be more important than the pricing, but apparently most people don't care.

Page after page of
"I feel betrayed"
"Goodbye GOG, you've hurt me too much"
"I knew I made the right decision to not buy from you"
"I will no longer buy your games GOG"
ect...
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's the typical vitriol you'd expect from any sort of decision like this. People say they're going to stop buying games altogether, because it's like 26 eurocents more expensive to buy old games. What-fucking-ever.

It's fine to be unhappy with the decision, but I think we could all do without the needless dramatics. I have a feeling that whatever fickle customers they do lose will have their share of sales more than made up for by the new customers they bring into the fold with bigger games.

At least, I hope so. I want to see this gamble succeed.


Edit: Well, it took a while, but somebody on GOG's forums finally compared them to the Nazi regime. So, I guess that's kind of... interesting.
 
Castlevania 2 seems to be unavailable in my region on GOG(middle east).
Not buying this for 60$, might as well wait for sale.
 
It'll blow over.

Had the same thing when gog started selling the dlc for that godawful mafia game separately.

DRM free has always been the singular concern for me as I want to still be able to play all my games in 5,10, 20 years time. If this increases prices on certain games, I'll decide on a case by case basis whether those games are worthy of the higher price tag, and if not, wait for a sale or not buy it at all. It's hardly rocket science

Q8D3vil said:
Castlevania 2 seems to be unavailable in my region on GOG(middle east).
Not buying this for 60$, might as well wait for sale.
Click to expand...

Vania's coming out on gog? when did they announce this?
 
Chacranajxy said:
Yeah, it's the typical vitriol you'd expect from any sort of decision like this. People say they're going to stop buying games altogether, because it's like 26 eurocents more expensive to buy old games. What-fucking-ever.
.
Click to expand...

Would you honestly not be annoyed if your favourite store increased prices by nearly 50%? Might even make an internet post about it..
 
Phinor said:
Would you honestly not be annoyed if your favourite store increased prices by nearly 50%? Might even make an internet post about it..
Click to expand...

I'd be surprised, I'd want to find out why. I wouldn't be annoyed unless I found the reason inherently offensive, and in this instance, I don't.
 
mclem said:
I'd be surprised, I'd want to find out why. I wouldn't be annoyed unless I found the reason inherently offensive, and in this instance, I don't.
Click to expand...
It should be complained about though in my opinion. Though not just to GOG but to the people who set the silly prices ie publishers.
 
Really doesn't sound too bad at all; I admit that I only buy GOG games on sale anyway, and if $5.99 is going to be £3.49 for me, then $2.99 is still going to be pretty darn cheap, £1.99 at most.
 
This just begs to be posted:

GOG in 2015:

Good news! GOG.com is going to bring you the games you requested the most, classic LucasArts adventure games. We've lined up 3 big titles that we will be bringing to GOG.com in the next couple of months for sale or preorder that we think will be hits with all of our gamers; and we have more equally exciting games coming up soon.

That brings with it more good news, though! As mentioned, we have three games we're launching soon with Securom and TAGES DRM and while we can't tell you what they are yet because breaking an NDA has more severe penalties than just getting a noogie, we're confident that you'll be as excited about these games as we are.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Dino Crisis 1 & 2 Available on GOG
News  2
72
4K
ArtHands replied
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is coming DRM-free to GOG this Spring
News 
18
1K
Danny Dudekisser replied
GOG Preservation Program announced – preserving old games for current and future PC setups (over 100 games "Preserved by GOG" starting today)
News  2
57
5K
Mr Hyde replied
Kingdom Deliverance 2 reveals Post Launch Roadmap with free updates in Spring and DLC
News 
28
1K
Grizzled Ghost replied
Sony's next GAAS is Chinese-developed Convallaria; currently in the polishing and optimization stage | free download, season updates and season pass
News 
21
2K
LimanimaPT replied
Top Bottom