GOG News and Updates 2014

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



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.
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They are paying more, because the publisher could charge the same "low" price in the US, but they believe it's going generate less revenue for them. It's not even a good business strategy, really. Most data so far shows that people wait for sales, so keeping the price as high as possible isn't doing them any favors. Sure, they make more on each early adopter that buys the game in the first 2 weeks, but there's usually a steep decline after that, whereas a more constant trend would be better.
Physical copies are usually more expensive in less developed countries, and I'm 100% sure about that in Latin America.

Minsc said:
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.
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You're wrong. I am complaining and I have 380 games bought on Steam and 49 on GOG, and I don't see myself buying on GOG again anytime soon.
I've seen and talked to many others in the same situation.
 
sirfairfax said:
You're wrong. I am complaining and I have 380 games bought on Steam and 49 on GOG, and I don't see myself buying on GOG again anytime soon.
I've seen and talked to many others in the same situation.
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Could you give a more specific example of why you'd buy something on GOG before but now you won't? Is it like before it was $20 on GOG and $50 on Steam? Now it will be $50 on Steam and GOG, except GOG will give you $30 of credit towards select games or something, but you'd rather not use GOG now? I'm just trying to understand in what situation you had a choice and choose GOG for price, and what will be the better option present now.

Also, since this policy doesn't actually effect their entire catalog, I'm curious why you'd choose to not buy a game that is priced equally on GOG now, and instead what, buy it priced higher, regionally elsewhere? Am I missing something, is there another source providing the region-free pricing, or do you just not buy games?
 
Re: Volgarr

It was one of my favorite games from last year. I know kickstarted games tend to get a lot of shit, but this one turned out amazingly well. I truly believe that if Volgarr were released in 1993, it'd be one of the games we nostalgia over today. Its design is just... Perfect. It's a tough game that's incredibly satisfying to succeed at, and that never crosses the line into frustration. There aren't a whole lot of games I care to practice and perfect these days, but Volgarr was good enough that I felt like I had to beat the game with a single life. And I did. And it was glorious.

tl;dr if this game were $100, it'd still be worth it. At whatever the price is now, it's an incredible deal.
 
Minsc said:
Could you give a more specific example of why you'd buy something on GOG before but now you won't? Is it like before it was $20 on GOG and $50 on Steam? Now it will be $50 on Steam and GOG, except GOG will give you $30 of credit towards select games or something, but you'd rather not use GOG now? I'm just trying to understand in what situation you had a choice and choose GOG for price, and what will be the better option present now.

Also, since this policy doesn't actually effect their entire catalog, I'm curious why you'd choose to not buy a game that is priced equally on GOG now, and instead what, buy it priced higher, regionally elsewhere? Am I missing something, is there another source providing the region-free pricing, or do you just not buy games?
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I live in Brazil, which has the shitty cheaper regional price/locking policy on Steam. That means buying on GOG was already more expensive, but many classics were only available there and I wanted to support them. Now, most of them are being released on Steam and other outlets as well and I've already bought the ones I wanted the most. I know Steam is DRM itself and I'm not fond of it, but at least Valve never acted morally superior about their policies.
Regional pricing is not 3-game deal for GOG, by the way. The letter is clear on that regard. They plan on introducing regional pricing in future additions to their catalog, including classic games. Their current catalog will eventually be up for renegotiation, so even if it doesn't affect all of their games now, that could change in the future.
The only reason for their growth were consumers believing in their business, but now that money speaks louder they turn against a principle they used to boast about? Who knows what they'll introduce next?
There's simply no reason for me to buy there anymore. If I want a digital store with regional pricing and no limitations on downloads, etc, I'll simply buy on Amazon.
 
Chacranajxy said:
Re: Volgarr

It was one of my favorite games from last year. I know kickstarted games tend to get a lot of shit, but this one turned out amazingly well. I truly believe that if Volgarr were released in 1993, it'd be one of the games we nostalgia over today. Its design is just... Perfect. It's a tough game that's incredibly satisfying to succeed at, and that never crosses the line into frustration. There aren't a whole lot of games I care to practice and perfect these days, but Volgarr was good enough that I felt like I had to beat the game with a single life. And I did. And it was glorious.

tl;dr if this game were $100, it'd still be worth it. At whatever the price is now, it's an incredible deal.
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I need to start this up sometime.
 
I'm pretty excited for Age of Wonders 3. I'm torn though on which version to get. I'd like to support DRM free but the Steam version has Steam achievements and trading cards. I think this now wins out for me more than being DRM free. So I'll more than likely get it on Steam.
 
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.

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.
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I think that's a gross exaggeration, given the exchange rate today, I'm pretty sure you pay about 1-2% in exchange fees when buying in foreign currencies with most cards.

Still it's obviously break everyone's budget and no one will ever buy a game again.
 
sirfairfax said:
They are paying more, because the publisher could charge the same "low" price in the US, but they believe it's going generate less revenue for them.
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They could also just charge zero dollars, because extra copies of digital content have basically no marginal cost, but they don't, because that'll generate way less revenue.

It's not even a good business strategy, really. Most data so far shows that people wait for sales, so keeping the price as high as possible isn't doing them any favors.
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Now you're arguing that games should always be cheaper across the board, starting on release day? I don't see what this has to do with single-region discounts.

You're wrong. I am complaining and I have 380 games bought on Steam and 49 on GOG, and I don't see myself buying on GOG again anytime soon.
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So you'll stop buying on GOG, which will continue to have universal pricing for 90% of its catalogue and which has made an effort to be as fair as it can while changing its pricing strategy, but continue to buy on Steam, which has never even hinted at an all-region pricing strategy and won't be considering one any time soon?
 
charlequin said:
They could also just charge zero dollars, because extra copies of digital content have basically no marginal cost, but they don't, because that'll generate way less revenue.
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My point was that I don't think that's the case. They could charge something in between the cheaper regional price and standard US pricing, and that'd the reasonable thing to do without fucking consumers over.

Now you're arguing that games should always be cheaper across the board, starting on release day? I don't see what this has to do with single-region discounts.
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I'm arguing that protecting standard $50(now $60) launch prices is the reason for regional pricing policies, and I believe that's pointless and counterproductive.

So you'll stop buying on GOG, which will continue to have universal pricing for 90% of its catalogue and which has made an effort to be as fair as it can while changing its pricing strategy, but continue to buy on Steam, which has never even hinted at an all-region pricing strategy and won't be considering one any time soon?
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As I said, there's no reason for me to buy on GOG anymore. There's no way of knowing for sure how many of their games will keep fair pricing, and there's no way of knowing what new policy is coming next. They used to make polls for this, by the way.
The deals with publishers will be up for renegotiation and they already have a pricing model in mind.
I know Valve won't change Steam policies for the better any time soon, but at least they're upfront about it. To be honest, I'd rather buy games on Origin or Amazon now, but their catalogs are still too small.
If I have to purchase games on a store with shitty regional pricing, I'd rather pay less for them, instead of giving money to people that want me to believe they're on a fucking moral crusade for gamers or something.

"To make the world of gaming DRM-free, we need to convince top-tier publishers & developers to give us a try with new games, just like they did with classic games."

This is from the "why we're sellouts" letter. Seriously.
 
Quick heads-up

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire
Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

are free right now on GOG
 
I redeemed my GOG Shadowrun Returns Dragonfall key and the DLC was added to my library, but I can't download its executable. Is it included in the original game's ?

edit: nevermind. I had "French" selected as the language and it hid the link to the executable, as the DLC doesn't support it, I guess. It's kind of a half-assed way of communicating the information; they could've just greyed it out or displayed a message. :/
 
Not strictly GoG news, but due to them being closely involved, chances are this'll end up releasing on GoG:


Night Dive Studios just posted on Facebook:

One of these titles should be seeing the light of day pretty soon...
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...with a link to this PC Gamer article.

The list:
Harvester
Total Distortion
The Zoo Race
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties
Vangers
Tongue of the Fatman
GAG: The Impotent Mystery
Toilet Tycoon
Limbo of the Lost
Zeno Clash
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy.
Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge
Pathologic
Barkley: Shut up and Jam: Gaiden.
Wrecked


Now, there's some games there that don't really need to be 'brought back', they're freely available, and some games are just dire, but there's a few there that'd be interesting; I'd guess that Harvester, Vangers and Tongue of the Fatman are perhaps the three most plausible. Harvester feels closest to Night Dive's existing MO, but I do have to admit I'd love it to be Vangers.
 
I was always hoping Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa would be in GOG's library.

Although seriously, Total Distortion would be one I'd actually be excited for. (Not that BSU&JG wouldn't excite me, but I can get that already.)
 
inm8num2 said:
Don't hold your breath.
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Well, the downside of this kind of situation is that nobody can meaningfully move forward with things as they currently are... but the upside is that if anyone can put together a tight case for who the rights currently belong to, it'll probably be much easier to move forward from there.

My guess is that the best way to go from here would probably involve chasing down the people who worked in legal at Fox Interactive back in the day.
 
Time to get pumped for Telsa Effect.

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I already got Tex Murphy 1 & 2 when it was free.
 
Persona7 said:
I think Night Dive has been trying to figure out the issues with NOLF.
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I hope so! I can't think of any other particularly notable individual title (the LucasArts catalog is obviously a different situation) that's in this particular type of rights limbo, since SS2 was taken care of.
 

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Back to our regular amount of five recommended game updates this week. Was able to catch up with all this year's releases now too, so if you don't see a game recommended that released on GOG this year, speak up and hopefully we can find a few others who have done so.

Eschalon makes an appearance with Book I, as it has the most impressions on it, and a few of the people who liked Book I didn't care for Book II, and Book III (just released) has basically no discussion at all yet. But back to Book I, while not being without flaws, it generally comes recommended if you're interested in what it is... EviLore's quote on it summarized how I felt about it from what I played pretty well.

Lords of Midnight is another that reflects back from a more current release... Doomdark's Revenge being the more recent GOG release of the series, but once again, more impressions on the earlier entry, and mclem's description of Doomdark being just "more" of LoM pushes me to give the nod to LoM with a little warning over the lack of recent impressions and that one could really go with either/both.

Volgarr the Viking, this one is probably the one in the batch not to miss. Really impresses anyone who enjoys what the best action games of the past brought to the table. Speed runs of 30 minutes iirc, while giving new players 10x that amount of gameplay to figure out at first with multiple endings to shoot for.

Silent Storm Gold Edition, this is another generally strong entry, for strategy fans. Crosses a lot of the check boxes that XCOM or similar games do, but is seen as unsurpassed for environmental destruction and the way it incorporated physics in to the engine is fairly unique for a strategy game like it as well. Unfortunately things fall apart a little later on in the game for a lot of people, but by then you've gotten money's worth for sure.

Lastly, Jazzpunk. Initially there weren't enough impressions to get it listed, but going back to it now a few weeks later has treated it favorably. There are a bunch of mixed impressions on it though, but it's one of those doesn't overstay it's welcome games (aka very short), and the minigames and (unique) humor if it clicks really is one of a kind it sounds like. So worth looking in to if you're up for a different experience in a game, that strays a bit from a typical gaming experience.
 
NEW RELEASE : Tower Of Guns

Tower of Guns, a first person shooter in which you storm a enemy-filled tower that is randomized to offer a different experience with each exciting play-through, is available 33% off on GOG.com. That's only $9.99 for the first week!

Guilty Gear Isuka is now removed from the catalog.
 
Interesting

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/release_harvester/post2

I’d just like to personally thank tfishell for his huge help in making Harvester available by helping me get in touch with the rights holder. Without his efforts to track down the rights holder we wouldn’t be having this great release today. Thanks also to Novotnus and the other rights researchers from our forums and the Harvester fans over at https://www.facebook.com/lodge.level.4 for their assistance. We greatly appreciate all your efforts!
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Looking through the messages posted around the time we had that Big List Of Microprose games, looks like Sword of the Samurai has a fair few fans, too. I've sent my usual friendly PMs :-)
 
Persona7 said:
Is harvester good? I remember reading about it around the time illbleed came out but I never got to play it.
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I wouldn't call it "good", but it's an experience well worth $5.99. Quite a fascinatingly unpleasant atmosphere. I'm going to pick it up when I get home.
 
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