"Better than" is not the argument. The argument is whether it's regional pricing or not. One is, one isn't. If regional pricing was a main point of concern then it wouldn't have happened because they have a choice not to let it happen.

It's really no different than not selling a big name game that would make you lots of profit because it has DRM attached, both prevent profits due to an ideological stance.

It's one thing for gog to behave a certain way when they're selling old PC games and they're pretty much the only ones really doing it (obviously this has changed).

Do you honestly believe they can just simply do the same when dealing with newer titles that compete inside and influence the videogame space in a much larger way? titles that are still very much connected to their ROI and public perception aspects.

I have to admit I've only just caught the last page of this discussion so may be entirely misunderstanding, but are you suggesting that instead of accepting regional pricing for games they should have region locked all games where the price differs from the US base price?

Because I'm fairly sure that isn't the same thing at all.

Refusing to sell the game completely I could understand (though it's not a stance I agree with it in this case) but implementing one awful practice to avoid another seems completely counter productive...

I'm totally on your side Pheace. But you should just understand, that GOG is not at all interested in principles, just in
a) making more and more money and
b) in the same appearing as if they care for and fight for principles which they don't do.
This is what I call bigotry, but this is GOG of the last 2-3 years.

Could GOG please answer the following question:

Do they think that changing things by just playing along with all the others will change anything???

Yes, it's me again and not GOG and you have made it quite clear that you don't want any answers from me or the others but maybe it could help GOG answer your question (after the weekend maybe since it's sunday and I highly doubt that many are still working now) if you could explain a bit more what exactly you mean with "playing along with all the others"?

btw: Just in case you did not know ... a business who is not aiming to grow (therefore making more money) usually is a business that is destined to die. That's standard economics.

No problem. How does GOG want to get rid of regional ripoff if they just play along like all other companies? Why should anyone chance their stance on regional prices if even GOG, who fight this, just uses regional prices like everyone else?

And businesses that grow too fast or just always want to grow will go down eventually. No one can always get bigger and bigger. That just does not work for "eternity". Just my idea of that.

Was gog connect discussed in any way? I'd be curious to know if it actually led to an increase in paying customers or if my prediction that it will mostly attract deadbeats came true.

Also, I question the validity of inviting a handful of people only so they can (at best) repeat the exact same points that hundreds of forum users have been making over and over again. Just read the friggin' forums! (And, yes, I'm saying that mainly because I'm immensely butthurt over not receiving an invitation)

Also, I have to agree with Pheace here (re: why are CD Projekt's games regionally priced). This would have been my main question to Marcin Iwinski in particular: How come his company's (CD Projekt) games are always at the forefront of eroding his other company's (gog) supposed guiding principles. With The Witcher came the regional prices, with The Witcher came the region locks. No microtransactions in gog titles, along comes GWENT. Preach water and drink wine.

Also, you fellas have mentioned the lack of updates. I'd be curious to know whether The List(tm) was mentioned and whether the gog people consider it a good thing or a bad thing.

I just could find a German article on this but just like I leaned when studying economics it is confirmed here that a business MUST grow to stay in business:
https://www.marktding.de/strategie/warum-es-fur-unternehmen-keine-alternative-zu-wachstum-gibt/

Maybe some of our international GOGers will be able to find an English article as well - I am sure there are some.

No it was not. We tried to discuss problems GOG is having now. Afaik there are none with GOG connect I am aware of.

It has been mentioned that not receiving updates is a problem (the List was not mentioned afair). Like it was said before here in the thread there is not that much GOG could do about it but asking the devs/publishers to provide the missing update. The problem here is not GOG but the dev/publisher of such game who seems to think that GOG is important enough.

There was a recent thread complaining about how it;s not used:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_connect_list_of_games_supported/page1

If they think gog is important enough to sell their stuff there, it damn well better be important enough to keep the product sold up to date.

Of course, the flip side of that is that if a game only sold half a dozen units here, I kind of see why a dev might not want to bother ever updating their build here ever again.

Can't gog make maintaining recent-ish games a contractual obligation to the effect of: Games must be updated to their latest build every half year. That doesn't sound too tasking in my mind.

And if that fails, can't they just get the latest build off Steam and sell a cracked Steam version? Yeah, I'm 99,9% sure that wouldn't fly, but I also seem to remember one instance - Omerta, was it? - where the dev couldn't be arsed to patch a game-breaking bug, so gog cobbled something together themselves.

One of you guys mentioned that they can't "play hard" with publishers about updates and such, since their reputation might be at stake. Well, how about your reputation when you continue to sell stuff like those Cinemaware games, where both the customers AND gog itself got fucked in the worst way imaginable. And continue to get fucked, since they still sell that stuff here. What kind of precedent do they think this sets? Don't gog think that publishers will eventually see them (and their user base) as those losers who you are free exploit for small change?

My answer of was because I thought JMich wanted to emphases that single player part of the games will be playable offline without client or required network connection because that's something we talked about during the Q&A. Especially as saying that the offline installer won't require a network connection is kind of redundant.

Concerning the "requiring a client to download the offline installer" they said again that Galaxy will remain optional and that they don't want to force peoples who to use it if they don't want to, so yes the stand alone installers will remain.

They are aware of the issue, so IMHO that's probably part of the "minor bug fixes and tweaks" I mentioned in my answer, but then again that's just my opinion.

I am no fan of regional pricing but I gladly take regional pricing over region restriction any day.

IMHO it's the lesser of the two evil, and I am pretty sure that a lot of German Goger who suffer first hand from region restriction will agree with me.

"Not used" is an overstatement imo. There were just quite a few games the last time. Anyway since it is completely up to the publishers if they want to give away their game for free, there is nothing GOG could add to this. I am still surprised that this feature even exist since I highly doubt that it have brought many customers to GOG.
I really agree with you but it seems some publishers just don't. They have our money and obviously don't care much afterwards.

I still think it is very bad customer support from the devs in this case and I am not getting tired telling such devs what I think about such practices. Multiple times and over months with nearly daily e-mails if necessary.

I am quite sure that it's hard enough to convince the devs to the DRM-free concept - adding to this the concept of such obligations (which steam persumably does not have) would make it even harder to get some games on GOG - at least that is what I am thinking.

In many cases those aren't compatible and in addition to that GOG cannot just take whatever files they want tpo sell them with the name of the dev/publishers on it. I am pretty sure that would endanger some contracts.

I am pretty sure that GOG is aware of the dilemma you are mentioning. Unfortunately I don't see a way to know upfront if you are dealing with honest devs or with devs who don't care anymore the moment they have a bit extra pocket money earned here on GOG.

Like I said: I am totally with you and having the guarantee that games will always receive all updates would be a dream for me. Unfortunately I think that this will only happen if GOG has gained much more reputation so that the image is more important to the devs.

Funny part here is ... as you said, we already have regional censorship (which I call DRM btw). So there is no difference to the solution Pheace proposed.

I'm not the economics guy, but there are surely different ways to grow. More aggressive and faster (wiht mor profit ... the GOG way) or slower with less profit, but keep up with all you are doing and more importantly be true to yourself. I have to repeat myself when I state "saying we had to do it or else" is no way of dicussing things, that is blackmailing. I don't believe in GOG having to give up their principles. It was just the easiest way for them, because people are stupid and if you just wait long enough almost all of your customers will come back to you. I have seen this MANY times.

Two examples are VW and their "dieselgate". They didn't compensate any german buyers, opposite to the us customers, and still every idiot here is buying from them again. If I had a car that just became worthless, I sure wouldn't buy from them ever again. Other example is completely different, but shows this. German Pay-TV. In the last 5-10 years, they cut their rights (movies as well as sports and channels overall) and still the customer base is growing and growing. Starting from like 1 commercial break and know, if you take football, you get 13 out of 15 minutes of half time nothing else but commercials.

As for these two examples, I'm out of here until they show that this visit was more than an PR stunt. It is up to GOG to show they really are better than other companies. Go for it. I'm anxiously waiting.

EDIT: Wouldn't it be a great start to fix the chat on iPads? Using Safari, I cannot use the chat.