Responding to community feedback, digital games retailer GOG.com has scrapped its plans to implement regionalise pricing as an option to attract more publishers to its DRM-free distribution platform. In another kindly worded
blog post, GOGs Marcin Iwinski and Guillaume Rambourg explain the decision (thanks
VG247):
We're not perfect, we're exploring new frontiers, and we make mistakes. We thought DRM-Free was so important that you'd prefer we bring you more DRM-Free games and Fair Price was less critical and that it could be sacrificed in some cases. The last two week's worth of comments in our forums (nearly 10k!), show that's not the case. We didn’t listen and we let you down. We shouldn't sacrifice one of our core values in an attempt to advance another.
The post continues on to reinforce their continued commitment to DRM-Free distribution, and describes their intention to wear the cost difference themselves where they are unable to negotiate even pricing:
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.
Lastly, the statement notes that GOG still plans to support various additional local currencies on its store in the future, and that although charges might vary between regions due to forex fluctuations, all games will still have the option to pay in USD at a single price point.
Posted 07:48pm 17/3/14