GOG - Fair Price Package Ending

GOG has had to conclude its Fair Price Package program in order to offer better conditions to game creators.

On March 31st we are going to discontinue the Fair Price Package program. Let us explain the reasoning behind this decision. We came up with Fair Price Package (FPP) as a way to make up the price difference between various countries. Some games on GOG.COM have regional pricing, meaning the price of the same game in one place can be higher compared to its price in North America. In countries where the game is more expensive, we give users the equivalent of the price difference in GOG Wallet funds. In actual numbers, on average, we give users back 12% of the game price from our own pocket. In some cases, this number can reach as high as 37%.

In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller. However, we look at it, at the end of the day we are a store and need to make sure we sell games without a loss.Removing FPP is not a decision we make lightly, but by making this change, we will be able to offer better conditions to game creators, which -- in turn -- will allow us to offer you more curated classic games and new releases. All DRM-free. We wanted to make sure you have some lead time to still benefit from the Fair Price Package. The program will last until the 31st of March, 2019, so if you would like to take advantage of it, now is the time. The funds you gather from the program will keep the 12 months expiration date from the moment you've been granted your last funds.

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More information.

That's a shame because I've really enjoyed their FPP program. But it's totally understandable that they are removing it.

Maybe Epic Store had some indirect influence in this decision.

Kudos to them for sticking it out as long as they could, as well as giving a full months' warning so people can still take advantage of the offer, if they so choose. But yeah, I can see how this was likely a costly endeavour for them.

Until 2016 my main digital platform for gaming was GOG.com because of its DRM free and costumer friendly policy. In those days dollar parity in Turkey was around 2 TL. So when you bought a 20 $ game in GOG you paid 40 TL. At the end of 2014 Steam introduced regional pricing for Turkey and anchored parity to 1 $=1,5 TL (Not for all games. Some distributers still apply their own prices). At those days GOG prices are slightly expensive than Steam, so I continued to shop from GOG.

In recent years Turkey had several economic crisis and now the dollar parity is around 6 TL. So right now the price of 20 $ game in GOG is 120 TL while you can buy the same game in Steam still for 40 TL (right now 1 $ equals to 2 TL in Steam). Parity increased to 300% in two years but my (and lots of gamers in my country) income unfortunately didn’t (40% at best). So you can guess why I prefer Steam right now. If GOG offers regional pricing like Steam, I return to GOG gladly. But at that point economic conditions bind my hands.

Regional pricing is not only good for gamers who live in relatively poor countries, but for the publishers as well. It can be a lucrative business model. Because unlike other sectors, for games (especially single player ones) the production costs for a product is not increase by the units you create. If you spend 10 million $ to make a single player game (development and marketing), that’s it. You can create any number of copies of the game in digital stores without a cost. So at that point all the sales are profit whether you sell it to 10$ or 50 $. If you determine a relatively steep price for a region, gamers of that area can’t buy it and instead resort to piracy rather than buying your game. So you miss that potential customers who would buy and instead of earning some money in that country you gain nothing at all. If you think that those small payments isn’t important, think about all those free online games that earn tons of dollars with their micro transaction models.

A birdie told me if you have an account based in Lithuania and VPN purchase items its pretty good value especially for new releases.
The birdie also doesnt feel bad about this because they choose not to pirate when it is a viable option and even Denuvo is fallible 2 weeks after a release.

Gokyabgu said:

Regional pricing is not only good for gamers who live in relatively poor countries, but for the publishers as well.

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Going by what a Capcom rep answered when a Canadian asked them why he had to pay more in Canadian $ for Dragon's Dogma on Steam than it would actually cost to convert the USD price to Canadian: publishers do not see lower price as a guarantee of more copy sold and tus more profit (and they probably have stats to prove it too).

Wisdom said:

A birdie told me if you have an account based in Lithuania and VPN purchase items its pretty good value especially for new releases.
The birdie also doesnt feel bad about this because they choose not to pirate when it is a viable option and even Denuvo is fallible 2 weeks after a release.

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That's still kind of piracy-lite, though. You end up with a working key, but by cheating the contract they're offering in your market. It's a license violation, just as plain piracy is.

Ripper said:

That's still kind of piracy-lite, though. You end up with a working key, but by cheating the contract they're offering in your market. It's a license violation, just as plain piracy is.

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I'll pass your feelings on to the birdie. I'm sure she feels the same way about license violations as most do about 90 pages of terms and conditions to own an apple device. She likely takes it very seriously indeed and our added insight will change her practices.

Wisdom said:

I'll pass your feelings on to the birdie. I'm sure she feels the same way about license violations as most do about 90 pages of terms and conditions to own an apple device. She likely takes it very seriously indeed and our added insight will change her practices.

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You might as well not fuck about, then, and just get on with proper piracy. If you're dictating that you get the product at the lower price they offered to someone else in different circumstances, instead of the one in the contract the vendor is offering you, you're still cheating them on the deal.

Gokyabgu said:

So you can guess why I prefer Steam right now. If GOG offers regional pricing like Steam, I return to GOG gladly. But at that point economic conditions bind my hands.

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I feel you bro :lol:
But seriously, I do. Here in Brazil the US$1 is R$3.7. So, it's a shame that GOG suspended this program, I bought I lot of games there, but I guess that I will buy only on Steam now. The prices usually don't get *that much* cheaper (e.g. I backed Pathfinder on KS and I paid US$28, the game launched on Steam at R$80 or US$22 more or less). But it helps, with US$6 we can buy some stuff here.

I'm offering my empathy because I think that some people from more prosperous locations don't seem to get it. We often see people arguing that regional pricing is bad because some smart-ass is buying cheaper keys or whatever. But the fact is that the benefits that regional price brings outweigh the downsides. Such as that Steam has been doing this for years and they seem to be profiting. But as for the GOG situation, I agree with the comment that it seems that Epic Game aggressive strategy had a hand on it. But who knows, maybe they didn't sell enough games to generate profits ╮(╯ _╰ )╭

You make an excellent point!
I love you Ripper.

Ripper said:

You might as well not fuck about, then, and just get on with proper piracy. If you're dictating that you get the product at the lower price they offered to someone else in different circumstances, instead of the one in the contract the vendor is offering you, you're still cheating them on the deal.

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They're cheating you on the deal too, if they're offering the exact same product to other people at much lower prices.

Stingray said:

They're cheating you on the deal too, if they're offering the exact same product to other people at much lower prices.

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I think it's pretty normal for businesses to offer different prices across different markets, or special rates to certain groups of people. There can be dozens of reasons for that, but I think that setting prices that reflect the different economic conditions in different markets is probably a necessity. If you set the global price at the lowest price dictated by the economy and currency in worst shape, you probably won't generate enough revenue, whereas if you set it at the highest price the strongest market will bear, you put it out of reach of people in the tougher economies.

One might not like regional pricing, but I think it's a stretch to call it cheating - they offer us a certain licence, in a given country, at a certain price, and we can take it or leave it. They have the right to licence their product any way they like.

But, I'm not really looking at what people should or shouldn't be doing. Perhaps someone is a nihilist, and pirates as they please, which at least makes logical sense to me. What I find interesting is the weird moral reasoning that some people apply to justify their actions. "The sellers have wronged me by not giving me the deal I want in the way I want it, so I shall respond by cheating or stealing from them." That sort of thing. It's a curious sort of petulant self-righteousness.

Ripper said:

One might not like regional pricing, but I think it's a stretch to call it cheating - they offer us a certain licence, in a given country, at a certain price, and we can take it or leave it. They have the right to licence their product any way they like.

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But if you don't like it, you can buy it somewhere else. That's why some people in the US buy prescription drugs from Canada. Using a VPN is sort of the same concept? You're creating a virtual digital presence in another region and then purchasing.

We have people doing arbitrage with these regional prices anyway, people buy keys in the cheap regions and re-sell them to people in the expensive regions through sites like G2A and its ilk. There are people who make quite a bit of money doing this. You don't necessarily even have to buy it yourself (via a VPN) to take advantage of the other-regions pricing.

BTW, example of the massive differences in pricing between countries, for those who aren't in the know: https://steamdb.info/sub/258525/

Stingray said:

But if you don't like it, you can buy it somewhere else. That's why some people in the US buy prescription drugs from Canada.

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Yes, which is also illegal. But, in general, I'd agree - with simple physical goods, if you want to pay the cost of travel or shipping, plus any taxes or tariffs for getting your goods in a cheaper market, you can do that. But, those costs and logistics I mention, plus import laws, provide a barrier that acts to limit physical goods to their own markets, to a large extent. With digital goods there is obviously no such friction, so they rely upon licensing restrictions instead. Otherwise, the lowest price would immediately become the only price, and regional pricing becomes redundant - ultimately hurting people in weaker economies as the lowest price has to rise.

You have to remember that you're not buying a key, you're buying a licence - the key is just part of the DRM mechanism that gives you access. And, that licence can have any restrictions the seller wants, including being only for a specific region, and having different licences at different prices for different markets.

Stingray said:

We have people doing arbitrage with these regional prices anyway, people buy keys in the cheap regions and re-sell them to people in the expensive regions through sites like G2A and its ilk. There are people who make quite a bit of money doing this. You don't necessarily even have to buy it yourself (via a VPN) to take advantage of the other-regions pricing.

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Yes, they're typically dodgy companies breaking the terms on your behalf, providing you with a key that might work, but a licence that's not valid. You can end up using software without a licence, just as the pirate does, but with the benefit of a key that grants you more convenience.

Stingray said:

BTW, example of the massive differences in pricing between countries, for those who aren't in the know: https://steamdb.info/sub/258525/

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That depends on the game and on the publisher. Bandai Namco games are usually only 10% off here. And sure... PoE is 70% off in Argentina, but do know how crumbled Argentina's economy is right now? I won't be surprised if most people there cannot spend US$13 in a game. Things are pretty ugly down there.

Besides, if games start to get really expensive people won't pay more for a game they can't afford, they will pirate it. So regional pricing is a way for developers to earn more money. It is probably the highest price that people in these locations are willing to pay for the game.

Stingray said:

We have people doing arbitrage with these regional prices anyway, people buy keys in the cheap regions and re-sell them to people in the expensive regions through sites like G2A and its ilk. There are people who make quite a bit of money doing this. You don't necessarily even have to buy it yourself (via a VPN) to take advantage of the other-regions pricing. [/url]

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And you just did what I described. You're using the "cheating argument" to classify regional pricing as bad. People breaking the law will exist whether there is regional pricing or not. They will find another way to pay cheaper or to not pay at all. But more importantly, if there are people in more prosperous locations breaking the law and cheating, why people in weaker economies should pay the price? It simply makes no sense.

gabrielarantest said:

That depends on the game and on the publisher. Bandai Namco games are usually only 10% off here. And sure… PoE is 70% off in Argentina, but do know how crumbled Argentina's economy is right now? I won't be surprised if most people there cannot spend US$13 in a game. Things are pretty ugly down there.

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I'm totally agree with you. For games like Pillars of Eternity 2 or Bard's Tale 4, prices are fair on Steam in Turkish liras. But some distibutors determine their own prices and some of them are pretty high.

You can check the price of Resident Evil 2 Remake for example:

https://steamdb.info/app/883710/

Turkish price for the game is 75$, much more higher than the US price. Now we are talking about a country where minimum wage is 350$. I think Capcom tries to say to Turkish gamers, I don't care whether you buy my game or not and you can pirate it if you want. Because average gamer in Turkey with a sane mind do not give the hefty slice of their wage to one game that offers 10 to 15 hours of playtime.

Gokyabgu said:

I'm totally agree with you. For games like Pillars of Eternity 2 or Bard's Tale 4, prices are fair on Steam in Turkish liras. But some distibutors determine their own prices and some of them are pretty high.

You can check the price of Resident Evil 2 Remake for example:

https://steamdb.info/app/883710/

Turkish price for the game is 75$, much more higher than the US price. Now we are talking about a country where minimum wage is 350$. I think Capcom tries to say to Turkish gamers, I don't care whether you buy my game or not and you can pirate it if you want. Because average gamer in Turkey with a sane mind do not give the hefty slice of their wage to one game that offers 10 to 15 hours of playtime.

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:lol:
What an outrageous price!
Or maybe Turkish people like Capcom games a lot and Capcom thinks they can charge whatever they want. Go figure. Soccer games tend to be expensive here in Brazil because everybody here loves this crap. :lol:

To put it cynically, does this mean that Europeans are charged much more again than U.S. people ?

I mean, that's a thing I know for many years now in the fields of Star Wars collecting : U.S. firms treat Europeans as if they were rich, very rich people with LOTS of money to spend ...
Cynically put, I just don't want to be treated like a host for a tick.

And now GOG has that, too ...

The European prices include tax (VAT), don't they? US prices never do - if you live in a jurisdiction that has sales tax, it's added in during checkout, if at all.