How in the world are people not used to regional pricing? Just about EVERYTHING is regionally priced. Starting at disc games to bread to gas to internet access to staplers. I'm really curious what items or services are NOT region based, certainly a tiny tiny minority.
Why all the complaining?
I really didn't want to post again since I already made my argument but this argument has been iterated 3 times now and it's just too stupid to let lie.
First of all, how in the world do you equate the regional pricing of physical goods to digital ones? Physical goods have production costs that depend on the country of origin, there are taxes, there are border tolls, the cost of raw materials is different depending on where they come from and what each country produces. Digital goods have nothing to diferentiate them per country other than some potential taxes. These aren't the problem here though as GOG was already bearing the burden of the VAT for its releases in Europe. Furthermore I believe Europeans could be pursuaded to pay the American price + VAT since the issue is less a matter of cost and more a matter of equal treatement and no discrimination based on country of origin. Not a cent more though.
Second, the prices of goods flunctuate further based on the average buying power for each country. People who live in richer countries generally (though not always) pay more for the same products for a variety of reasons, which include taxes or simple offer and demand. Regional pricing for digital goods, the way it has been implemented, flies in direct contradiction to this principle. For example all the countries in the Eurozone pay the same ammount of money despite there being a huge economic gap between the countries of the north and the south. Sadly almost everything is priced with Germany in mind. That means that southern European countries are asked to pay more than the USA for a product while having 1/3 (or less) the average American salary.
Now depending on the way you look at it, flat pricing can be fair or not. It's fair on the logic that it reflects a certain development cost, marketing cost, plus the cost of getting the game on an online store. These costs don't flunctuate from country to country. The development cost is a constant as soon as the game is finished. The advertisement cost is usually higher in richer countries because they have more potential buyers but given the extend of online advertising nowadays I'd put that as a global cost, not tied to a certain market. The same goes for the cost of getting the game on a global online store.
Flat pricing is not fair if you take into account the buying power of each country. If we go by the example of other products (again this isn't absolute due to a myrriad of reasons) games should be cheaper for developing countries.
From those two the most reasonable in a global market is to hope for the first. I don't expect to pay three times less than the US for a game because I live in a developing country, that's not how the world works. On the other hand when I'm asked to pay more, that sure feels like I'm being ripped off.
Now I understand how the market works and what agreements with regional distributors mean. However, if I'm not mistaken, Dragon Commander sold an overwhelmingly larger number of copies online than in retail. It's good to have boxed copies but a medium to small sized company could opt to go full online if they wanted and just sell boxed copies at their own website, as collector's items. Or it could at the very least dictate some terms. For example sell a game that costs 40$ at the US for 30 euros, both physical and digital copies. Even if that doesn't leave much of a margin for profit on the boxed copies, they are there mostly to get the word out. The bulk of sales are digital. Sales shift towards digital even for the largest of publishers, as time passes, and I'm sure the rate of digital to retail is even greater when we address the PC space only.
Anyway, this whole matter is rather unfortunate. I understand the business standpoint but as a customer I don't have to support a company, even if it's one I like, at everything they do even if it's against my own interests. The conclusion is that I, and I hope a lot more people, will stop buying from GOG until there is (hopefully) a reversal of policy. As for Larian, I realise it would be an overreaction to stop buying their games for this. After all almost every publisher uses regional pricing, why should Larian take the blame? If they release games I'm interested in I'll keep buying. However I will stop all the support I've been giving over the years, speaking for Divinity 2, Dragon Commander and Original Sin at every relevant forum thread and comment section I could find, just as I don't support any other publisher that isn't interested in me.
