Publishers need to honor retail partnerships. Retail needs to die, basically, for all the benefits of digital to really take off.

Being "honestly an asshole" has two sides to it.
The "asshole" part means that one is doing something very wrong. That "honestly" part, however, means that one is not trying to hide one's true intentions or character.

Steam is a perfect example about a company, that is being "honestly an asshole".


Compare this with GOG, who has for the last five years been telling us that there are good guys and bad guys in the industry, and that bad guys are ripping customers off with regional pricing. You can find this message in many videos and interviews posted in many recent threads.

One GOG comment even had somebody saying that GOG cannot exist if it abandons its core values.


So here we have two companies:

Steam: been ripping off customers for years, having stupid shit (GOG term...) like DRM, blocking gifting, deleting already purchased games, etc.

GOG: been telling us things over the years, but when it comes to making bigger profits, does a 180 turn, breaks promises which it promised to keep as core values, and has been lying about all this and trying to sugarcoat this all as being a favor to GOG users.


Which of the two has been more consistent and true to their form?

They need to honor the number or the value of the product? :P

Seeing how we are stuck in this limbo past few years and how nicely they milk europeans with 30%+ overprice i doubt they will let it die that easy... couse basically nobody can say anything to em, they know it's wrong to do but they don't care. Someone like steam must step in and stay "that's not right" but that means steam taking a hit for "the good of the customer"... lol, right? :)... what stops em from doing that even IF retail dies?

Steam has. But as you've pointed out, Steam is mostly a shitty deal. Steam hasn't proclaimed they have any core principles at all, so when they want to change something they just do it, the community be damned. I'm not abandoning a company that turned on one of their core principles when they are still a better company. And they may yet be able to offset the crappy regional pricing. It's their intent to treat customers right and their track record in doing so, that's what matters to me. Not the fact they've stumbled occasionally or had a few PR gafs.

Steam lies (in addition to being terrible). Gabe Newell is full of shit. They claim that they don't even think about piracy, and piracy isn't an issue to them, and they view it as a service problem.

Then they go and spend time and money to develop some of the most advanced anti-piracy DRM schemes ever devised, such as a custom executable being sent to each user, that only works on their specific PC configuration (used in such games as CS:GO). Change your computer, and the game stops working until Steam sends you a new custom executable. No other company has gone to such sophisticated extents to try to combat piracy with DRM technologies. Without question, Valve spends an enormous amount of lot of time and effort specifically thinking about and developing anti-piracy technologies, yet they blatantly lie and claim that piracy isn't even an issue to them, what a joke!

While we're discussing alternatives, I'd recommend ShinyLoot, because I've had a good experience from what little I've bought there, and they seem do be doing many things right.

DRM-free or "minimum" DRM (ie. CD keys, which a few games on gog also use for multi-player if I'm not mistaken?)

Where applicable, they also provide Desura and/or Steam keys for convenience (in addition to DRM-free downloads, never instead).

Mostly indies, but some oldies also seem to have shown up there from the last time I'd checked (like Little Big Adventure or Realms of the Haunting, no idea how many exactly they have).

Store credit for writing reviews.

Pretty great trait-based search functionality, along with some "semantic search" (for example, they don't have a "4x" trait, but do have "empire building", "tech tree", "diplomacy", and "exploration"; typing in "4x" gets results for all four of those traits).

Responsive support (there's not much of a community though).

One price? (I'm not sure about this, and it's not advertised, so subject to change, but seems to be $ all around? correct me if I'm wrong)

I'm not sure if I will go boycott here but I kinda understand those who do. People want to make sure gog understands they're unhappy with the change and it seems like a really straightforward way of showing their dissatisfaction.

The question of where to buy games now is irrelevant. And not buying games is a valid option as well btw.

But if this logic doesn't work for you... feel free to mock the idea of boycott as long as you wish. [sarcasm]mockery will make people change their opinion on the subject for sure[/sarcasm]

Sadly, no. They said they were "working on it" as a new feature for 2012 in some ancient post on their forums, and as far as I can see, they still don't have it on their site. That's a real shame.

I'll stay too... but for the moment I'm not eager to buy anything. I will wait to see how they actually implement their fair regional pricing for their older games. Don't plan to buy much anywhere else by the way. Maybe Rome 2 Total War when it get deeply discounted later in the year, on Steam or Gamersgate. Probably Hegemony : Rome , if and when it gets released in a non-steam version. That's about it. ( Had initially planned to buy Shadowrunner Dragonfall and The Witcher 3, but as I said, that will wait . And I am a very patient guy )

Thank you, I couldn't have said it better. Exactly my opinion. +1 for you.

As a proponent of vivid metaphors, I approve of this statement ^^.

Ahhh, the hobgoblin of little minds...

I never said I was taking a stand against regional pricing (I don't use Steam or Amazon though). I'm taking a stand against GOG going back on their no regional pricing policy (and not just on some games but the entire catalogue).
I did. There are a couple of games in the current promo that I definitely would have grabbed.

I'm not buying any games until GOG changes its mind (or they clarify and it turns out I've massively understood).

Since when did boycotting mean leaving the forum?

You mean a company that aims high, then gives up, chooses to go back on one of their main advertised principles and finally tries to deal with the objections with an insulting letter telling us its for our own good?

umm... I think you have been a bit misinformed about how CEG actually works.... you do not get locked out if you change hardware, and you do not get sent another executable file.

In worst case scenario, and this is if you have Steam Guard activated, is that you need to enter a key code that Steam sends to your email if you log onto a different PC than one normally used, to prove that it is you. This is an anti-pishing thingy to prevent someone logging into your account. There is no executable sent anywhere.

I'm not trying to send a message to the market. I'm not even really trying to send a message to GOG, just voting with my wallet. GOG is showing themselves to be untrustworthy so I won't be buying here any more.

Good luck finding other 'trustworthy' game dealers.