half of eastern europe is in the west earning big wages and blocking up my bloody train!

Consider this, for example: I live in Serbia, which is by any means one of the poorest European countries. Yet, prices on Steam, and elsewhere, are EXACTLY the same as in much of Europe. The Witcher 3 is €54.89 here on GOG. And, guess what, average salary here is in the range of about €250. So, is that fair? Should people say: “Hey, you know what, I’m just gonna shell out one week salary to play this!” Would you pay, let’s say, £500 for a game, if there is way to buy it cheaper? Or, is it justified for people in Serbia, to use VPN methods, to buy software at more reasonable prices? And, if it is, would it be justified for poorer people from UK, for example? If not, why not?

Truth is, there is no fairness in this. Everyone is out to get what is best for themselves. So, do what you think is best, but please refrain from this Holier than thou attitude.

I’m with Lewie on this one. He reports the deals. Whether we use it or not is *our* choice.

Personally, I’m not going to use the trick, but that’s my call.

There are many countries with lower wages that get charged the higher price.

The average wage in the Ukraine is €116, the UK €2723. I think that says it all.

Please, don’t take advantage of this situation.

Shame on you, Lewie Procter.

It’s obvious that they can’t charge everybody £11for a new AAA title. So your solution is to make it £50 in Ukraine, so that only a handful of “millionaires” would be able to afford it? Really?

You should feel ashamed, seriously.

Pretty broad generalisation you are making there. There are millionaires in Ukraine, and there are people living in poverty in the UK. Drawing economic lines in the sand along national borders is not rational in my opinion.

It is not a decision they have made out of generosity, it is financially driven. They are trying to maximise revenue by charging the highest price the market will bare in each country.

Maybe because people in Ukraine earn 5-10 times less money than those in so-called Western world. Maybe CD Projekt lowers it so that even they can play this game. It is a discount for those who have less money, not a regular price. But you are free to convince CD Projekt not to have any discounts for poorer lands. They are poor so they should not play it.

Understood. I think it’s perfectly healthy for people to discuss the merits of any given deal here in the comments, even if I’ve usually taken into consideration the different sides of the debate prior to publishing, unless there happens to be an aspect of the deal I have missed. Cheers for your input!

Indeed, it is up to each person to go with their consciences, that is why I appealed to the consciences of the people ;D

I do agree that while regional pricing can be good, people in those countries wouldn’t be able to afford the full price. Distribution platforms tend to abuse it.

Similarly I also agree that in the case of GOG, the difference in price is too big and too tempting, I wonder why they chose such a low price.

I agree with your point broadly, except for your use of the word “forced”. If there is any third party mandating this approach to pricing, it was CD Projekt’s decision to engage with them in such a way where they relinquished this control.

I don’t think GOG’s regional pricing policy explains the massive difference in this particular case.

The way I understand it is, if they’re forced (by the developer/publisher/distributor/whoever) to price a digital game using the 1$ = 1€ rule, they will refund you the difference out of their own pocket as store credit or gift cards or whatever. This way the developer is happy and EU customers don’t get completely shafted.

However, this does not explain why TW3 is several times cheaper in certain countries like Ukraine, and they’re certainly not going to refund anyone that difference.

Another example is Age of Wonders 3. The Deluxe Edition costs €45 in the EU and $45 in the US. That difference gets refunded to EU customers. However, it costs only $20 in Ukraine (feel free to check with Hola or the method I described above). Ditto for Divinity: Original Sin. Will EU (or US, for that matter) customers be refunded the difference in those cases? I wish.

I don’t feel I’m cheating them anyway, since I just wouldn’t buy it at its current price. I very rarely buy a game for more than £10, and since my current PC won’t even run it, I’m in no hurry. The difference between me exploiting this loophole and me waiting for some Steam sale, is that this way they get the money today instead of in two 2-3 years time.

Not an unreasonable position. Still, I posted this deal for much the same reason I would post any other: so people can decide for themselves whether they want to buy it or not, taking into account a wide variety of factors. If the developer’s prior actions lead you to opt out of this particular deal, then I’d consider that a great outcome for all involved parties, but it would be remiss of me to not inform people about this deal, since no doubt there are people who would opt into it.

GOG, has explained why some of their games have regional pricing:
http://www.gog.com/news/letter_from_the_md_about_regional_pricing

They are open about what they are doing and they are a company that cares about the community and tries to make everything as fair as possible despite of what the gaming industry forces them to do. They even got sued because they didn’t want to put the same price on a retail copy of The Witcher 2 and on a digital one.

So no, they probably will not check where you bought the game from, their premises is trust the community, they trust you for this as they trust you won’t upload the games you buy from them (that have no DRM) to torrent networks.

That said I feel it is terribly wrong to cheat a company like that, their games are fairly priced and if a discount in the price means that much then wait until the game gets a discount, at least for a company that always treated their clients and the community fairly.

This announcement from last June contains a list of countries where, in addition to Ukraine, the pre-order price should be significantly cheaper than elsewhere:

http://www.gog.com/news/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_price_update

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Officially_assigned_code_elements

I didn’t actually try buying the game (as I might decide to buy it on Steam instead), so I can’t guarantee this will work, but it’s worth a shot. Look on Bing/Google for instructions on how to edit cookies in your browser of choice.

I broadly agree that they treat their customers well, but I consider charging people ~3x more simply because of where they are from is not treating customers well at all, and have no hesitation about circumventing this regional pricing discrimination.