It's global when it makes them money. Your job can be done more cheaply overseas? Global. You can buy their product at a cheaper price elsewhere? Not global.

So the economy is global in the same way that Schrödinger's Cat is alive.

That global thing only applies for B2B.
As far as consumers go, globalisation is a bad thing, and you are supposed to buy things locally.

Back in the day of videotapes there were real technical barriers which prevented people from buying videos in most foreign countries. With DVDs and more modern TV sets, these technical restrictions were solved. So, they had to introduce a new artificial barrier, the DVD zone system.
And oh yeah, at least one import DVD shop in my town was forced to stop selling imported R1 discs by some weird semi-legal clause, which I have already forgotten.

So nope, there's no globalisation for the common people.

Unlikely, as Wurzelkraft said they would have done so already.

I don't think it is about angry users perception directly. It's what 'retail partners' perceive, or what publishers believe retail partners will perceive and how they will react, and the threat to the price fixing status quo.

If some of the major retailers, say equivalents of Walmart, bricks & mortar games store chains, or big supermarkets that sell a lot of games, if they play hardball with publishers and say "we will not sell any of your titles if customers can get the game cheaper online or if the customer can import" then the publisher will give into the demand.

The publisher then negotiates with Steam and other online retailers to keep the price high so it won't antagonize the old school retailers and distributors. It's easy for the publisher - lose a major source of sales or fix the price and take a bigger cut on all sales. It's easy for the online retailers like Steam, they get a nice fat mark up and don't have to compete. Then they put in place all the regional blocks and controls so that the free market is unable to find a way past the fixed prices.

Now if a business like GOG and a few 'renegade' publishers look like upsetting the apple cart and challenging the market with a more ethical approach the major players are going to start using whatever methods they can to avoid having to compete.

I can't say what motivated Nordic and Frictional, fear of losing business elsewhere, contractual agreements with distributors or only the desire to protect their margins. I'm not really convinced by the VAT argument, it's not the reason for regional pricing (we always look at pre tax prices anyway for comparisons) and I think there is more to this than is being said in the PR.

I would be surprised if the vendors weren't able to make the Dollar-to-Deutschmark comparisons themselves, and thus think it unlikely that GOG changing from "dollars everywhere" would suddenly make their competitors notice the difference. Besides, Frictional themselves said it was about the users:

We had an exception for GOG, as their model was to use USD only, this "discount" was not visible and folks got it without knowing it. With the addition of currencies, the discount is clearly visible and because of it we asked to have the same price as in other stores. Instead of seeing it as an increase in price, it should be seen as a discount that stopped being active. [source]

So the problem seems to be that (a) customers from other vendors are suddenly aware that GOG was cheaper, even though they could have figured it out earlier if they did the price conversion themselves, and (b) Frictional wanted to raise the prices so that they appeared the same on GOG as elsewhere, and GOG wasn't up for it.

At least, that's my take-away from this.

I don't blame the publisher. They are a business who have many different partners and it is not sound business advice to piss everyone else off to please one.

I am curious to know what the dividing line is on 'classic' as it pertains to GoG's eyes.

A game that can stand the test of time. Doesn't matter when it was released.

So in other words, Divinity: Original Sin doesn't qualify for that standard?

No idea. I'm pointing out that GOG never had a time limit on what they released, since they did have games less than 5 years old released back in 2008.

So absolutely no idea what counts as classic for GOG, or for GOGlodytes.

Exactly. The system inconsistency that GoG has now is what is playing against us the customers. We more probably end up with less classic titles with fair pricing and get new ones overpriced in some regions. Then GoG (a site whose core audience expects great old games DRM-free with equal prices) would mostly get newer games yes with unfair pricing (like those of Daedelic), and less and less classic games (like those that are on the promo).

+1, I can only agree to that.

That's why I don't understand why this multi-currency "service" had to be introduced at all. It's bad for customers, we are losing games and I rather would pay a few cents more for currency conversion than having this currency mess now, it's bad for developers (and GOG should really have seen these problems coming), and it's bad for GOG itself in the end. So why introducing this currency mess at all?

From Frictional Games at their forum:

We want our games to have about the same price on Steam, GOG, Humble Store, App Store, Desura & Gamer's Gate for different currencies and countries. Which is the base price of 20 USD (for Amnesia) with added sales tax when applicable (example 15% for EU, so 17.49 EUR, 13.99 GBP). We don't have complete control, so we give suggested pricing and accept the stores slight differences in pricing. We don't accept too high price (1 USD = 1 EUR) and we don't accept too low price (developer pays the customer's sales tax).
With Machine for pigs our pricing model was accepted, but as Amnesia and Penumbra are older games they were not accepted. We mutually agreed on removing them.

So GOG is going to betray their roots and sacrifices older games in favor of (locally priced) newer games? That's hard to believe and I'm very disappointed.

Drop this multi-currency mess and stick with your roots, GOG!

Edit: formatting

I'm curious why it isn't just about quality old games? there are a handful of turkeys sold here.... uno it too.

Huh? What's a Steam loyalist? All I ever see on Steam's EU forums are complaints about how they pay more than US gamers for the same games.
A "classic" is something upon which many people reminisce fondly, whether it be books, movies, or, now, games.
A simpler view is that a classic game is basically any game that is included in sentence like, "Oh, wow, did you ever play that game..."

UNDEAD THREAD!

...though not the worst necro (in years) of recent... do have to wonder what the point of it all is...

Is there even a point in necro threads?