I don want to be the dumb one here but... Why don't you guys use a proxy? I know, Steam can close your account if they detect it (to get the prices in dollars within Europe), but... I don`t think that GOG would care about this.

Thread is TL;DR, so if this was mentioned before, sorry. Is it possible that the reason the Kiwis are getting screwed is simply technological, like the IP ranges used by Australia and NZ overlap each other in some way, preventing GOG from distinguishing them properly?

That's an intersting point. If that were the case though, the correct thing to do would be to go "Oh well, we can't stop Australians downloading it*." rather than "Oh well, we'll have to stop New Zealanders downloading it*."


*The uncensored version.


More likely it's a licensing issue. If Namco Bandai treats both countries as one region and only does one version for the two of them, it's likely they're forcing GOG to give NZ the censored version for the same reason they forced them to do it for Australia.
Namely, GOG is competition for Namdai and don't want them to have an unfair advantage.

but still its a bad rep, pulling another country into someones immature stand on games :X hope gog resolves this mistake, lots of things at stake here

They say it is only slightly edited, so it might not be as bad as some people think. And as the GOG staff said, there will probably be lots of mods coming after release. Worry not, Oceanians, I am sure your game shall eventually contain as many... smooth curves and fine... *cough* armaments as ours (if you are into that sort thing)! Though maybe not the first few weeks. ;)

Edit:
But yes, I agree that censorship stinks and that this is rather disappointing, but it does not sound like they had much choice in the matter.

I believe that will be closer to "hours" than "weeks".

Still, the fact that it'll have to be enabled by 3rd parties is bad.

Actually, that would not be the correct response since by doing that GOG would knowingly violate Australian law. No legitimate company would do that, especially one like GOG. If this were caused by a technological limitation, they would be forced to go with the "lowest common denominator" solution, which is to only sell the censored version in both countries, as they have done. That being said, the licensing cause you mention is far more likely, though I did try to find out information about each country's respective IP ranges and they are a completely muddied mess.

Yeah, CDP should be very careful not to include anything in that path that would lead someone in OZ to think they released it right after the release.

It wouldn't be breaking the law actually, as GOG is not an Australian company and the transaction isn't taking place in Australia. GOG selling a digital copy to someone who happens to be in Australia is no less legal than PlayAsia selling a US retail copy to someone in Australia.

I'm pretty sure it's the publisher bullying them. It's the same reason we had regional pricing from the start of the pre-orders.

That's my understanding, but I'm not really sure why Mr. Gog needs to comply. I'd hope that they can at least work out a way of providing a patch to put the functionality back for New Zealanders.

Wait, their launcher handles the patching, doesn't it. Never mind.

Man, I'm starting to think the whole Witcher 2 thing is tainting GOG a bit. Regional pricing, regional versions, "not DRM" patch client, etc. etc.. A lot of, in my opinion, anti-GOG stuff going on at GOG because of this game.

Not that I am actually riled up about it. I couldn't care less since I am buying a boxed copy in the US. Just saying it seems like this might have been more trouble than it was worth?

Maybe. The fact that they have the same publisher everywhere except America and Poland (where it's Atari and themselves, respectively) and that they'd probably have to hunt for another publisher this close to release if they don't comply with Namco Bandai's rules is probably one factor.

Mmm... this all sounded so fantastic back when TW2 was first announced to be coming to GOG.

What's the point of it being here if it's not DRM free, isn't available universally worldwide and isn't the same price worldwide? CDP might as well have sold it from their own webpage.

I'm not so sure about that. The purchase of physical goods is not covered by the same exact laws as digital purchases, though the laws covering physical goods are much more firmly established at this point. The simple fact that GOG uses regional download servers could be enough to make them fall under Australian law, even if the actual transaction takes place in imaginary space (the internet) outside of Australia.

I do agree, the publisher bullying does seem far more likely, but we don't have enough of an understanding of how all this works in order to discount everything else.

Hmmm, I thought that Namco Bandai owned Atari now...