Good Old Games, the digital distribution website for DRM-free classic PC games, has detailed a new privacy policy which will no longer use IP addresses to determine a customer's location.
The company said that it "has always been about trusting the user", and that the policy change is due to "a number of issues" that apparently arise when using a customer's IP address to work out which region the user is currently residing in.
Although it is not specifically stated, the press release hints that the new policy is in aid of Australian users who cannot order upcoming title Witcher 2 due to Australian censoring of the game.
Guillaume Rambourg, managing director of GOG.com, said, "We’ve come to the conclusion that there are a number of issues with using a customer’s IP address to determine what offer they are being presented with from GOG.com. A good number of users can find themselves negatively impacted by a policy of using geo IP to set their region."
"We only need to know the country that you’re making this purchase from, so although we originally planned to use geo-IP to determine user’s location, we’ve decided to trust our users and let them inform us as to the correct region for their purchase."
The digital distribution site suggests that those users having issues with their country's location should update their information in the settings on the site.
I can't imagine that this will be the end of this story.
Disagreeing over content-restricting laws related to computer game ratings is relatively trivial. But this move by GOG, which is clearly intended to encourage Australian citizens to flout those restrictions, is pretty much guaranteed to bring the Australian government into the fight since no government can tolerate even small affronts to its sovereignty. (Well, except for EU member states being bypassed by Brussels, but that's their choice.)
GOG's decision seems clever now, but they may wind up paying for it later.
The Australian government might get its panties in a bunch, but what can they do? Sue a Polish company for...allowing their customers to lie about their country of origin?
More distributors need to push back like this against absurd censorship laws. There's little to no threat for a company that doesn't have stakes in the ground in the offended country.
Hopefully being untrustworthy about stating my region will not affect my standing with GOG - lying about where I am is not something I want to do but a man's gotta do right? Am I right? Damn right I'm right.
I've pre-ordered as an Australian but will be pre-dowloading today as a seppo methinks.
Disagreeing over content-restricting laws related to computer game ratings is relatively trivial. But this move by GOG, which is clearly intended to encourage Australian citizens to flout those restrictions, is pretty much guaranteed to bring the Australian government into the fight since no government can tolerate even small affronts to its sovereignty. (Well, except for EU member states being bypassed by Brussels, but that's their choice.)
GOG's decision seems clever now, but they may wind up paying for it later.
More distributors need to push back like this against absurd censorship laws. There's little to no threat for a company that doesn't have stakes in the ground in the offended country.
Anyway, I'm glad to see there's still some developers that trust their customers.
I've pre-ordered as an Australian but will be pre-dowloading today as a seppo methinks.