WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs

Harr · Apr 6, 2009

Oh dear:

RPGNow said:
Wizards of the Coast has instructed us to suspend all sales and downloads of Wizards of the Coast titles. Unfortunately, this includes offering download access to previously purchased Wizards of the Coast titles. We are in discussions with Wizards about their decision to change their approach to digital sales of their titles and will post more information as we have it. If you would like to let Wizards know your opinion on offering D&D titles for download, we suggest the D&D Message Boards found here (linked to gleemax).

This certainly stings me as a PDF-exclusive buyer and user of D&D.

So what could this mean in the long run...? Here are my thoughts from the WotC forums:

Very likely they're planning to start selling the PDFs online themselves so they can keep the money from online sales. So first step is to take away the permission for anybody else to sell PDFs online.

Same thing happened with all the online character generators and online D&D tools about six months before 4e was announced. And Dragon/Dungeon magazines. Remember?

PS: I looked to see if there was already a thread on this and I couldn't find one, if there is, my apologies.

mach1.9pants · Apr 6, 2009

Woh, that is not good.

I haven't got any as yet but will do soon when my eReader arrives. How can they stop you getting copies of PDFs you have already purchased????????

Jack99 · Apr 6, 2009

Yeah, it's pretty odd, without giving a reason. Arguably you have the right to the product purchased, along with the number of downloads that are made available to you?

Either way, I am sure someone will let us know soon enough why this has been done, or at least undo it.

MadLordOfMilk · Apr 6, 2009

My first thought was "stop people from getting illegal copies of PDFs," but people are bound to just scan everything anyway (they already do for things without an official PDF). The guess that they might intend to sell them themselves is a logical possibility. Another guess is that they might be changing the PDFs in some drastic way and don't want to deal with people who "just bought the un-updated one" or something. I'm not sure what to make of it.

crazy_cat · Apr 6, 2009

Does anybody know - Is this an across the board thing from WOTC covering all sellers of authorised PDFs of their material or is it just affecting RPGNOW?

Voadam · Apr 6, 2009

This sucks.

I've bought a number from RPGNow. Originally I was told I could download as many times as I wanted to forever. When they merged with DTRPG it went to 5 downloads per product and contact them if I needed more. And now apparently WotC is trying to pull the plug on old downloads. That should not be possible under the contracts rpgnow should have had with them but I don't have the specifics.

I really hope I will still be able to get old edition pdfs, there are a ton I still want to get.

Harr · Apr 6, 2009

What gets to me (not too much of course, but a bit) is that I've already had a couple evenings of gaming saved by RPGNow's convenient "Download it again if you need it again" feature. I haven't had to do it with any WotC book yet, but I know it's only a matter of time. And now I know that's off the table. Guess I just take better care of my folders from now on

rogueattorney · Apr 6, 2009

I don't see anywhere whether the old TSR stuff is effected by this. Paizo, which also sells the old TSR stuff, doesn't have a similar statement up.

If the TSR stuff is effected by this, it'd really suck. It's really the only .pdf's I buy and I could completely see WotC deciding not to make them available again. (There's supposedly no market for OOP D&D products, afterall.)

If they are still available, I think I'm going to buy a parsle full of them that I've been putting off. I've been too complacent, thinking they'll be available forever.

jdrakeh · Apr 6, 2009

mach1.9pants said:
How can they stop you getting copies of PDFs you have already purchased????????

One of the two major reasons that I bought WotC/TSR stuff in PDF form was specifically because I knew that RPGNow archived my past purchases for easy retrieval in case of hardware failure on my end. If WotC is forcing OBS to make those past purchases unavailable, well, 'em.

If this does come to pass, somebody up in Seattle needs to credit me for my past purchases of WotC product that still have downloads remaining. Changing an agreement after somebody purchases things might be legal but it's still a load of horse pucky.

[Edit: As for anti-piracy issues, I think all of the WotC/TSR PDFs that I've downloaded from RPGNow (even the old scans) have an embedded watermark with my name in them. This makes piracy more trouble than it's worth.]

Obryn · Apr 6, 2009

I'm more inclined to think it's a financial decision (as in "We'd make more money if we sold them ourselves") than it is a panicky anti-piracy decision because some executive's kid found a pirated PHB2 on 4chan.

-O