White Wolf licensed d20 stuff gone on rpgnow?

[Voadam]

It looks like White Wolf pulled their sale of pdfs of d20 Ravenloft, Warcraft, Everquest, Engel, and Gamma World recently.

I'm annoyed again. Even though I had a bunch of these there were still plenty on my "to purchase eventually" list (Warcraft RPG and monster book, ravenloft gazeteers, guide to shadow fey and undead, etc.).

Another set of pdfs gone with no notice.

WotC with D&D.

Sovereign Press with Dragonlance and Sovereign Stone.

FFE with their d20 stuff.

I.C.E. with Rolemaster.

Avalanche Press with their d20 stuff.

I wish publishers would give customers some notice on these things. It would seem to be in both their interest as well as that of their customers to give notice before it happens and perhaps hold a sale.

Mongoose did it with Conan RPG when their license ran out.

Pelgrane Press did it with their Dying Earth stuff when they lost the license (before gaining it again years later along with rights to sell pdfs again).

Tons of d20 publishers (Goodman, Fantasy Flight Games, etc) did it at the beginning of 4e when there was d20 logo license issues and GSL stuff.

Had I known the White Wolf license stuff was going away now I would have loaded up on the remaining ones I was interested in, much like I did with Conan, Dying Earth, and a ton of d20 stuff during the final sales. Instead I will spend my monthly RPG money budget on other stuff, not have these pdfs, and White Wolf misses out on my purchases.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Nothing lasts forever.

The lesson to take away is, nothing will remain "in print" forever. The longer you choose to delay a purchase of something you want, the more risk you take. This has been true ever since we had an entertainment industry. While it stinks that there was no warning, sometimes that can happen.

 

[Umbran]

If you buy from RPGNow, your business relationship is with RPGNow, not with the publisher directly. The publisher doesn't have a way to contact you personally - it is RPGNow who has your e-mail address on account.

Folk around here seem to find it reprehensible that a vendor or publisher contact you - even Morrus catches flack about the EN World newsletter. The prevailing attitude seems to be that if you don't explicitly ask for the information, they don't get to push it to you. Anything other than answering your specific questions is spam.

So, the best RPGNow could do under that restriction is post a notice on their site. And maybe the publisher gives RPGNow time to make an effective notification, and maybe they don't...

 

[Voadam]

If you buy from RPGNow, your business relationship is with RPGNow, not with the publisher directly. The publisher doesn't have a way to contact you personally - it is RPGNow who has your e-mail address on account.

The publisher has plenty of ways to contact customers.

They can put up a notice on their page on rpgnow. They can get one of those front page rpgnow ad notices. They can do it as a sale on the Drunken Goblin sale page of rpgnow. I expect they could get such an announcement in the weekly rpgnow newsletter. They can put up notices on their websites. They can go to big rpg websites and make anouncements about it. Publishers have done so before.

Mongoose anounces end of Conan license on ENWorld.

Pelgrane announced on RPGNOW end of Dying Earth stuff availability

Others have done nothing.

It is not rpgnow I'm annoyed with, it is the publishers who yank stuff I am interested in with no notice.

I was fine with how Mongoose and Pelgrane and Goodman handled their line endings and they received large multi-item purchases from me during their sales and I came away happy.

White Wolf, WotC, Sovereign Press, etc. annoyed me.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Damn, I wanted to get a PDF of their Ravenloft monster book.

I also don't get the rationale of taking it down -- the work's already done on these books, and even if it's not a flood of money coming in from these products, it's more than they'd get with the products removed, since anyone who wants a PDF badly enough will just go to the torrents, or maybe Noble Knight (and buy a used copy that WWGS also won't get paid for).

 

[Alan Shutko]

Odds are, they had their d20 license terminated for some reason, which gives them 30 days to pull all products from distribution. That's the problem with the D20 license, and the reason that a lot of d20 products disappear.

(I sort of thought the d20 license was terminated for everyone a while back when 4e was released, but maybe not?)

 

[deinol]

I could have sworn RPG Now had a feature where a publisher could e-mail people who had purchased their products.

Sure, it is harder to reach those who haven't purchased any of them yet. But if you bought one book from them, it would have been cake for a message to go out saying "Last chance to buy more!"

 

[pawsplay]

Odds are, they had their d20 license terminated for some reason, which gives them 30 days to pull all products from distribution. That's the problem with the D20 license, and the reason that a lot of d20 products disappear.

(I sort of thought the d20 license was terminated for everyone a while back when 4e was released, but maybe not?)

Actually, I see some d20 stuff up. Just not that stuff.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

I did notice that I still have the download links for all of my RL3E PDFs however.

 

[Ghostwind]

All licensed products have a set specific time period where they may be sold. Once that period has expired, publishers must remove them from sale. It is up to the publisher as to whether or not they want to inform the general public. Given that White Wolf is very tied up in developing the WoD MMO, I doubt that they even cared about giving anyone advance notice.