WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs

[Obryn]

The question is not about piracy and WotC as a whole, but does piracy make the WotC PDF initiative not worth the bother/expense? Bowing out of the PDF marked does not stop piracy, but piracy is rampant with or without WotCs participation.

This is a good point.

I'll also note that the direct-from-WotC PDFs are excellently done, and far higher quality than scanned (or scan/OCR) PDFs.

-O

 

[Storm Raven]

How many people actually purchase PDFs of legacy products(as opposed to downloading free pirated copies)? I expect the number to be very low, and may not even justify the amount of work required to make them available. Making PDFs available takes some amount of work and bandwith, and both of those things cost money.

For .pdfs that are already available the work is done. For .pdfs being sold by Paizo and RPGNow, the bandwidth is paid for by someone other than WotC.

How does keeping .pdfs available under these circumstances cost WotC any money?

 

[Storm Raven]

Then I needed to decide how to purchase the materials for DND. My wife gets extremely annoyed whenever I purchase anything not on the basis of money, but on the basis of space. She doesn't like a lot of books on the bookshelf, and she certainly would hate it if I started buying miniatures (She bitterly tolerated Descent).

Given that I have over 4,000 books (not counting the books for my kids), I would need to get a new wife.

 

[darjr]

For .pdfs that are already available the work is done. For .pdfs being sold by Paizo and RPGNow, the bandwidth is paid for by someone other than WotC.

How does keeping .pdfs available under these circumstances cost WotC any money?

Maintenace of the contract and fees from those companies. Someone has to manage that. I'd think this would have been obvious.

 

[vsper]

I put this theory in the tinfoil hat category, and I scratch my head whenever I see it. I think a lot of people would like it to be true, but this move isn't evidence for it.

I wouldn't say it quite qualifies for tinfoil hat. I don't know about wanting it to be true. I would like to see Wizards do well.

My reasoning for saying that is when they told retailers you can do 3.5 or 4 not both. As incidental evidence I know that two bookstore chains have had poor sales and two FLGS owners I am friends with told me of poor sales.

Having been in big business when you have had a legacy product with huge popularity and a new product that is getting luke warm support you try to kill the legacy hoping it will force the customer to the new product. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

There would be no reason whatsoever to take down both the 4e and older edition materials, if they simply wanted to stop selling the older editions.

Actually I wonder why take down the old versions to stop pirating of new stuff. If all the old stuff is so readily available from piracy seems silly. Taking it down now serves no purpose but to cut a revenue stream.

Making PDF's available doesn't really change Piracy. Take a look at Palladium books. They refuse to create PDF's and I just googled Palladium and torrent and it looks like it has almost everything they ever printed.

So if they did this to prevent piracy it was pretty foolish. It looks like they shot the horse to keep people from stealing it. I assume someone there would realize that so I think there is another motive.

Yes, there would have been an uproar about removing the older editions from sale. I can't imagine the uproar would have been larger, though, if they had only removed the older editions and left the 4e materials for sale. You can come up with scenarios where it somehow makes sense if you add on about three or four assumptions, but occam's razor doesn't give me any reason to doubt Wizards' official statements here.

-O

I like using occam's razor. Here I would say removing profits to stop the innevitable isn't the simplest solution.

I am not saying you are wrong. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, we can not know why they made the decision they made unless we were in the room at the time. I was just stating that is how I feel. Not a fact, just a feeling


vsper

 

[JohnRTroy]

It is highly unlikely, since copyrights don't work that way. You may know of cases where a company lost their trademark after failing to protect it.

Trademarks are not copyrights, and don't work the same way.

I didn't mean to say you legally lose your right to defend copyrights like you would with trademarks. But I'm sure a defense lawyer might be able to argue issues if they can prove "selective enforcement", at least enough to give pause to a Jury or Judge.

 

[Jamfke]

Maintenace of the contract and fees from those companies. Someone has to manage that. I'd think this would have been obvious.

Sorry, no. The contract is a one time affair, and "fees from those companies" are taken out of each sale of product. The only thing WotC has to do is collect their payout each month, which is basically cashing a check sent by the online retailer, and I'm pretty sure Wizzards has an accountant flunky that handles that for all their income.

Selling PDFs through an online retailer does nothing but earn them money.

 

[Storm Raven]

I didn't mean to say you legally lose your right to defend copyrights like you would with trademarks. But I'm sure a defense lawyer might be able to argue issues if they can prove "selective enforcement", at least enough to give pause to a Jury or Judge.

Unlikely. I've never seen a case where that argument has carried any weight. I haven't been involved in any copyright cases in a while though, so maybe there's been something in the last couple years. I'd need to see a transcript of such a case to find it plausible.

 

[Staffan]

I always think Ryan's posts are worth reading and considering, and I do in this case as well. However, as this is the person who failed to get MasterTools up and running, any discussion of the lack of hybridization of D&D and computer gaming must keep that in mind.

I feel I have to step up and defend Ryan Dancey on this point. Unless I'm totally misremembering things, Master Tools was originally supposed to be overseen by Jim Butler, and was originally supposed to be something along the lines of what they've shown us of the D&D Gaming Table (except without the online component) plus character/monster generators. After numerous delays (partially due to the company they outsourced stuff to spending their time and budget on things like sound effects, which Butler and/or the actual creators mentioned in their periodic updates), Dancey took over and narrowed the focus of the product to what eventually became E-tools. That might also have been related to Hasbro selling off rights to make computer games based on their products to Infogrames (later Atari).

 

[Staffan]

She doesn't like a lot of books on the bookshelf,

What's a bookshelf for if not being filled with books?