jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Does OBS have a brick and morter shop?
Yes, they do, actually. Or, at the very least, Minion Development/RPGNow did prior to the merger with DriveThru to become OBS. I assume that it is still part of the company.
That said, as I mention earlier, this sounds far more like the GW push to 'help' brick and mortar stores by forcing Internet retailers to adhere to slavish, often absurd, standards in order to carry GW stock at all.
Then, after they effectively locked out most online distributors, they turned their sights on those brick and mortar stores they were previously trying to 'help' by forcing them to adhere to the same (or similar) standards.
That's what this sounds like. It may be something entirely different but, again, all we really know is what OBS has publically stated.
I don't know too many FLGS owners or webmasters who wouldn't love to spend a few hours alone in a locked room with a GW sales rep and a blow torch. I think that they (GW sales reps) must be some of the most reviled people in gaming.
Perhaps they saw that the pdf sales going exclusively through OBS were working in opposiion to their desire to help the brick and morter stores, and want to do soemthing to help them, rather then making Drivethru a monopoly?
Except that they were not going exclusively through OBS — they were (and apparently are) still going through Paizo. And there are other PDF distributors that they could go through, to boot.
If they let the brick and morter stores sell the pdfs, they help foster the ability of the B&M stores to stay relevent and continue to offer what they offer to the comunity.
If this action was forced by WotC as OBS seems to suggest, I think it's far more likely that they're trying to 'help' brick and mortar stores by crippling online vendors, a plan which is both far cheaper and easier to implement (and, again, which GW has proved works to the manufacturer's advantage with regard to IP control).
Again, I think it would be great if WotC let their customers know what the hell was going on but I think that the ideal of transparency in operations over there has pretty much stalled out.
To his credit, Rouse tells us what he can, when he can, but I get the impression that what he is allowed to say has become more and more limited in recent months. Giving a few thousand customers the bum's rush with no word from the publisher?
That's just bad business.
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