10:1 illegal downloads

[Endur]

I don't believe the 10+:1 numbers at all. I've been playing RPGs for 30 years, and I just don't believe it.

I think WOTC has to come forward and demonstrate some facts. Furthermore, WOTC may be including legal fair-use downloads in its illegal numbers, so I'm very curious to learn WOTC's definition of a legal download versus an illegal download.

Forked from: Exclusive interview WotC President Greg Leeds

A quick clarification from WotC:

The 10:1 ratio that Greg references is for PDFs only – it has nothing to do with the physical books. For every one PDF purchased legally, there were at least 10 downloaded illegally. And yes, we can track it.​

 

[mach1.9pants]

Why not? 90% piracy rate is about the norm from what I have seen:
2D Boy: I love you, 2D Boy! » Blog Archive » 90%

 

[Asmor]

I agree with you. The 10:1 number is at best an educated guess, and frankly I don't have enough confidence in them for that. Regardless of what they say, no, they can not track how many copies of the book were downloaded. For that matter, I wouldn't give them enough credit to get an accurate tally of how many copies were legally purchased through sanctioned venues.

That said, my personal suspicion is that they're lowballing it.

As an aside, there's no such thing as a 'fair use download.' It is illegal to download from anywhere other than an authorized retailer from whom you have purchased the book. Period.

 

[Endur]

Why not? 90% piracy rate is about the norm from what I have seen:
2D Boy: I love you, 2D Boy! » Blog Archive » 90%

There are a lot of ifs, ors, and buts regarding those numbers in the comments following that post.

And that is software, not RPGs. Comparing apples and oranges, really.

 

[FlareStorm]

Its believable. A lot are snatched just because they can, or to complete virtual collections. That doesn't mean 10:1 are actually using it, or even opened the file. Having it doesn't mean actually playing with it in a game

I dunno if they were just counting torrents, but there's also file sharing sites, IM transfers, email transfers, et al.

 

[Mark]

I took this to mean that if they could verify (from counters or whatever) that the filesharing sites in question racked up 5,000 downloads then the sold 50,000 PHB2s. Is this not what others are taking from the quote?

 

[Adso]

I agree with you. The 10:1 number is at best an educated guess, and frankly I don't have enough confidence in them for that.

It's actually not that hard. We know how many PDFs were sold. The Scribd website both tracks and published the number of downloads of a particular product. At the very least we know how many downloads were done on that site vs. the ones sold.

There are certainly other downloads on other sites that don't publish downloads numbers, but I am not certain we factored those in, or, if we did, we probably gave it a conservative estimate...but here I am speculating. I am a humble developer and not part of any business decisions.

 

[Adso]

I took this to mean that if they could verify (from counters or whatever) that the filesharing sites in question racked up 5,000 downloads then the sold 50,000 PHB2s. Is this not what others are taking from the quote?

See the clarification from Morrus above. I means there were ten times illegal PDF downloads than there were legit PDF sales.

 

[Obryn]

I find 10:1 completely believable. In fact, I'd guess it's a conservative estimate.

-O

 

[Mark]

See the clarification from Morrus above. I means there were ten times illegal PDF downloads than there were legit PDF sales.

Saw that, Steve. I was posting about what I mistakenly took it to mean, as I clearly stated, and wondered if others had mistaken it in the same way.

Care to share some numbers while you are here? And what's with the second exclusive interview over here? -

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/14726.html