10:1 illegal downloads

[Treebore]

It could be true.

Then again I believed there were 6 Million D&D players around the world, and that WOTC was selling to them. Now we know the lie in that.

So WOTC has convinced me they can be trusted to tell the truth as much as any demon/devil I would meet on the streets.

I'll take another look at them when I hear they have all the PDF's back up for sale.

 

[Tilenas]

Maybe so but it is as good numbers as WotC come out with. Look at the torrents when some DnD thing comes on, heaps of leechers and seeders. However none of them (or very few) would have brought the book/legal PDF and they'll still get them from scans so the point is moot anyway.

And 10:1 or even 100:1 is better than x:0 PDF piracy does not equate to lost hardcopy sales. At all.

Seconded. There've been scans and even OCR versions on the P2P-networks before anyone even offered them as a legal download.
Wizards should take the additional sales they get from the PDFs and stop complaining. To me, and certainly to many other players, a PDF is a useful supplement (for printing etc.) but does not replace the actual book. Call me old fashioned, but when playing RPGs, I like to keep my computer turned off.
If Wizards believe they can sell PDFs of their products for virtually the same price as hard copies, they're mistaken. If they're dissatisfied with their sales, they should review their price policy. Blaming everything on illegal downloads is corporate sound bite and shows an incredible lack of faith in their customers.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

• As folk note, many P2P junkies out there just collect stuff, regardless.
• Downloads doesn't mean they read or even used it, so that is not a lost sale!
• If someone cannot afford the books, and they pirate, good, because they may just then BUY the actual books, they sure as hell will not, otherwise. Piracy = free advertizing! Computer game companies know that (but won't admit it). Also, see how Electornics Art were forced to back down from their asinine DRM garbage last month, as fans hammered them for it, it ruined sales and never stopped piracy.
• Call me weird, but I don't see WTH I should pay the anything like the same for a pdf as for a hard copy.
  Hard copy = real finite stuff, it's a book, it has ot be shipped, it even adds up ot our environmental mess. But a pdf. can be "shipped" a billion times across the globe in seconds. Sell all pdfs for 1 to 5$ based on file size, not current edition, and you'll get more sales.
• I buy an assload of D&D books, but it's become too much hassle now, I'm the DM, I will NOT carry all that weight to a pal's house to play. WTH should the pal have to buy books he will never or rarely use? Put it on cheap pdfs and d I'll take it along on a laptop!
• Yup, folk will still scan and thus, you will sitll get pirate pdfs, WOTC has taken themselves out of the market for that and will thus be wiped out, as it's the market to get into, now.
• You cannot lose a sale you'd never have, you can get sales for advertizing, which is what the pirate copies are. You may be surprised how many folk got into a subject after trying somehting online, be it a game, art, programming or whatever.
• Pirates are potential customers, anger your customers off at your commercial peril! See Metallica relaizing hammering Napster etc was the worst thing they ever did.

Meh, it's like WOTC has completely lost the plot :/ They honestly don't have a grasp on how things are really going, typical corporate "suitery".

 

[Nymrohd]

I'll completely agree that the 10:1 is ultimately irrelevant. People who pirate might well never have bought a products so they are not a sale lost (in fact it is more the publisher's fault for not selling his pdfs cheaper which is the best way to reduce piracy). But tracking that number to a good estimate is not all that hard. I mean I don't know much about how these things work, but would it be so hard to locate the popular torrents and track their activity in major torrent clients?

 

[SlyFlourish]

It would seem what was once 10:1 illegal to legal has now gone to 100% illegal. At least WOTC was recovering some costs.

I wonder what that number would have been if they sold the PDF for a competitive price (like $9) instead of $2 more than the paper copy.

I know I wanted to buy a digital copy of the Dungeon Delve so I could print out the ones I wanted. It turned out to be cheaper to buy two paper copies and cut one up.

 

[Tagnik]

serves them right for putting out a product without much substance.

In the 3.0 they gave us a CD with a character creator, some crappy tiles, and a junky map. It was a decent idea though.

They just need to give reasons to own the books.

heck, give us secret codes to get things. Ever heard of WebKins for children? Heck, they are able to do it just fine.

 

[Adso]

No problem. And rereading my reply I hope that calling you Steve is not a misnomer. My brother Steve is actually a Stephen, too, and I used the informal version reflexively..

Not at all, Steve is fine. My wife calls me Steve...so I don't have a problem with it. Just don't call me Steve the Pirate.

Careful how you parse language. Leeds will think you're after his job.

LOL. I like Greg. He's a good guy. I sure as hell don't want his job.

 

[armorclass10]

I'm sure I'm wrong BUT how do they tell the pirated vs. legal? Am I missing something of has WotC been allowed to operate under the Patriot Act? I mean someone please explain how they can accurately come up with a number. I'm sure I'm missing something, I know "the man" can get this info but WotC.

 

[avin]

Well, over the 3.5 area there was me and two more friends having the books compared to something like 12 people with no books at all.

I can tell you that CB sold DDI to them and now almost of them has a subscription. I got the subscription and still buy the books.

 

[Enerla]

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.

Except if you pay a reprography fee in your country which means you can copy any book legally, and these reprography fees are forwarded to an US agency (along with fees from libraries) and then sent to WOTC so you paid for the permission to get a copy, and used an agency that is authorized to do so by law.

Also if we don't speak about the cases where you are actively encouraged to run demo games, but new players need access to run rulebooks, since that encouragement means that copying is part of normal use of the stuff, and it can place it in fair use.

Also if we speak about modules where you are expected and instructed to send some information to your players, but they made a module into a file you can't edit, so if you follow the instructions you would send the whole file.

So we have legit purchases.
We have copying that is legal in the country where they happen.
We have sends with a perfectly legit purchase, encouraged by copyright holder (if they encourage you to do something that also means they have to permit that)
We have people sharing the books in a party - which is common with hardcopies too, and a fair and common practice in the community.

We have people who bought the hardcopy and pirate the PDF since they say: "we already paid for the content"

And finally there are people who just take the copy.

Even the later can be:
Someone wanting to see it before buying, who wouldn't otherwise buy the book => results in an extra hardcopy sale
Someone who can't affort the book, but his party can, and if he can DM with the pirated copy the party will buy more books => extra sales
Someone who can afford the book, would buy the book, and buys it later => no real effect for WOTC
And a real lost sale

And the lost sale due to piracy vs legit pdf sales ratio are very different from this claimed ratio.