Another Cease and Desist Letter: 4E Powercards

[Scott_Rouse]

Sorry Scott, but that does not help your case any. You asked other people and got the same polite no, which is no problem. But you did not ask why the no response was given. As a result you cannot then say that one reason or another was not the reason either. All you can legitamately say is that those reasons would not be ones for you, but that does not mean it couldn't be reasons for others.

Fair enough I did not dig in deeper with legal but really that is not my place to question why another brand and/or our legal department did something that does not affect my job/roles and responsibilities. I can tell you with almost 100% certainty it has nothing to do with jdrakeh's zine or a fan publishing policy.

As I tried to explain sometimes these old games have messy issues that can't be explained in public. So when it comes to permissions sometimes the best answer our legal team can provide it a simple "no" because the time get to root of the issue is too dear and the risk to just say "yes" is not worth it. Saying yes to a use may be a right we can't give.

Similarly, I deal with these issues regularly on requests for usage rights for old TSR articles and artwork. The contracts were poorly written at best and at worst are long gone so we may not know if we own the work outright, had one-time rights, or some version in-between.

Sometimes a no is all we can give.

 

[DennisB]

I do not know if this stuff has been covered because I just skimmed threw the blog, but i have a few things to say about all this stuff wizards has done this month.

1) In this economic crises, IT is a crime to sell the books at $40 a piece, $20 is a reasonable price and my god, $100 for a deck of cards, cards that are ugly as hell, are generalized, and just plain out suck, they need to go to jail for robbery. they took the idea of the cards from the players that worked so hard to design the cards on here. They did all the work and then Wizards tells them to stop so they can make the money from there idea. That is plain out wrong.

2) The stopping of the PDF Versions of there books is also wrong. for years i had to carry there books sines the release of the 2nd edition and when they announced the PDF version of there books i was estatic, I have bought every book and downloaded there books onto my laptop and it has made my life (and back) much easier. But because of a few butt holes out there wizards has discontinued all PDF sales. First, there is no way i am buying the hard copies, EVER, just thinking about carrying all thoes books again is sending chills up my spine <Shutter> Its not the fans fault that they did not think about protecting there products from getting sent to file sharing, so dont punish the people out there who obtain the books leagely. and second, i did not mind paying the price for the PDF books, but i will not pay that much for the hard copies, if i wanted to pay for a workout, I will use the money at gold's gym. Besides, How is wizards going to stop people from photocopying the books and sending them out there in PDF. If people want to send that information out on the internet then short of tracking down the offender and sueing them there is no way to stop them, sorry but thats the reality of the internet.

I know this is going to tick off some people but this is my oppion and how i feel about what wizards has done

 

[Filcher]

I do not know if this stuff has been covered because I just skimmed threw the blog, but i have a few things to say about all this stuff wizards has done this month.

1) In this economic crises, IT is a crime to sell the books at $40 a piece, $20 is a reasonable price and my god, $100 for a deck of cards, cards that are ugly as hell, are generalized, and just plain out suck, they need to go to jail for robbery. they took the idea of the cards from the players that worked so hard to design the cards on here. They did all the work and then Wizards tells them to stop so they can make the money from there idea. That is plain out wrong.

Well my argument won't change your mind, but ...

I walk into your kitchen. I make dinner using ingredients from your fridge. Is it okay that I give it away now?

If no, then we agree. If yes, please give me your home address because I'm hungry. (You know, economic and all.)

 

[DennisB]

I was not done whith what I was saying earlier, I had to go run and take care of some stuff, but my complaints continues.

3) When D&D 4E came out they also came out with D&D Insider, Had some great ideas so I suscribed, It was suppose to have a dungeon maker and a section to create pics of your characters and NPC's, However thoes programs never showed up, All insider has thats worth anything is the Dragon and Dungeon magizines, and now I am waiting for them to take that away because it is in PDF format then insider will not be worth anything, I feel like I was had and my money was wasted, but wizards does not consider that, any loss they may have lost because of the free sharing of the PDF books they made up with taking our money for a shoddy product in insider. In reality, not sure, but i think we can demand our money back for not getting a product we were promised. I feel like wizards does not have there stuff together over there, not thinking ahead as far as protecting there PDF books, making false promises to the public, and taking the fans ideas and charging outragous prices for there products.

More of my oppions to come!!!!

Edit: I did forget about the character builder, another good idea that have and i must say it is worth the money, but I still got indider for the map maker and the character image maker.

 

[Squire James]

Hmm... it's hardly "robbery" if you can choose not to buy the product and, say, make your own darn Power Cards. You have plenty of examples to work from, and making your own for your own use is "fair use" and WOTC would say nothing of it.

I'm aware you did not invent the term, but I dislike the very description of calling something offered for sale as "robbery". If it costs too much, DON'T BUY IT! Some argument can be made along those lines if the product is a necessity and a viable substitute is not available elsewhere for a better price, but D&D products do not fit either category.

$40 per Core Book is probably unreasonable, yes, but Amazon.com prices are $66.12 for all 3 books at the time of this message (not so good for individual books, but still lots less than $40). Yes, it's in stock. Sometimes it's just a matter of knowing where to look.

Finally, there is NOTHING about being in an economic crisis that implies that a business has a moral obligation to lower their prices! Businesses may fail in such a crisis if they set their prices too high, but that's THEIR problem, not yours. It's only your problem if the product DOES sell well but is still priced out of your range... then it's not really the fault of the "economic crisis" anymore, is it!

 

[DennisB]

But if a corperation tells you that they have this great product and fail to deliver that product (in this case the map maker and the character image) and you paied for it and did not get the product, would you not get mad.

 

[mudbunny]

But if a corperation tells you that they have this great product and fail to deliver that product (in this case the map maker and the character image) and you paied for it and did not get the product, would you not get mad.

Except no-one has paid for the Visualizer or Game Table yet. Not to mention that they also put up a news article and an ampersand a month before the release telling members that the applications would not be ready at the release of 4th edition.

 

[Imban]

I'm aware you did not invent the term, but I dislike the very description of calling something offered for sale as "robbery". If it costs too much, DON'T BUY IT! Some argument can be made along those lines if the product is a necessity and a viable substitute is not available elsewhere for a better price, but D&D products do not fit either category.

Yeah, about the only times I complain that businesses are guilty of highway robbery is when they're like... amusement parks that are open in the sweltering heat of summer and charge $4 for a bottle of water because people need it to not die of heatstroke and can't buy it from anywhere else without leaving the park.

There are even arguments that some forms of price gouging in a disaster (basically as long as you still sell all your stock) are acceptable because they distribute the goods to the ones who value them the most, but I've thankfully never had to deal with this myself.

If WotC isn't conspiring to overcharge you for basic necessities (and they're not) or screw you with contracts (and they're not - the can't-unsubscribe-from-DDI debacle was just that Digital River sucks) or acting out of spite (where the price is artificially higher due to their actively wanting to not sell it), pretty much any price they charge is a legitimate business decision.

 

[DennisB]

But its been almost a year, How long does it take to make the programs.
I mean, jeesh, come on, they need to get there act together, and this is not the first time they have done this, they did this when 3ed edition was released, had this great idea for character builder, even had a disk in the players handbook, told everyone that this was a bata form and upgrades will be avaliable soon and had 1 minor upgrade and then nothing. I see a pattern in the way they do things there, they make empty promises they can not keep. Everytime they start getting into the 21st century, they get scared and back off and keep them selves stuck in the 20th century.

As far as there prices, i agree, and it was worth it when the books were in PDF, i was paying for the convience, but no way in hell i am lugging thoes books around again and paying the price they charge for them. The PDF books was worth the price and maybe even a little more, not saying to raise the price.

 

[mudbunny]

But its been almost a year, How long does it take to make the programs.

To do it quick and dirty, not long. But to do it well, obviously takes a little longer. IT is pretty clear to anyone, and WotC has said so numerous times, that they overestimated their abilities to produce the tools and underestimated the time it would take to finish the tools. As more tools are released, they are gaining more experience. Not just in programming the tools, but in the development and managing of the tools. And that is where WotC got bit in the rear. They had no experience with the pitfalls, setbacks, etc that a company that does software development day-in and day-out knows about and can plan for. WotC has this for the development of their print line. They are, slowly, surely and definitely via the hard way, gaining this in the software development side of things.