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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 1948845" data-attributes="member: 2804">I don't completely agree with this. The logic is flawed. Just because a gamer buys Grim Tales doesn't mean they would have bought a WotC product if Grim Tales wasn't available.Software and entertainment companies use that same logic when estimating the ridiculous estimates of billions in lost profits due to piracy. Of all the people I know who have pirated copies of this software or that, not one of them would have bought it if the pirated copy was unavailable. Not one. And of all the people I know who have downloaded music, perhaps 1 in 10 people didn't buy a CD because they got a copy from the internet. But of those 10 people, 5 would never have even heard of the artist if it wasn't for their friends telling them about some cool MP3 they downloaded. In other words, the amount of money lost to piracy is far outweighed by the amount of money gained. Last time I checked, record companies were doing just fine.If we could see the books for every RPG company and run computer simulations for what WotC's profits would be with or without the OGL, I think you would find that some gaming dollars spent on competitive producs would come back to WotC if there was no OGL. But I think this sum would be dwarfed by the extra profit WotC has generated over the past 4 years by growing the d20 market as a whole. In other words, they have made far more money from the OGL and d20 license than they have lost.The thing that piracy or something like the OGL really does though, is force companies to create quality products. Being able to see competing products via the OGL, or get a free sample of software, music, or movies really means that garbage will quickly be identified as such.Those companies that create bad products will make less money than they would have 15 years ago. But those companies that make good products will make more money than they would have. Informed consumers make better educated choices. Good companies will succeed and bad companies will fail.</blockquote>

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