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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7724676" data-attributes="member: 6778044">It is brilliant when you include the cost of paying developers, support for the product, the infrastructure to support the product, etc. There's little point for WotC to either pay for what would be needed in-house. And to pay somebody else to do it for you is also expensive (usually more expensive than in-house). But the bigger advantage, by far, is that WotC assumes no risk. If a third party is making the product and paying WotC for the content, then WotC has no expenses to offset before they start making a profit, nor do they assume any risk if the product doesn't sell well. As you pointed out, it's brilliant. Well, selling a digital copy of the same content, or even giving it away with the purchase of a book, certainly isn't going to encourage other companies to spend their own time and money, and assume the risk for such a product. All I'm saying is that with the evidence at hand - now the fourth company (at least) production a product to provide the same licensed digital content seems to point to a business model where WotC has decided that they aren't the best people to design, build, and support a digital product. I suspect a lot of this also has to do with the struggles they had in the 3e/4e era in creating a lasting and complete solution. As far as in-house designed or purchased products, they've been there, done that.And while the solutions that have been released haven't served everyone's needs, I think that almost all of them have done well enough that it's encouraging for other companies who feel they have a solution that fills an empty niche. And based on that, I don't think that the primary reason WotC hasn't released pdfs has anything to do with piracy.</blockquote>

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