DTRPG Says 'Don't criticize us or we'll ban you'

[Jd Smith1]

I am not sure what your objection to what I said is.

You stated: Corporate censorship is a long accepted issue for anyone who is interested in free speech.

That is not true. It is a long accepted issue for some people who are interested in free speech.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

Folks, I already see repetitive head-butting going on. Please reconsider your approach to discussing the topic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes. OBS/DTRPG being the way that a marginal business stays afloat does not create a duty on the part of OBS/DTRPG to always support that marginal business. There is no right to remain in business.

Well it is a two way street, OBS is also in business because small publishers and medium publishers are willing to work with them. If a viable alternative came around that might not be the case. Also OBS didn't always dominate the market and you had small and medium size publishers, but they acquired things like RPGnow, they came to dominate the market more and more, and so many companies find themselves now in the position of having to be on OBS. The issue is if you have one company that powerful and important, it can be a good thing, they could be helping to maintain smaller companies as you point out, but they also can end up having an outsized influence on what kind of art is getting made in the industry. That is where people need to consider things like the impact it has on free expression. Something like Amazon or Walmart can offer a lot of convince, good prices, etc. Things that are good, but their dominance can also lead to bad things (like record companies censoring content because they have to in order to get on walmarts shelves, and int he case of amazon, weird things like bootlegs driving out legitimate copies of movies: something that I saw happen with a lot of marital arts films on that site). I'm not saying we should ignore the positives of OBS. But your point about marginal companies (which I think is not a fair way to frame it because really we are talking about both small and midsized RPG publishers), demonstrates what I am talking about: without being on OBS these companies can't survive. That gives OBS's decisions about things like content guidelines a massive impact on content in the industry as a whole. Even larger companies don't want the headache of not being on OBS, so you could even see it impacting larger RPG companies too.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You stated: Corporate censorship is a long accepted issue for anyone who is interested in free speech.

That is not true. It is a long accepted issue for some people who are interested in free speech.

My point was just it is important if you've followed the free speech conversation over the years (i.e. it comes up a lot)

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well it is a two way street, OBS is also in business because small publishers and medium publishers are willing to work with them. If a viable alternative came around that might not be the case. Also OBS didn't always dominate the market and you had small and medium size publishers, but they acquired things like RPGnow, they came to dominate the market more and more, and so many companies find themselves now in the position of having to be on OBS. The issue is if you have one company that powerful and important, it can be a good thing, they could be helping to maintain smaller companies as you point out, but they also can end up having an outsized influence on what kind of art is getting made in the industry. That is where people need to consider things like the impact it has on free expression. Something like Amazon or Walmart can offer a lot of convince, good prices, etc. Things that are good, but their dominance can also lead to bad things (like record companies censoring content because they have to in order to get on walmarts shelves, and int he case of amazon, weird things like bootlegs driving out legitimate copies of movies: something that I saw happen with a lot of marital arts films on that site). I'm not saying we should ignore the positives of OBS. But your point about marginal companies (which I think is not a fair way to frame it because really we are talking about both small and midsized RPG publishers), demonstrates what I am talking about: without being on OBS these companies can't survive. That gives OBS's decisions about things like content guidelines a massive impact on content in the industry as a whole. Even larger companies don't want the headache of not being on OBS, so you could even see it impacting larger RPG companies too.

If it's a two-way street, then this is even less a marker of monopolistic power. OBS/DTRPG has to maintain enough goodwill of their customers to continue engaging in their marginal businesses to have enough customers to be in business themselves. Of course, if OBS/DTRPG fails, then those marginal businesses are in the same boat. The 'outsized influence' at stake here isn't a curation of products that's disruptive of the possible market but some clear statements about behavior that OBS/DTRPG finds sufficient to terminate a business relationship over.

Let's pose another hypothetical. Does OBS/DTRPG have the ability to refuse to provide services to a product that they find in poor taste and likely to be broadly offensive? If so, why is this not an outsized influence on the market?

 

[MGibster]

If I felt a business partner of mine was acting in bad faith by telling lies and attempting to turn customers against me, I'd stop doing business with them.

 

[Alzrius]

If dealing with this hypothetical is harder, that should provide pause for why you believe what you believe about OBS/DTRPG.

The hypothetical isn't harder, it's a substantively different example that only presents the appearance of being comparable so as to try and create a "gotcha" attempt, which isn't helpful.

The farmer's market needs to be looked at in terms of whether or not they can meaningfully create a barrier to market access, and the issues you cited don't seem to meet that threshold. They're inconveniences, to be sure, but even for a one-person operation create only minor issues to reaching the same pool of potential customers. This is not the case with DriveThruRPG, as another publisher in this same thread has outlined, and which another publisher said in a link I posted earlier.

You said before that you didn't know what monopoly power was. I posted a link that describes the term, noting that it recognizes the difference between a literal monopoly and a business entity that has gained enough market influence that they have the effective abilities of a monopoly. It's not something that can be easily discounted, any more than being thrown off of Youtube (and its affiliated subsidiaries) can be said to be unimportant to someone who makes their living via video content, since they can still post videos on their personal website.

The farmer's market is a bad analogy, because it doesn't scale properly to what's happening here, nor does it gatekeep access nearly as much. That's why hypotheticals don't work: they distract from the issue at hand by trying to "win" the discussion rather than actually discuss it.

Let's not do that, okay? Let's put that example to bed and focus on what's happened with DriveThruRPG.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If it's a two-way street, then this is even less a marker of monopolistic power.

Yes but that is contingent on there being a competitive alternative to go to. And in my point I was saying it is a two way street, so if a competitor comes around, they could leave. Right now I don't think it is a realistic option (my point is more that it could change over time).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Does OBS/DTRPG have the ability to refuse to provide services to a product that they find in poor taste and likely to be broadly offensive? If so, why is this not an outsized influence on the market?

I believe they do. It is in their guidelines, but as I stated earlier int he thread, they have shown tremendous restraint on this front. I think they've largely reserved enforcing those guidelines to truly objectionable content. I think where people got worried with these new guidelines was it seemed to be taking a slightly different posture towards publishers and we were wondering if this signaled a change in how policies in general will be enforced.

But them showing tremendous restraint, doesn't mean it is an ideal situation. I think we would be better off if there were 3-5 truly viable OBS's than 1.

Keep in mind one of the concerns people are raising is about the process itself. When a product is flagged, it automatically gets taken down for two weeks. So all it takes is someone not liking you or your company and flagging you maliciously and a release date you have carefully timed, gets impacted. That is pretty important for RPGs. Those first two weeks are crucial. Now there are things OBS can do to balance that out on the other side. I don't know if they do or not as I have never had a product taken down for review. From the publisher side, I think them addressing this process would be very helpful because it seems like it is ripe for abuse.

 

[Jer]

Yes but that is contingent on there being a competitive alternative to go to. And in my point I was saying it is a two way street, so if a competitor comes around, they could leave. Right now I don't think it is a realistic option (my point is more that it could change over time).

That kind of thing has to be a two way street as well - part of the reason that the available options are not viewed as as good is the lack of network effect. Publishers who are worried about this sort of thing should consider putting their content up on other sites such as itch and gumroad to try to help those retailers become better known and more widely used by customers looking for ttrpgs. There's a chicken and egg problem going on and it takes both publishers and retailers to break that cycle and create competition in the space.