Eden Studios Adds Drive-Thru Window

[d20Dwarf]

Someone living outside the US on RPGnet brought up a very good point regarding this:

PDFs are great for people in third world country with fewer print products. DSM is not, because there is a lot fewer connections at home, especially high speed connections. Some do their downloads at a cyber cafe and university and don't have the option of opening it at home.

Excellent, excellent point. But I can only assume the creators of DTRPG knew that already.

 

[johnsemlak]

Someone living outside the US on RPGnet brought up a very good point regarding this:

PDFs are great for people in third world country with fewer print products. DSM is not, because there is a lot fewer connections at home, especially high speed connections. Some do their downloads at a cyber cafe and university and don't have the option of opening it at home.

See:

People who have difficulty obtaining RPG products in their area don't necessarily live in a 'third world' country. Saudi Arabia, a country mentioned, is FAR from that.

DTRPG will increase access to RPG products for a number of people (how many I can't say) living far from a FLGS. It won't solve everyone's problems though.

 

[BryonD]

However, as indicated in an earlier post, the first litmus test will be Malhavoc's next release. If the sales are extremely poor and Malhavoc goes back to RPGNow right away, I will be proven wrong on this matter.

You may have simply missed this before. But I am really curious if it is your opinion that Malhavoc specifically is no longer viewing typical US pdf buyers as a primary market. Your prior comments can be easily read to lead one to this conclusion.

Anyway, I doubt Malhavoc will go back to RPGnow in the short term almost regardless of what happens.

Further, the history of DRM type technologies has been that they do fairly well out of the gate. It is only after a little while that the "average" user starts to be dissatisified. Then the sales drop. Curiosity can actually enhance sales at the start.

 

[BryonD]

People who have difficulty obtaining RPG products in their area don't necessarily live in a 'third world' country. Saudi Arabia, a country mentioned, is FAR from that.

DTRPG will increase access to RPG products for a number of people (how many I can't say) living far from a FLGS. It won't solve everyone's problems though.

This one guy in Saudi Arabia seems to be the most powerful and influential guy in all of RPG e-publishing.

Obviously tounge in cheek.
But the supporters of DRM do seem to be trying to have it both ways.
They can point to indivdual cases as a reason to do this, but blow off entire groups of people as not significant.

 

[Cergorach]

This one guy in Saudi Arabia seems to be the most powerful and influential guy in all of RPG e-publishing.

Must be a sjeik (or however you spell that), maybe he's a silent partner of DTRPG... *grins*

 

[Eden Studios Inc]

And... Eden bats 0 for 2...

The (highly professional) response:

People should remember that once something is on the internet, it's often there forever.

Ok now why dont you read alittle further in that thread where I apologize for my outburst.

 

[Eden Studios Inc]

Ok first off Im sorry for the mispost here. Before leaving for the Licensing Show I left my employees with a list of things to do and looks like it got screwed up My bad for bad communication on what needed to get done.

Anyways...

Yes I have been getting alittle hot headed over this DTRPG issue and DRM and all that.

This method of PDFing was to get additional sales to the peple who

a. cant find our stuff thru normal distribution
b. a way for out of print product to still get to the fans.
c. to offer "cheaper" versions of our print products to fans who dont want to spend full retail
d. to make us some extra money

As with all aspects of our buisness (game design and publishing) we cannot make everyone happy.

For example, why us this system? why not hardcover, why not this sourcebook first, why not in color?

We make the decisions for our company based on what data we have on hand at the time. Sometimes they are good decisions sometimes they are bad. Almost all of the time we listen to our fans. Anyone who knows me knows this to be true. And the truth is I will tell it how it is. No fluff or smoke and mirrors.

I have been listening to all the praise and complaints since this started. Now looking back I should have just said absolutely nothing (like other publishers involved with DTRPG) but thats not in me

I want to hear feedback and sometimes I have to stir the pot to do so. Anyways - now we are at the boycott phase. Ive accepted that. Not much I can do about that now.

Anyway Ill be back later... lost my train of thought

 

[wocky]

Their target audience is the person who cannot get a print copy easily because of location, availability and/or costs (such as being overseas or stuck 200 miles from a game store).

Hahaha... that'd be me then, or the other Argentine people I game with. I've bought lots of PDFs at RPGNow because of location, availability and costs... but DTRPG pisses me off just like anyone else.

First of all, a 5-10 U$S PDF has a good enough price... I can spend something like 3-4 U$S extra and have it printed and bound, with a color cover. Much better than paying the price of the print edition, plus something like 10 U$S for shipping.
Now... many of the PDFs in DTRPG are priced at Suggested Retail Price, which is more expensive than what I'd pay at Amazon, if I add the printing and binding costs, I'd much rather buy the print edition and be done with.

Not only that... I usually take my PDF to a store to have the cover printed in color. The DRM thingy makes that no longer an option (print shops don't even have the latest version of Acrobat).

And I also don't like to be restricted by a product I bought... even if I live overseas.

PS: Argentina IS a Third World country.

 

[Voadam]

I have been listening to all the praise and complaints since this started. Now looking back I should have just said absolutely nothing (like other publishers involved with DTRPG) but thats not in me

I want to hear feedback and sometimes I have to stir the pot to do so. Anyways - now we are at the boycott phase. Ive accepted that. Not much I can do about that now.

Anyway Ill be back later... lost my train of thought

Thanks for showing up here. I buy a lot of pdfs. For instance, of monster books I have Complete Minions, GF Monsters, Bane Leger, Legacy of Dragons, Terrors of the Twisted Earth, Book of Templates, Book of Templates Deluxe, Bodies and Souls, and Monsters of the Id. I would love to get a pdf of Liber Bestarius and the Odyssey series of themed adventure compilations Eden did. I am not interested in licensing partial use to one that is difficult to cut and paste, make back ups, and has portability issues. For the way I use my electronic gaming products the increased hassle is not worth it. I'm not even sure I would accept a free review copy because of all the registration hassles that would be needed to gain access to it. I have not gotten the free licensed use of Exalted, Gamma World, or the Malhavok dragon from DTRPG even though I would grab them in a second if they were free pdfs on rpgnow or if DTRPG offered them as full pdfs without DRM and registration/security hassles.

 

[Cergorach]

I want to hear feedback and sometimes I have to stir the pot to do so. Anyways - now we are at the boycott phase. Ive accepted that. Not much I can do about that now.

Boycott phase? What are you talking about? I couldn't get Fields of Blood at my current distributor and haven't spend the time to look overseas yet. I bought FoB at DTRPG for $15 and it's money well spend! I don't like the DRM one bit, but that's not exactly stopping me now is it, just creating a bit more work to get it into a usable format...

Now if your looking for a bit more money, post more Eden D20 material on DTRPG, especially Liber Bestarius (i would also buy the two as of yet unposted adventures if the current price scheme is in effect). Prerequisite is that it's in the same quality pdf as FoB. So go forth and make more money at little extra effort ;-)

ps. how about The War of Shadows in pdf format?