Wizards of the Coast is due to release a new version of its classic game Dungeons & Dragons on June 6. There’s just one problem for the subsidiary of Hasbro: In various unofficial forms, it's already out.
Die-hard fans have been impatiently waiting for the new version of the paper-and-pencil fantasy game, which debuted in the 1970s and still has a passionate following. It's big business: by one estimate, some 20 million people have played Dungeons & Dragons, and the books and related materials have racked up $1 billion in sales.
Expect more. The fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which will be published in three books, features many of the same elements as previous versions. Make a hero, fight big things (like dragons), become a better hero, fight bigger things (like really big dragons). But while Dungeons & Dragons has in the past featured an enormous--and complex--set of rules, this version aims to be more streamlined and appeal a bit more to new players.
To whet fans' appetites for the new version, Wizards of the Coast has been gradually releasing tidbits of information over the past 10 months. Even though the game still requires nothing fancier than grid paper and a pencil, Wizards has made ample use of the Internet to feed the fans: There have been blog entries about game prototypes, excerpts from the books, interviews with developers and sample adventures. Fans have devoured every morsel. ENWorld.org, a Web site that has covered everything about the release since it was announced August last year, is logging 10 million visits a month.
And fans have been taking notes. Careful notes. Andrew White, a 31-year-old in Calgary, Canada, compiled every rule and statistic mentioned in those tidbits and published his own "4 th Edition Pre-Release Rules Compilation" reference. White's project turned into a massive engineering feat itself, going through 12 revisions involving 40 people, and consuming at least 150 hours of White's life. He released an 86-page final version on Thursday. In his spare time, White is working on a doctoral degree in archeology.
Even worse for Hasbro (nyse: HAS - news - people ), just before midnight Wednesday, scans of the books appeared online, too. They weren't homebrewed rip-offs like the Chinese editions of Harry Potter-- the muttering online is that they were stolen copies of the electronic printing proofs, grabbed when the manuscripts were sent to the printer in March. The clue: Some of the contraband pages have prepress design symbols and a notation that dates the files to 10 days before Wizards announced they had sent the final product off to the printer.
Wizards spokesperson Tolena Thorburn confirmed that the leaked online editions are real. "We are fairly confident that we’ve identified where the leak occurred, and are moving forward on handling it appropriately." The fairly specific nature of the material no doubt left a clear trail to this particular rogue.
Despite the free copies circulating, fans are buzzing on the Web about their plans to buy the books anyway. The purloined copies have even won a few new customers for Wizards: some bloggers who feigned disinterest in the fourth edition now say that the illegal copies have convinced them to buy the new version.
And then there are the slipups. Buy.com shipped out a chunk of the books pre-release. No more than 100 (less than 10% of Buy.com's total preorders for the books) shipped before the error was caught. But the lucky fans who got their copies early have been boasting about their treasure.
Buy.com’s vice president of marketing, Jeff Wisot, says his team is investigating whether there was a miscommunication over the publishing date. "The parties involved have been dealt with and there are consequences for breaking the street date," wrote Scott Rouse, senior brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons, in an online forum.
Lucky for the mischief maker, Rouse can't summon an ogre.
