Free League forcing Alchemy VTT to remove PDFs - Anti-consumer behaviour?

[cmdr23]

Hey all. I recently purchased a bundle of Free League games on Alchemy VTT. Pretty awesome, was looking forward to playing a bunch of sweet Swedish-published games. It included access to a bunch of games via the Alchemy platform and the pdf downloadable for each. All good. Unfortunately, I've received an email from Alchemy this morning saying Free League are asking them to remove pdf download access to their games. Alchemy state that they don't like this but are complying. Customers will have 7 days to download the pdfs of the games they purchased before access is removed. I'll post the email below.

I think this is a bad show from Free League, pretty anti-consumer. It reeks badly of the kind of own-goal a certain larger ttrpg corporation has been getting absolutely trashed for lately (rightfully, in some cases). I certainly won't be giving Free League another penny myself and I would encourage others to avoid purchasing directly from them as well. I'll attach a screenshot of part of the email I recieved.

Pretty grim eh? What a hassle just to play some fun games with your pals.

 

[Cergorach]

Many folks just bought that Humble Bundle with Free League stuff just for the PDFs. I find it interesting that they can remove things you already 'own' without your consent.

Are they also able to do that on services like Humble Bundle itself, Bundle of Holding, or DriveThruRPG, etc? Or is this just something Alchemy f-ed up in their contracting with FL (and other companies)?

I see this as much of a problem by Free League as of Alchemy, if FL can do this on the Alchemy platform, other companies can do so as well. So I'll certainly not advise anyone that finds such a feature important to use Alchemy in the future...

I think that this is a knee jerk reaction from Free League that didn't realize that giving away 50 Alchemy licenses also meant giving away 50 pdfs of most of their core products at $30/€28 in a Humble Bundle. And instead of eating that mistake, they are now putting the issue at the feet of their (potential) customer base.

This being the problematic Humble Bundle:

The Free League Immersive RPG Bundle for Alchemy VTT

Get a vast library of RPG goodness from fan-favorite Free League Publishing, all playable on the Alchemy VTT! Your purchase helps support Direct Relief.

www.humblebundle.com

For me that was a way to look at Alchemy as a VTT with 3rd party products and at the FL products as an RPG. My preferred VTT is still Foundry VTT, but it's always useful to look at the competition and what they are doing well (or wrong). For me these products were stepping stones for potential future purchases of FL FVTT modules.

For me this is again a reason that reinforces that things like Roll20, DDB, the new D&D VTT, ALCHEMY, etc. are a bad 'investment' from a roleplayer's perspective that keeps on playing for decades. I still own my pnp RPG purchases from 35+ years ago. With Foundry VTT I downloaded and archived all the (linux/nodejs) stable releases and am starting to backup my (premium) modules and rules sets. So even IF Foundry ever goes down or some company pulls their digital product I purchased, I still have a backup of that product I can deploy on whatever version of FVTT it requires (in my case on a self hosted Raspberry Pi).

These Free League and Alchemy shenanigans are bad press for all products as a service companies in the pnp RPG space.

Sidenote: I've also started backing up all my Humble Bundle, Bundle of Holding and DriveThruRPG purchases. I would advise everyone start doing that, especially if you have FL products anywhere.

 

[cmdr23]

100%. Seems like a communication error or some such somewhere between Alchemy and Free League is now their customers' problem. Bad business, that.

 

[Morrus]

Many folks just bought that Humble Bundle with Free League stuff just for the PDFs. I find it interesting that they can remove things you already 'own' without your consent.

If I'm reading the above right (and I may not be), they're not taking your PDFs from you... all they're doing is not hosting the PDFs for you. You can download the PDFs and keep them. You still own those PDFs. It's not like it's content which you can't back up if it goes away.

7 days seems a bit short notice though. What if somebody is away for the week?

I agree that it's not a very consumer friendly move.

 

[Nikosandros]

It would nice, IMHO, if Fria Ligan would send Drivetrhu codes for those PDFs, like they do when you purchase books on their own webstore.

 

[cmdr23]

Yeah they are no longer providing access to the PDFs after the specified date. I don't expect Pinkertons to turn up demanding my HDD.......right? Amazing that the thought even occurs with a company like Free League who otherwise seem so right on, how silly.

If they have a problem with the PDF being part of an Alchemy purchase I could see it being somewhat reasonable to exclude this from future purchases (and making this clear on their store etc.) but removing access from people who have already purchased is unforgivable.

Or...you know...just let folk who buy the game have the PDF, like a ton of other good-actors in the TTRPG space. I can already hear Mike Shea's wails of pain..

 

[Cergorach]

If I'm reading the above right (and I may not be), they're not taking your PDFs from you... all they're doing is not hosting the PDFs for you. You can download the PDFs and keep them. You still own those PDFs. It's not like it's content which you can't back up if it goes away.

7 days seems a bit short notice though. What if somebody is away for the week?

I agree that it's not a very consumer friendly move.

Of course, you can download beforehand. But for most consumers, that don't have a backup strategy, when they accidentally delete their pdfs, loose their phone, burn their HDD/SSD, etc. They were expecting to re-download that pdf in case of failure. I expected to do that with my Humble Bundle, Bundle of Holding, DriveThruRPG, and Alchemy purchases. It's part of what they advertised and sold to you...

Recent events (even before this Alchemy thing happened) have made me reconsider that assumption. Bundle of Holding is easy (as they provide one or two zips per collection), Alchemy was 50+ pdfs, also easy. But DriveThruRPG (been a customer for 20 years) is already more difficult to wade through and something like Humble Bundle (~12 years) is a beast, as some comic book bundles are 30+GB... I don't even want to think about backing up my Steam collection (3666 games over 15 years).

7 days is insanely short for this, again reinforcing my suspicion that Alchemy contracting F-ed up. Not impacting myself, as I already downloaded everything before this announcement.

And let's be honest, what do you think will happen when customers missed the boat in the download window of their legitimately purchased product? You think many will buy another pdf copy from FL? I think not and if they are already shopping in the 'creative' aisle of the Internet, when they see a new FL product, how many that bought legitimately before, will now give the middle finger to FL. I suspect that in the end this will hurt FL way more then that it will help. And it hurts Alchemy because they didn't close this hole in contracting with FL and people will just now have way less trust in Alchemy as a product/store, because what has happened before will happen again...

 

[rokville]

Anyone know if I purchase the Humble Bundle now (post announcement) if I would still have access to the pdfs (until August 21st)?

 

[rokville]

By the way, it's probably worth highlighting the rest of the Alchemy message that includes their stance on the importance of including PDFS (see below) - which seems to generally align with what (our pal) @SlyFlourish espouses.

We can't say whether there was lack of clarity between Alchemy and Free League from the jump or the was a change of heart. But it seems to me that Alchemy has a customer friendly postion on this, in general.

This again highlights a critical risk with digital platforms and the risk is compounded by the fact that either of the two parties (publisher or distributor) could change their rules at any time.

ALCHEMY’S STANCE ON PDFs
Our team spends weeks hand-entering the complete contents from every book we convert into an Alchemy Universe. It’s our hope that a Universe can provide an even better way to access the contents of a book when using a digital device.
However, we strongly believe that our customers should be able to download a digital hard copy of everything they buy on Alchemy for two main reasons:

First, we are passionate about addressing what we think is a broken buy model in TTRPGs today, where consumers are forced to purchase a title multiple times in the format they wish to enjoy that content. Whether that’s a physical book, PDF, or VTT module. This is not a simple problem to solve, as books have material costs associated with them and VTT assets have many hours of development time invested by third-parties, like us. Being passionate about this issue, we’ve freely offered hundreds of thousands of Alchemy modules to creators to fulfill on crowdfunding campaigns and to offer alongside the purchase of their physical books. It’s been our hope to create arrangements with all of our Creator Partners, making this a standard for our platform and the VTT space holistically.
Second, we understand that cloud-based services like Alchemy, Roll 20, Demiplane, etc. aren’t guaranteed to exist forever. If the servers behind these services shut down, the investments you’ve made in content for those services inevitably go with them. Offering PDF downloads is one way we can provide an immutable value for your investment that can never be taken away from you.
These are sentiments that many of our Creator Partners also share, but every business is different, has external partnerships and obligations they must consider, and revenue models that take time to evolve.
Alchemy will continue to be led by innovation in the development of our platform and services, remain focused on modernizing the buy model in TTRPGs, and strive to be the best place to buy, build, stream, and play role-playing games online. We apologize for this sudden change and sincerely thank you for supporting our journey.
If you have any questions or need help getting your PDFs, please don’t hesitate to email us directly at help@alchemyrpg.com.

 

[Retreater]

That's a yuck from a company that I normally like. Also the quick turnaround on the Alien 2E.
But I didn't buy the Humble Bundle (mostly because I dislike the UI of Alchemy) and haven't invested in the Alien RPG.
We'll just say that both of these actions in quick succession give me a little caution of this company going forward.

Edit: And according to the email I received from Alchemy, this was 100% Free League's decision. Free League should address this with their customers. I just got an email from Free League asking me to back their Kickstarters, but no mention of why they're pulling PDFs. This is a lousy way to treat their fans.