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

[stadi]

So much for being a Fan Favorite Publisher. I've never understood why people were voting for them. If you like the product, that not the same as liking the publisher.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

Yeah, a lot people purchased the bundle specifically for the PDFs, so does not look good for Free League. Tired of companies being anti-consumer.

 

[pete284]

Alchemy explicitly saying it's Free League who have changed their policies and asked them to remove them

 

[Cergorach]

Alchemy explicitly saying it's Free League who have changed their policies and asked them to remove them

Yes that's on FL.

What's on Alchemy is that FL even has this option on the Alchemy platform. They could of course pull product licenses, that should stop new sales, but shouldn't impact existing sales to customers. What if FL changes their policies again and ask Alchemy to completely pull their VTT products and take away access from customers that already bought those products...

 

[Retreater]

Yes that's on FL.

What's on Alchemy is that FL even has this option on the Alchemy platform. They could of course pull product licenses, that should stop new sales, but shouldn't impact existing sales to customers. What if FL changes their policies again and ask Alchemy to completely pull their VTT products and take away access from customers that already bought those products...

Can't any publisher do that to any VTT (or PDF site for that matter) at any time?
Like, Cubicle 7 could pull all their PDFs from Drive Thru (like when the Warhammer license expires).
Roll20 could pull the adventure modules they sold you for 5E if WotC told them.
You're not guaranteed permanent access to anything on any site.
As a librarian who focuses on digital collections, I've seen this. Publishers are very draconian to us. They charge per download or stream. They cap the number of downloads, expiring after a set number of views or time period (usually 1-2 years).
There's nothing you can do when the content is hosted on a platform that the publishers control, whether it's RPGs or literature.

 

[Morrus]

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...

What you're describing is a perpetual service, though. As long as customers can download the PDF and store it themselves, I don't feel like an expectation of perpetual hosting is realistic.

The short notice, yeah. That sucks. 6 months would be more reasonable so that folks can arrange to host their PDFs somewhere else (or locally, or whatever).

I mean, if they promised perpetual hosting of your files when you signed up, sure; but that would be an impossible thing for them to promise.

 

[Blue]

Reading about this elsewhere, it looks like Alchemy never had the rights to let you download the PDF, and Free League only caught it after the recent big humble bundle sale where Alchemy was basically selling everything in the Free League catalog on Alchemy for a total of $30. That's a heck of a lot of PDFs.

But "read it on the internet" =/= true. Anyone have anything that isn't a press release?

 

[Morrus]

Reading about this elsewhere, it looks like Alchemy never had the rights to let you download the PDF, and Free League only caught it after the recent big humble bundle sale where Alchemy was basically selling everything in the Free League catalog on Alchemy for a total of $30. That's a heck of a lot of PDFs.

But "read it on the internet" =/= true. Anyone have anything that isn't a press release?

Yikes! That’s totally different!

 

[Blue]

Yikes! That’s totally different!

Yeah. The Humble Bundle I can confirm - it's still open. $30 for 50 items totaling $1018 value. I've purchased a number of these games myself in the past year; this isn't a dead catalog nor superseded editions.

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

And the Humble Bundle is specifically for access to them on the Alchemy VTT.

What I don't have reliable information is if Alchemy had the rights to distribute the PDF. It could be that they didn't, so were just in the wrong. Or did but for a percentage of the sale price which right now is 97% off and perhaps legal if not fair, which I could see Free League making a move to protect themselves.

Free League is generally a pretty customer-centric company, and takes part in the Bit and Mortar program that Pelgrane Press started where if you buy a physical book from them or a participating FLGS (and it's free to participate), they will send you the PDF for free. They have a history of not making money-grubbing moves around their PDFs. This seems really out of character for them as a company which is why I think getting both sides of the story and not just Alchemy's press release is in order.

Free league

Bits and Mortar is a pro-retailer, pro-brick-and-mortar, pro-PDF, pro-ebook initiative backed by many tabletop game and fiction publishers.

www.bits-and-mortar.com

 

[rokville]

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

I got an answer from Alchemy:
Question:

If I buy the current Humble Bundle AT THIS POINT (post announcement), would I be able to download those PDFs via Alchemy until the cut off date (21 Aug)?

Response:

Yes, PDF downloads for all of the Free League titles will be available until next Wednesday 8/21, so if you purchase today, you will still have time to download.