How does pulling old edition pdfs benefit WotC?

[Voadam]

I disagree, sort of- I think WOTC see 3e as direct competition. Their giving a candid answer here - "We pulled the old PDF's to dispose of a competing game system" - would only anger people. They dont care about supporting the game, but they do care about making it a less attractive option. It is their #1 competitor in a sense; having low priced PDf's for sale in a depression must have seemed like a poor choice to them.

The 3e pdfs on rpgnow were not low priced. They were full cover price (so generally $20-$35) versus the 30% off cover price 4e ones.

Only the 2e and older pdfs were cheap.

 

[Mistwell]

Not economically feasible to offer just the older books? Hmmm. How so? Does it cost WotC money to have them up for sale on WotC?

Yes, it does. I went through overhead costs earlier in this thread, extensively.

 

[Mistwell]

Any digital format is open to piracy. There has not been a single electronic format that has not been cracked, and cracked quickly. If WotC releases anything in any digital format that even resembles a book, it will be turned into illegal PDFs in no time flat. Even if it is not in the form of the book (DDI character builder for example) it will stil be distributed in a cracked format for free (See the DDI character builder for example again)

Apple through ITUNES handled it pretty well for many years. Yes, it was crackable, and yet 95% of people didn't know much about that or didn't bother with it. Overall, the security and piracy prevention portion of what they did was relatively successful. I know of some software that requires a dongle that hasn't been cracked (I am sure it COULD be cracked, but so far it hasn't been). DRM can work to decrease piracy.

 

[Mistwell]

Why do you think they only offered old edition pdfs at paizo? Why no 4e or 3e pdfs (outside of 3e dragon and dungeon pdf magazines) there when they were selling pdfs through paizo?

This seems to suggest they thought it was economically feasible to do so.

Yes. I can be economically feasible for Paizo, and not economically feasible for WOTC. Paizo is a company built to run on lower overhead for online sales.

Also they have not said they will offer old edition stuff later. They have only said they are actively exploring options to do so.

I didn't say I know they will. I said they are trying to. Which is how I read "actively exploring options". And I said if they succeed at doing that, most of these points are not correct.

 

[TheFindus]

My guess is that they pulled the pdf versions of older adventures because they were not making enough money on them and because they want to hurt Paizo. With Pathfinder they might think that Paizo has become a competitor for them. I mean, they gave the industry the OGL and now Paizo has the right to continue this line, turn it into their own, publish core rulebooks (which will sell decently, I guess) and take hold of those who WotC wanted to convince to play 4e to begin with. That is why I believe Paizo was likely not to go go with 4e with any license that was more strict than the OGL. As Eric Mona said in one of the more recent Green Ronin interviews: Why should the company have to rely on the goodwill of another company (WotC) if they can publish material based on the OGL, over which they have full control, 8+ years of design experience and an already existing fan base?

So, Paizo is a competitor of WotC now, as 3.5 seems to be a competitor of 4e. And since it is easy to transfer old modules into 3.5 (again, with 8+ years of experience with the 3.5 system), pulling old modules probably hurts Paizo, because old modules support their product, not WotCs 4e.


My guess is that WotC will eventually publish old modules with the 4e rules for cheap and find a different way to sell digital content through DDI. And a lot of people will be ticked. And I will not understand why.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Apple through ITUNES handled it pretty well for many years. Yes, it was crackable, and yet 95% of people didn't know much about that or didn't bother with it. Overall, the security and piracy prevention portion of what they did was relatively successful. I know of some software that requires a dongle that hasn't been cracked (I am sure it COULD be cracked, but so far it hasn't been). DRM can work to decrease piracy.

Well we seem to fundamentally disagree. Apple was successful not because of DRM but because it made the product available legally. Currently iTunes is moving away from DRM as well since people don't want it. As for iTunes DRM slowing piracy it did no such thing, having the music easily available and at a reasonable price is what fought piracy. Also the songs were not being converted from iTunes as there are far easier ways to make mp3s.

As for dongle DRM, it may work somewhat but it is an unreasonable option for book sales. If PDFs arn't profitable as you say, then manufacturing and selling dongles will be even more so. Dongles basically exist only for very expensive software at this point. And by the way I know from experience that AutoCAD tried dongles at one point, but that same software was cracked and available from pirates.

 

[rogueattorney]

Re: itunes. My impression was that itunes wasn't pirated much because it's just plain easier to simply download it from itunes for $0.99 per song (often less if you d/l full albums at a time). It's just easier for me to download the new High On Fire song legally than for me to pirate it. But for bands not offering their music on itunes, AC/DC, for example... you go out and buy the album in the store, or you pirate it.

Old D&D products are now like AC/DC's music... if used record stores were the only place you could find AC/DC albums, that is. The difference is, of course that I can get pretty much any AC/DC album I'd ever want from Wal Mart for $9.99. The same can't be said of OOP D&D.

That's the secret of beating piracy. Get a distribution system that's easy to use (that was one of napster's early successes - it was a lot easier to use than "legitamate" distribution points), get a product that people want to pay for, and get a price that people will pay for it.

Wizards could offer up all of these things...
A nicely indexed interface, where finding exactly what you want is easy.
Scrubbed up, complete, OCR'ed .pdf's (or equivalent alternative format).
Priced to sell.

I'm just not going to hold my breath on any of it. I think the OOP downloads are gone for good.

Long live the OGL.

 

[TheFindus]

I am not so sure that a roleplaying book store aquivalent to ITunes would actually work. Over here in Germany, prices for hardcover 4e products are cheap. You pay less than 16 euros for most books. That is less than I pay to go to the movies with my wife, including popcorn and soda. How much lower can you go pricewise? And how much are players and DMs willing to pay for a pdf version of a book anyways? I do not know. If the "piracy" ratio of 10:1 is halfway accurate, it seems that a lot of people are willing to download the pdfs illegally because they can do so easily, no matter what the cost of the legal product. They even seem to download stuff that costs 3$ or less. It is as if they think that life owes them a treasure of some sort.
So my guess is that a store like ITunes for roleplaying stuff will not work the same way for WotC than it did for Apple. Also because songs are different from roleplaying books.

And I would bet my left hand that it will not stop copyright infringements.

 

[haakon1]

I disagree, sort of- I think WOTC see 3e as direct competition. Their giving a candid answer here - "We pulled the old PDF's to dispose of a competing game system" - would only anger people. They dont care about supporting the game, but they do care about making it a less attractive option. It is their #1 competitor in a sense; having low priced PDf's for sale in a depression must have seemed like a poor choice to them.

I agree. From two analogous industries I understand, the biggest direct competition to an "upgrade" in business software or educational textbooks is often customers deciding the old edition is good enough. That's why WOTC wants to get us on a subscription model (compare WoW getting $15 a month versus other games selling each edition for $50 each and you see the DDI sugarplum ferries in WOTC's accountant's dreams) or failing that, churn us through new editions as quickly as possible -- which means trying to make old editions obsolete (let's make sure Madden 2009 can be played online, but Madden 2008 can't, that sort of thing). If only old books would self-destruct faster, WOTC would be happier . . .

 

[haakon1]

Paizo is a competitor of WotC now, as 3.5 seems to be a competitor of 4e. And since it is easy to transfer old modules into 3.5 (again, with 8+ years of experience with the 3.5 system), pulling old modules probably hurts Paizo, because old modules support their product, not WotCs 4e.

That may be WOTC's logic. But as has been pointed out, the older materials contain lots of source and setting materials that could be used with 4e. So, what's intended to hurt Paizo also has a (minor) negative effect on the enjoyment of 4e players (read: actual customer base for WOTC).

My guess is that WotC will eventually publish old modules with the 4e rules for cheap and find a different way to sell digital content through DDI. And a lot of people will be ticked. And I will not understand why.

Old modules with 4e rules, but no more old materials with original text? Yes, I would be pissed about that. It would be like selling only the "Greedo shot first" versions of Star Wars, not the original intent of the artist -- only worse, since it's not just an artist changing his mind and retouching his own work, but a hack messing up the work of an earlier artist (Gygax, for example).