How does pulling old edition pdfs benefit WotC?

[Kask]

Occam's razor tends to disagree with you.

That may be but, years of experience running a business that relies on customers upgrading to newer versions of the same product tell me differently.

Have you run a large company where rev relies on getting customers onto the latest product version?

 

[Voadam]

I don't know the overhead was more than the revenue, I just suspect it. But the premise of this thread was asking what harm could come of continuing the non-4e PDFs while pulling the 4e PDFs. I am offering one plausible explanation that does not involve a conspiracy theory or nefarious reasons or corporate disinterest or neglect. If it cost more money than it makes, I'd think most people would understand that as a decent reason for pulling it.

As I said it is a possibility. If the numbers come out that it costs more for them to track and deal with the incoming money than they make from them then it is a rational business decision to cut the whole thing.

I thank you for bringing it up, it is a rational possibility I had not considered.

It just does not jump out as a factually plausible scenario to me though, similar to my posited possible WotC rationale of 4e legal pdfs of non-new products draining off more profitable 4e physical sales. It is possible that the costs of selling existing pdfs are more than WotC makes from selling 4e pdfs, in which case it is a rational business decision to stop selling the 4e pdfs, but I find it factually unlikely on a gut level that this is the situation.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

The way to deal with laws you do not like is to go through the system to change those laws. It's not to just ignore them, and it sure isn't to go around encouraging people to break them.

Or you can go throw all their tea in the harbor.

 

[pawsplay]

I broke down and bought a lot of the old stuff a few months ago and just got around to putting it all on my hard drive last month. I am so glad. I would be sick with anger now if I had lost my chance. I'd probably have become an active pirate just out of spite.

 

[Mournblade94]

The way to deal with laws you do not like is to go through the system to change those laws. It's not to just ignore them, and it sure isn't to go around encouraging people to break them.

I won't need to pirate for old PDF's since I have hard copies of all the old sources.

If WOTC made old PDF's ONLY available through DDI subscription which many people don't need, hence forcing older D&D players to buy a subscription they do not need or want...

Then they deserve to have the PDF's pirated.

 

[Drkfathr1]

Which makes great sense for a private company to earn a modest profit. Such a plan does not satisfy the revenue demands of a large corporation with shareholders. The job of the company is to provide the best earnings per share for the stockholders as possible while putting out the best product they can to acheive this. D&D will never be by gamers for gamers so long as the shareholder is in charge.

Which is why the D&D brand is always going to go through cycles of new editions and major revisions and never seem to make enough profit to the corporation that owns it.

D&D needs to be a smaller endevour with fewer employees and a more modest release schedule, but unless WOTC spectacularly crashes, that's not likely to happen. And since most of WoTC's revenue is supposedly from MTG, it's even less likely.

And the fact that Hasbro is the parent company, and will shelf a brand rather than sell it off, it's probably never going to happen.

Shame really. The D&D brand is a good brand, capable of generating very good profits for whoever owns it, but unrealistic demands are going to constantly fuel the "scorched earth" policy.

 

[Cadfan]

The older products were probably pulled because WotC probably canceled their entire distribution license. Canceling it in its entirety was probably their only contractually permitted option. It probably wasn't due to any specific desire to remove older edition products.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Or you can go throw all their tea in the harbor.

... because living in a colony that is oppressed and overtaxed and fighting for your freedom is comparable to a company no longer selling stuff you like.

I wonder when the people who liked TacTiles are having their "throw the stuff i could sell on ebay for 350$ into the harbor" party?

I won't need to pirate for old PDF's since I have hard copies of all the old sources.

If WOTC made old PDF's ONLY available through DDI subscription which many people don't need, hence forcing older D&D players to buy a subscription they do not need or want...

Then they deserve to have the PDF's pirated.

Cool! You mean i´m allowed to pirate the upcoming KOTOR MMO because its not available as a standalone single player game but requires a subscription? Who would have thought.

 

[Kask]

So, in summary. The the only way pulling old edition PDFs possibly benefits WotC is that it keeps paying customers from spending on old editions and hopefully, they will spend on 4.0 instead.

Ahem. Don't use red text, please. We save that for needing to get someone's attention. Like now! ~ PCat

 

[Keefe the Thief]

In summary of what? And using red text gets you in trouble.