How does pulling old edition pdfs benefit WotC?

[Korgoth]

Planned rules/supplement/revise/repeat is the current model but that can't last much longer. Either the revisions aren't radical enough to warrant change in the eyes of the consumer or they go way too far and split the player base.

Plus the company stands to its customers like a virus to its host. It just keeps draining their resources until they're wiped out and then moves on to the next one. I don't think such a scorched earth policy has ever been good business in any industry.

It seems to me that with the traditional model (selling core books, supplements, adventures and accessories), there are two ways you can go: one is the Virus model above, where you get a small, solid group of hosts and bleed them dry over a period of years until they can't take it anymore and then you get another group of them, wash/rinse/repeat. The other is what you might call the Gygax model, which is to produce a core set of rules so good that it will only require small revision over time, and all revisions are cross compatible. To your core group of early adopters you sell a bunch of adventures, magazines and the occasional rules supplement. But in the main you focus on taking your excellent core product and constantly expanding your customer base by bringing in throngs of new customers.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It seems to me that with the traditional model (selling core books, supplements, adventures and accessories), there are two ways you can go: one is the Virus model above, where you get a small, solid group of hosts and bleed them dry over a period of years until they can't take it anymore and then you get another group of them, wash/rinse/repeat. The other is what you might call the Gygax model, which is to produce a core set of rules so good that it will only require small revision over time, and all revisions are cross compatible. To your core group of early adopters you sell a bunch of adventures, magazines and the occasional rules supplement. But in the main you focus on taking your excellent core product and constantly expanding your customer base by bringing in throngs of new customers.

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.

 

[Mistwell]

Hi,

Is it a huge stretch to think that it went something like this?

Corp Man1: We have to pull the PDF of our books they are being pirated like crazy.

Corp Man2: How about all those old PDFs?

Corp Man2: Aw crap, you know what I have 10 reports I have to complete today, just pull them all.

No conspiracy, no cost analysis, just plain out It is easier to yank everything and figure something out later.

RK

I suspect it was even simpler than that, and went like this:

Corp Man1: We have to pull the PDF of our books they are being pirated like crazy.

Corp Man2: OK

This idea that the non-4e PDFs were selling in numbers large enough to even get a comment seems flawed to me. Everyone assumes they were considered, and there is some stated reason for it. My bet is they were not even considered, because they were a rounding error in the books to begin with, and it's just easier to say "pull all PDFs as of X date".

In fact, I suspect the total number of people who were actively buying non-4e WOTC PDF books at the time the decision was made is roughly close to the number of people posting here complaining about the pulling of the non-4e WOTC PDF books.

 

[billd91]

So nobody in accounting ever has to receive the money, enter it into records, balance it, deal with it in reports, etc? Nobody in marketing ever has to list it in products currently internally generating revenue? Nobody in tech support or customer service ever has to take a call on those products to tell that person they need to contact the distributor? No electricity needs to be supplied to those people? No office space needs to be rented for them? No janitorial service for them? They don't get paid? They have no benefits? There is no Human Resources support for them? No legal fees ever attached to them or those products?

Let's not exaggerate too much here. Most of that structure is already in place and the PDFs, once created and organized, probably add very little, incrementally, to all of that overhead corporate structure.

 

[Mistwell]

Let's not exaggerate too much here. Most of that structure is already in place and the PDFs, once created and organized, probably add very little, incrementally, to all of that overhead corporate structure.

No overhead is "already in place". That's the entire concept of overhead. It always gets allocated on a percentage basis to all products, because otherwise you could say for ANY individual product that it was "already in place".

Yes, it's incremental. And yes, it is probably "very little" relative to a lot of other active products. But relative to the revenue generated by the sale of non-4e PDF products at the time the decision was made? I am betting the overhead exceeded the revenue. It made sense when you had 4e PDF sales in there as well, but once you take those away, keeping the overhead for PDF sales through distributors was probably more than the revenue generated from those sales of non-4e PDFs.

 

[Voadam]

I am betting the overhead exceeded the revenue. It made sense when you had 4e PDF sales in there as well, but once you take those away, keeping the overhead for PDF sales through distributors was probably more than the revenue generated from those sales of non-4e PDFs.

Its a possibility that overhead exceeded revenue, but none of us have any numbers to say that is probably the case. It was apparently enough profit when there were only old edition pdfs for sale before the 3e ones went up so unless other factors changed, the existence of current edition pdfs did not carry the whole program.

Also the new 4e pdfs have overhead that the old edition ones and existing 4e ones do not. Part of the 4e pdf overhead would be the creation of the new files from the print proof ones, uploading them to rpgnow, coordinating the new products with rpgnow, etc. Once WotC decides not to create new pdfs of current products that portion of PDF overhead costs goes away.

 

[Mistwell]

Its a possibility that overhead exceeded revenue, but none of us have any numbers to say that is probably the case. It was apparently enough profit when there were only old edition pdfs for sale before the 3e ones went up so unless other factors changed, the existence of current edition pdfs did not carry the whole program.

Also the new 4e pdfs have overhead that the old edition ones and existing 4e ones do not. Part of the 4e pdf overhead would be the creation of the new files from the print proof ones, uploading them to rpgnow, coordinating the new products with rpgnow, etc. Once WotC decides not to create new pdfs of current products that portion of PDF overhead costs goes away.

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.

 

[Kask]

How does pulling old edition pdfs benefit WotC?

Simple. The total # of players playing 1st - 3.x is much greater than those playing 4.0

WotC wants new players to be unable to purchase the older editions and only buy 4.0.

WotC isn't going to reissue older games in PDF format & a proprietary, online DRM version isn't going to cut it.

 

[Mistwell]

Simple. The total # of players playing 1st - 3.x is much greater than those playing 4.0

WotC wants new players to be unable to purchase the older editions and only buy 4.0.

WotC isn't going to reissue older games in PDF format & a proprietary, online DRM version isn't going to cut it.

Occam's razor tends to disagree with you. The theories that depend on the least number of assumptions are 1) Stated reason - they want to decrease piracy, 2) Laziness - they just don't want to deal with splitting out non-4e from 4e PDFs when they can just pull all PDFs, 3) The non-4e PDFs were not profitable enough on their own to justify the overhead on maintaining it.

You're essentially assuming a conspiracy theory, and a weak one at that (because not being able to buy PDFs of 3e, 2e, 1e, and OD&D material will do extraordinarily little to get those people to play 4e).

 

[Kask]

Only if you've never run a business and seen how much cost is involved with the overhead of selling any kind of product, even if it is just data.

Hmm, I've run an international S/W company with over $150,000,000/year sales. When we had titles that resellers only sold & we had no enduser contact, it was called a profit center, not a cost center.

Perhaps you'd like to detail to me your theories on how the older PDFs were a cost center? I'll pit my business experience against your. Deal?