How Has the WotC PDF Situation Affected You REALLY?

[Shadowsong666]

i am not able to get the gaming fix i want. pdf rpg books.

now that i am robbed of going easy legal way, i am forced to buy a book, scan it and use it on my netbook. as humans are lazy i might consider just downloading a pdf illegaly as it saves me time and allows me to get the stuff without the need to buy a book and scan it myself. Money isn't the matter here.

So will i go and download illegal pdf files? I might consider that, yes. Maybe.
Do i think it is ok to do it? no, but i actually feel robbed of the right path...
Will i share files with the internet? No, but i sure will share it with my friends.

 

[S'mon]

I had recently started buying TSR-era PDFs of stuff that's hard to get on ebay. That has been stopped; so I went back to buying old Judges' Guild stuff instead.

 

[Rechan]

The option(s) I would have chosen aren't on the list.

One of which is:

Increasing venom towards WotC on the internet is going to irritate me more.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I divide my time between two countries, Singapore and Australia. My games are in Australia but typically I do my prep work in Singapore.

I keep all of my books, however, in Australia but have the PDFs on my portable hard drive so I can call them up wherever I am (I like working on planes where I can't get DDi yet as even Emirates has quite got around to installing full WiFi on their fleet). I have been buying WotC PDFs since they were first released as copies of old 1E and 2E products and was delighted with the decision to also sell 4E in PDF.

This decision by WotC means that I don't have a legal avenue to get my PDF copies. I will still buy the hard copies (I like books!) but I will also still get the PDFs so that I can access them when I am away from Oz. Does that mean I plan to access pirate copies? Yes it does. If WotC even changes its policy I will buy the books again even if I have pirate copies but, until they do change their policy, I will just take the pirate copies.

I've been a customer of TSR/WotC for about 30 years. I'm the CEO of a couple of successful businesses. Those two perspectives combined make me think that WotC have been very foolish here. The absence of real leadership is telling and the absence of underlying logic is also damning. They have a situation where their anti-piracy measures are demonstrated to work and yet they go and do this.

I will close with a quote from Forrest Gump: "Stupid is as stupid does."

 

[Treebore]

I wrote an e-mail.

I cannot buy many old PDF's that I have kept putting off buying due to having better things to spend my money on, like food and gas.


We couldn't get a PDF of Temple of the Frog tonight so we could have good maps to use on Maptools for our Arneson Memorial Game, fortunately our personal scanned version work well enough. The modules been a lot of fun so far too.

It has stopped my growing interest in 4E cold in its tracks. To the point that I have cancelled plans with my kids to go to the May 23rd game day, and to not buy any more 4E stuff until the PDF's are back up for sale.

Hopefully WOTC will make the PDF's available for sale again, at reasonable prices, before I lose all interest in things D&D.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

It's spawned a bunch of threads which I find personally useless on my favorite D&D message board, thus pushing potentially interesting threads off the front page.

(In other words: not a whole lot.)

Balancing that, I've found it to be entertaining as hell.

 

[JeffB]

As a gamer it limits my ability to get OOP D&D material. That's about it.


Your poll, now that it is up, doesn't really cover my perspective since it

This is my feeling exactly. Although I enjoy 4E, I don't buy supplemental WOTC 4E products, PDF or print (so far). All of my PDFs are OOP materials, Simulacrum materials, and the occasional 4E PDF from Goodman.

 

[Grazzt]

I had a lot of good laughs this week. WotC's PR department fumbles more than a virgin trying to unhook his first bra.

Well said. And agreed.

 

[scruffygrognard]

The ONLY business I've been giving WotC lately has been my purchase of back-catalog pdfs from Paizo.

Now that they've done this, they've completely lost me as a customer. Way to go Wotc!

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Not at all.

I bought a few PDFs for Alternity, but I don't think I've ever bought a WotC PDF since. I buy the hard copies instead. I don't think WotC 3.x and 4e PDFs were legally available long enough to make that an option for me. My first reaction on hearing this news was "oh, the rumors of WotC selling PDFs were true!"

I do buy some third party PDFs.