Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Million Dollar TTRPG Crowdfunders
Most Anticipated Tabletop RPGs Of The Year
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Humble Bundle Pros and Cons for the Publisher
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 9865757" data-attributes="member: 725"><p><u>Not a publisher.</u></p><p></p><p>See it as additional exposure, piracy mitigation, and additional revenue.</p><p></p><p>The example mentioned: Shadowrun PDFs, I already own all the SR 1/2/3 edition books, i bought pdf bundles for these, but for SR 4/5/6, I wouldn't be buying these at MSRP at all, as I have very little interest in this era of SR world. So I see this as additional revenue for the publisher they wouldn't normally have. It also worked as additional exposure, sudden interest in SR, which resulted in a sale of the original Anarchy 1.0 and probably Anarchy 2.0 PDFs. There's also piracy, when you can buy 90 PDFs for €23,15, do you even bother looking for pirated copies when you have that money?</p><p></p><p>With the WFRP4e bundles I moved from focusing on 2e to 4e, but eventually bought all the FVTT WFRP4e modules, something similar happened with the Dark Eye...</p><p></p><p>Quinns from Shut Up and Sit Down did a wonderful review of Spire: The City Must Fall, I thought it very interesting, but didn't really see a realistic opportunity to ever play that. A short while later there was a Bundle of Holding for it and bought it, it's now in my 'bag of tricks' to play as a one-shot in the future, exposing more people to it. If successful, we might play it more, leading to some to buy the physical rulebook, and me buying the rest of the PDFs that weren't in the Bundle. That exposure also got me buying the Heart Bundle of Holding, which I never would have considered before.</p><p></p><p>I do think it has very difficult to easily quantify benefits to the publishers, but some of those benefits might be years down the line.</p><p></p><p>The danger with these kinds of bundles is the customer's perceived value of your IP and (pdf) RPGs in general. Something similar is happening with computer games where cheap bundles (and deep Steam sales) are devaluing computer games. I'm for example at the point that I buy virtually no computer games at full price anymore, with a library of almost 4,000 Steam games... I'm starting to get in a similar situation with Bundles of Holding (250+), each ranging from a few to dozens of books per bundle. That's not even including the Humble Bundles with RPG books. It might be even worse then piracy from a publisher's perspective, because with piracy the pirate always has that feeling of illegality around the activity (some are more comfortable with that then others), but with bundles everything is legal and people paid penuts for the product.</p><p></p><p>I still sometimes buy (close) to full price PDFs, because I 'need' them at time X or because I still have a few holes in my 'bundle' collection... I spent a pretty penny on PF2e Core books, when half a year later they showed up in a Bundle I bought anyway due to the other content in it... I do tell myself that at the time I bought those books to evaluate PF2e as an alternative to D&D5e 2024. But it does sting a bit...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cergorach, post: 9865757, member: 725"] [U]Not a publisher.[/U] See it as additional exposure, piracy mitigation, and additional revenue. The example mentioned: Shadowrun PDFs, I already own all the SR 1/2/3 edition books, i bought pdf bundles for these, but for SR 4/5/6, I wouldn't be buying these at MSRP at all, as I have very little interest in this era of SR world. So I see this as additional revenue for the publisher they wouldn't normally have. It also worked as additional exposure, sudden interest in SR, which resulted in a sale of the original Anarchy 1.0 and probably Anarchy 2.0 PDFs. There's also piracy, when you can buy 90 PDFs for €23,15, do you even bother looking for pirated copies when you have that money? With the WFRP4e bundles I moved from focusing on 2e to 4e, but eventually bought all the FVTT WFRP4e modules, something similar happened with the Dark Eye... Quinns from Shut Up and Sit Down did a wonderful review of Spire: The City Must Fall, I thought it very interesting, but didn't really see a realistic opportunity to ever play that. A short while later there was a Bundle of Holding for it and bought it, it's now in my 'bag of tricks' to play as a one-shot in the future, exposing more people to it. If successful, we might play it more, leading to some to buy the physical rulebook, and me buying the rest of the PDFs that weren't in the Bundle. That exposure also got me buying the Heart Bundle of Holding, which I never would have considered before. I do think it has very difficult to easily quantify benefits to the publishers, but some of those benefits might be years down the line. The danger with these kinds of bundles is the customer's perceived value of your IP and (pdf) RPGs in general. Something similar is happening with computer games where cheap bundles (and deep Steam sales) are devaluing computer games. I'm for example at the point that I buy virtually no computer games at full price anymore, with a library of almost 4,000 Steam games... I'm starting to get in a similar situation with Bundles of Holding (250+), each ranging from a few to dozens of books per bundle. That's not even including the Humble Bundles with RPG books. It might be even worse then piracy from a publisher's perspective, because with piracy the pirate always has that feeling of illegality around the activity (some are more comfortable with that then others), but with bundles everything is legal and people paid penuts for the product. I still sometimes buy (close) to full price PDFs, because I 'need' them at time X or because I still have a few holes in my 'bundle' collection... I spent a pretty penny on PF2e Core books, when half a year later they showed up in a Bundle I bought anyway due to the other content in it... I do tell myself that at the time I bought those books to evaluate PF2e as an alternative to D&D5e 2024. But it does sting a bit... [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Humble Bundle Pros and Cons for the Publisher
Top