Is it OK to distribute others' OGC for free?
- Thread starter Halivar
- Start date
philreed said:
So your argument is analogous to: "Buy at full price from your FLGS instead of discount from Amazon because it supports the FLGS and keeps it in business and thats better for the gaming community."
Take these three conditions:
1) OGC stripping became prevalent.
2) This occured shortly after products were published.
3) This is offered for free.
If all three of these conditions were met then I do think it would hurt sales and hurt the business and therefore should not be done. However, I do not think all three of these conditions will ever occur. What Cerg. is doing doesn't apply because the amount of time is too long after publication and he is one person doing a few products. There have been neer 100% OGC products out for a long time and there have been many people proposing different schemes for posting the OGC for free on the web. Yet, none of these have become prevalent enough or been posted quickly enough to adversly effect sales.
Unless you have a concrete example where all 3 have occured, the question is moot because OGC is just too difficult to pull out and post in a complete and timely fashion.
Yair
Community Supporter
Why 2? philreed's data (just a few pages back) clearly indicates that products earnings for pdfs don't substantially decrease for years. 1 & 3 are hence enough to produce lost sales and revenues for the publisher.smetzger said:
And philreed's data also shows that offering a stripped ogc in RTF brought sales of actual product to zero. Zero. And that without 1; just 3 is enough.
These are facts, not speculations, not thoughts. Just facts.
I think SRDs should* be limited to products that have added non-OGC value, much like the PHB includes experience and character creation rules, is a reference book so needs to be of good quality, and so on. When they are not, and especially for crunch-rich electronic products, they will hurt the publisher and I just don't see that improving the gaming options available to me in any way.
* By this I *don't* mean legally and I *don't* mean morally; I just mean it practically - it terms of what benefits the gaming community.
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wingsandsword
Legend
Now, does WotC still sell Monster Manuals? Does Core Book III still sell? I think it does, despite 90%+ of it's content being in the SRD's, doesphilreed said:
Not every gamer is online, despite the time we may spend on d20/OGL message boards, looking at new .pdf's and seeing this side of the gaming world, there are plenty of gamers who, while online, don't go to gaming message boards and go download even legal things online (one player in my game had to be introduced to the SRD's by me a few months ago, even though she's played 3e since the beginning, because she just never paid attention to anything besides what WotC put out on the store shelves). Then there are the gamers who are practically never online at all. What percent of the market who might consider buying Unearthed Arcana at their FLGS even would even know that a Unearthed Arcana SRD is out there, and what percent of that would take the free SRD instead of buying a book (that's probably cheaper than printing out the book in color, and is easier to reference). And what percent of those people haven't already bought UA in the 7 or 8 months it's been out.
Everything I've heard about the retail end of gaming is that sales of books fall off sharply after their first 90 days or so, and by 6 months its down to a trickle. So you have the people who are interested in buying the book 6+ months after it came out, who are devoted enough to d20/3e gaming to be online and savvy to the SRD's and d20 message boards, and will download the UA SRD instead of buying a hardcopy. People who are fans enough to be in the fairly devoted minority who regularly read sites like ENWorld and would even know that a 3rd party OGC document was out, but didn't buy the book they wanted within a half-year of it's release. That seems like a pretty small sales loss, which the OGC document release increases the loyalty and enjoyment of the fans who already bought the document, keeping them as fans and thus likely to go back for future books and even to 3rd party works based off of the original.
I'm not getting into .pdf's or other fringe elements (yes, d20 .pdf suppliments are a fringe element of the gaming market), I'm talking just about Unearthed Arcana here, a WotC hardcover released through mainstream channels into both FLGS and mass-market bookstores.
pennywiz
First Post
Companies have to realize that they need to add more than just OGC to their product if they wish to have a sustainable business model, whether that comes in the form of closed content or functionality that cannot be easily duplicated. I believe this is one of the reasons why hardcover rpg book publishing has been so popular, for example. A good portion of the market will see that as added value that can't be duplicated by an electronic medium, even if it is free, and even having a significant edge over soft cover products. Electronic products with a great deal of closed content, in addition to whatever OGC they might have, and a good number of cutting edge electronic features are a much safer product model than those with mostly OGC and no features.
Publishing predominantly open content, simple PDF products, especially the smaller ones, might be an unsustainable business model that no amount of begging the public for quarter can uphold. Sure you can churn them out quickly, every time you have a quick idea, but if someone wants to legally collect that OGC into a compilation you have no valid, legal defense. Even if garnering the good graces of your fans fends off temptation for 99.9% of those who might be considering such a compilation, you just aren't safe. If the compiler also adds a significant number of electronic features that makes the compilation a more functional product they might even be seen by the market as providing a valuable service that the originator has neglected to provide. If you're already on the edge of failure, you might wish to reassess your options. Like the baloon vendor in a porcupine colony, it might be only a matter of time. Don't shoot the messenger, I'm only discussing this as a supposition and have no personal intention of making such a compilation myself.
Publishing predominantly open content, simple PDF products, especially the smaller ones, might be an unsustainable business model that no amount of begging the public for quarter can uphold. Sure you can churn them out quickly, every time you have a quick idea, but if someone wants to legally collect that OGC into a compilation you have no valid, legal defense. Even if garnering the good graces of your fans fends off temptation for 99.9% of those who might be considering such a compilation, you just aren't safe. If the compiler also adds a significant number of electronic features that makes the compilation a more functional product they might even be seen by the market as providing a valuable service that the originator has neglected to provide. If you're already on the edge of failure, you might wish to reassess your options. Like the baloon vendor in a porcupine colony, it might be only a matter of time. Don't shoot the messenger, I'm only discussing this as a supposition and have no personal intention of making such a compilation myself.
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