Pirating RPGs. (And were not talking "arggg" pirate stuff here.)

[Jim Hague]

I think for a lot of guys this doesn't have anything to do with money. They think they are screwing the man, or the system or something. For the others, its about free stuff, if if they won't use it. Look at RPGNow, you can sell a pdf and get under a 100 downloads for a good game book of whatever type, put up for free and you'll get hundreds of downloads, or even over a thousand. People like free stuff.

It doesn't make it right, but Eden selling a PDF for $28 doesn't exactly make it a hard decision for these guys to pirate. I mean, if you are not going to sell pdfs at what the market normally bears, or what is reasonable for the industry, then don't give me a song and dance when it doesn't work out and how "you gave it a try". You didn't want it to work out and it didn't. cheers.

George and many other publishers have already stated that they'd much prefer that their customers get a hardcopy - either from them or the FLGS. Whether you agree with that or not, I don't see any reason why you should go bagging on Eden, nor a reason for you to take a snarky tone that implies that you don't see anything wrong with Eden losing money to some halfwit with a P2P setup.

 

[Crothian]

It doesn't make it right, but Eden selling a PDF for $28 doesn't exactly make it a hard decision for these guys to pirate. I mean, if you are not going to sell pdfs at what the market normally bears, or what is reasonable for the industry, then don't give me a song and dance when it doesn't work out and how "you gave it a try". You didn't want it to work out and it didn't. cheers.

Well, you can't really say what is reasonible for the industry or what the market bears for their PDF. There just are not that many full color, liscense based products out there for sale as PDF.

 

[reveal]

Who cares how much this stuff costs? Who cares whether it's DRM or not DRM? None of that matters. What matters is that a product a company produces is being stolen (i.e. downloaded without paying for it) by people. That's it. Is it lost sales? Maybe. Is it a reflection of Eden's business practices? No. That's like saying people with more expensive homes "shouldn't have bought that type of house" because it's more prone to burglary.

 

[Shining Dragon]

I think for a lot of guys this doesn't have anything to do with money. They think they are screwing the man, or the system or something. For the others, its about free stuff, if if they won't use it. Look at RPGNow, you can sell a pdf and get under a 100 downloads for a good game book of whatever type, put up for free and you'll get hundreds of downloads, or even over a thousand. People like free stuff.

It doesn't make it right, but Eden selling a PDF for $28 doesn't exactly make it a hard decision for these guys to pirate. I mean, if you are not going to sell pdfs at what the market normally bears, or what is reasonable for the industry, then don't give me a song and dance when it doesn't work out and how "you gave it a try". You didn't want it to work out and it didn't. cheers.

No matter what price Eden put on that PDF (say $14), it would have appeared on that p2p. Chances are that if there was no PDF version, once the hard copy was in the shops the same guy would have it scanned and up on the p2p. To these guys $1 is too much.

Blaming Eden for pricing it out of the market "forcing the freedom fighters of RPGs to reluctantly put it on a p2p to make it easily available to all the downtrodden gamers of the third world who otherwise would be denied their rights to game" is the kind of argument the pirate would be using to support their actions. And it would still be wrong.

 

[PJ-Mason]

George and many other publishers have already stated that they'd much prefer that their customers get a hardcopy - either from them or the FLGS. Whether you agree with that or not, I don't see any reason why you should go bagging on Eden, nor a reason for you to take a snarky tone that implies that you don't see anything wrong with Eden losing money to some halfwit with a P2P setup.

I'm not sure who you are talking to, but its not me. I said it doesn't make it all right. I was just pointing out that they have no interest in their pdf business actually succeedingly, which you yourself say they admit. Thats not bagging on people. Go pick a fight with someone else.

 

[PJ-Mason]

Well, you can't really say what is reasonible for the industry or what the market bears for their PDF. There just are not that many full color, liscense based products out there for sale as PDF.

I feel pretty safe in believing that most pdf buyers would blink at a $28 price tag, regardless how much color it had in it.

 

[philreed]

Look at RPGNow, you can sell a pdf and get under a 100 downloads for a good game book of whatever type, put up for free and you'll get hundreds of downloads, or even over a thousand. People like free stuff.

Yep. A free PDF I put up about a week ago has had about 150 downloads. A for sale PDF put up around the same time has sold 10 copies.

I really think a lot of the people downloading the free stuff don't even read it -- they collect PDFs.

 

[Wayside]

That said, would DRM really have addressed the situation? From what I understand, it's easier to create a DRM free PDF from a DRM PDF than it is to spend "the time and effort to go and remove 256+ pages worth of watermarking".

You're absolutely right that DRM wouldn't have made a difference, as protection schemes generally don't. DRM-removal programs have been around for a while; the process is already automated. The same is probably true of removing watermarks, so I doubt anybody went through all 256 pages and manually removed them.

If nothing else, they have managed to undo all the good work that had been done in persuading DTRPG and their clients to use watermarked PDFs in place of DRM. Which sucks for those of us who are honest.

Well, I have no qualms purchasing a DRM .pdf, because like I said above, I can remove the DRM quickly and painlessly. So I'm actually glad such software exists, otherwise there are a lot of things I just wouldn't buy due to the publishers' sometimes ridiculous expectations of content control (although I certainly don't think a watermark falls into that category--I'm a bit amazed at the price tag on it though).

They've almost certainly reduced the willingness of Eden to produce further PDF products, and perhaps to produce products at all. And who knows how many other companies are going to make the same decision?

This also doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the pirated RPG material you can find online actually isn't .pdf originals; it's hardcopy books people scanned and turned into .pdfs. Did Eden release .pdf versions of Buffy or Angel? Because they're out there on p2p networks.

 

[Shining Dragon]

I'm not sure who you are talking to, but its not me. I said it doesn't make it all right. I was just pointing out that they have no interest in their pdf business actually succeedingly, which you yourself say they admit. Thats not bagging on people. Go pick a fight with someone else.

Whether or not Eden has any interest in their pdf business doesn't give anyone the right to make available their property for free.

It doesn't make it right, but Eden selling a PDF for $28 doesn't exactly make it a hard decision for these guys to pirate. I mean, if you are not going to sell pdfs at what the market normally bears, or what is reasonable for the industry, then don't give me a song and dance when it doesn't work out and how "you gave it a try". You didn't want it to work out and it didn't.

I believe this is the part of your original post that is annoying people. It implies that Eden's pricing is unreasonable thus the pirates, who only want what is fair for the people, have every right to their actions.

 

[PJ-Mason]

No matter what price Eden put on that PDF (say $14), it would have appeared on that p2p. Chances are that if there was no PDF version, once the hard copy was in the shops the same guy would have it scanned and up on the p2p. To these guys $1 is too much.

Which is why i said it wasn't about money for a lot of these guys and the rest just like free stuff and don't care about the particulars.

Blaming Eden for pricing it out of the market "forcing the freedom fighters of RPGs to reluctantly put it on a p2p to make it easily available to all the downtrodden gamers of the third world who otherwise would be denied their rights to game" is the kind of argument the pirate would be using to support their actions. And it would still be wrong.

Okay, i'll respond one last time to these posts that are stuffing words into my mouth. I didn't call them freedom fighters, you have. I didn't AT ALL say what they were doing was right. I pay for my PDFs, bub.

You ALL need to stuff that self-righteous flame back where it came from. Thank you.