D&D 4E Posssibility of 4E pdf's being leaked?

[Sitara]

Discliamer: I in no way endorse stealing, pirating or anything of the sort. This thread is simply for conjecture

In this day and age piracy and leaks of intellectual property have become sad facts of life. Half Life 2 is a prime example, as are the harry potter books.Now dndn 4E is a much bigger event that HL2 was; now I'm sure that WOTC has taken all precautions, but so did Rowling and Valve.

Do you think there is a chance that the 4E documents will be leaked prior to the global release? By leak I mean pdf leaks via the internet p2p networks. The leaks could consititute playtest documents, bits and pieces of the rulebooks, to the entirety of the rulebooks in general.

IMO the most vulnerable time for leaks of the entire documents are when they have been comlied and sent for publication; since its usually the softcopy of the file thats sent to a third party for publication, there is the possibility of any number of leaks right there.

While I am sure every precaution is being taken, and a leak will not occur (nor should it! Peoples livlihood we are talking about here) how much of a possibility of one happening do you think is there?

 

[Bagpuss]

Now dndn 4E is a much bigger event that HL2 was

I suspect that isn't true.

 

[Sitara]

Yes it is. the total sales volume of all 4E products over the lifetime of the edition will eventually far far outstrip HL2 sales volume. Furthermore you have to figure in the revenue from branching products such as 4E computer games, comics, movies, etc etc.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Yes it is. the total sales volume of all 4E products over the lifetime of the edition will eventually far far outstrip HL2 sales volume. Furthermore you have to figure in the revenue from branching products such as 4E computer games, comics, movies, etc etc.

Maybe, but that more leisurely-paced and long-lived profit stream means you're not as badly hosed if the game's leaked one week before publication.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

The PDF files are going to be cleverly secured surely? The sort of thing that's annoying to P2P or needs a crack etc..

Adobe has got pretty good at things like this.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I don't expect it.

For HL2: It's a computer game, meaning the data is digital all the way and there are many sources that can leak easily (i.e. Steam, from a CD, copy of the game on HD) - which were on PCs all over the world for review or similar purposes. I think that was also a big factor, after all, many people want reviews of games that come out simultaneously with the game, meaning that the magazines often have early copies.

Harry Potter... well, it's not easy to control such a huge number of books and a much larger community of fans and enthusiasts.

For D&D: PDFs are only for intern use (at least right after the start), unless they intend to release PDFs simultaneously with 4E - I rather expect they'll come later or with the DDI, i.e. a completely Wizards-controlled system.

Furthermore, I suspect that Wizards is a wee bit smaller than Harry Potter, and they don't have as easily digitalized data as HL2 - unless they're deep in the interns or a part of the printing process.

However, these persons are easily identified and will most probably be deterred by fines.

This only leaves playtesters and people who got the book early (like R&C) - well, in this case, that's nothing new.

And don't forget the type of D&D players: I suspect that HL2 players are more computer-enthusiastic than D&D players. After all, many of us prefer print versions, meaning there are less people who want to feed that stuff into the torrents.

Finally, D&D 4E consists of books with heavy layout and use of illustrations. It's much harder to digitalize that than a Harry Potter.

Further point: Wizards is sometimes pretty heavy-handed in dealing with such leaks. Read here. Basically a MtG playtest card got leaked... and Wizards sued a moderator (who posted the leaked cards) on a fan-messageboard to get find the leaks. I guess after that event, the guys at WotC are a bit more careful about leaks of any sort.

So, after considering these points, I think the chance for a truly pirated leak is quite low, though I fully suspect at least a leak as in "in my FLGS a week before release date". Or perhaps a playtest leak (though that's much less probable, but still more probable than a piracy leak).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Sitara]

Aren't pdf's sent to printers for publishing, and (AFAIK) isn't publishing is outsourced/third parties? AFAIK WOTC doesn't own their own publishing rig (like say, mongoose now does)

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Aren't pdf's sent to printers for publishing, and (AFAIK) isn't publishing is outsourced/third parties? AFAIK WOTC doesn't own their own publishing rig (like say, mongoose now does)

If the publisher leaked something, they'd never print anything again. Who would work with them after an obvious breach of trust, not to mention the inevitable lawsuit, fines and witch-hunt within the company to see who gets fired.

 

[Baumi]

Even if it will be available before the start, I don't think the sales will be hurt. PDF-use is still very minor compared to the real book and WOTC will give us the Rules for free anyway (OGL) which didn't hurt 3.x and make pirating pointless.

And while I'm pretty sure that the books will get pirated at some time, I don't think it will hurt them more at it is now. Since they announced that when you buy the book you will get an electronic for a small fee legally, there is not much reason to steal it. Those who only get a pirated-PDF an no book wouldn't have bought it anyway, so there is no money lost there.

But back to the original Point, I don't believe a Pirated Version will be available before the actual Release since the market is much to small to make such a big effort (and risk), past WOTC-DND Stuff didn't leak before the Release Date (at far as I know) and I think playtesters only get part of the rules (Sample Characters, no generation) so this big leak-source is unusable.

 

[EricNoah]

On some level they don't really sell the "ideas" -- they sell the physical product. That's why they can give away the entire game (with a few bits and pieces missing) via the SRD. It's their sale of dead tree books, and maybe even moreso the "hardware" like minis and terrain tiles, that they really care about.

However, they evidently feel that there is enough of an internet market to put together this D&D Insider thing -- which will have some stuff that I suspect will be leaked around the Internet (maybe the issues of Dungeon or Dragon online, or various articles). The main attraction of D&DI, though, is the stuff you can't easily pack up and take with you -- it will be the character creator, it will be the virtual game table. The stuff that only works when you have an account and are logged in to their site.

So, yeah, they may be concerned about early leaking of content, but ultimately I don't think they are all that worried about it. I doubt it will stop those who were going to hand over the money from doing so when the time comes. There were few attempts at large-scale early leaking last time around, and those that did come into the public eye were met with a bit of disdain rather than excitement.