RPG Illegal File Sharing Hurts the Hobby

[Lonely Tylenol]

No, but increasing the likelihood that you won't buy a product because you have the illegal PDF ain't helpful either.

That's not what he was getting at. I have no obligation at all to buy a product from someone. Even if I have access to the product and use it through that access, through a friend or a library for example, I still have no obligation to buy it. With that in mind, it is clear that if I don't like the product or have no use for it, I have no obligation to buy it. With that in mind, I have no obligaiton to buy something without first checking it out to see if I want to own it.

Saying that I should buy stuff impulsively because to do otherwise somehow hurts the industry is kind of crazy. And that's what I read Digital M@ as saying. He was responding to someone who says he uses PDFs to browse books because he has no access to the books otherwise and can't browse them physically, and won't buy them without browsing them. He said that doing that hurts the publisher and that the poster should instead impulse-buy, because "impulse buying and poor purchases probably make a significant chuck of the RPG products sold." Therefore, failure to impulse buy in favour of considered purchases is somehow doing a disservice to publishers, who aren't making the money that they otherwise would have made if purchases were made impulsively. I don't buy that argument.

 

[dpmcalister]

Impulse buying and poor purchases probably make a significant chuck of the RPG products sold.

So I should buy every RPG product that's released because it sounds like it's something I might use? Sorry, I've been bitten that way before and I'm not going to do it again - that and I don't have a bottomless pit of income.

I need to pick and choose which supplements I buy. Being able to have a quick read through them before purchase means that I can make an informed decision. Where there is a legitimate PDF demo available I use that, otherwise I'll download a pirated PDF. Once I've made my decision I either buy the hardcopy or delete the pirated version. Yes, this is still illegal, but until publishers decide to help themselves by helping their buyers I'm not going to change.

 

[Jim Hague]

That's not what he was getting at. I have no obligation at all to buy a product from someone. Even if I have access to the product and use it through that access, through a friend or a library for example, I still have no obligation to buy it. With that in mind, it is clear that if I don't like the product or have no use for it, I have no obligation to buy it. With that in mind, I have no obligaiton to buy something without first checking it out to see if I want to own it.

I'd suggest going to a brick and mortar store or seeing if there's a preview/demo, then. Justifying the encouragement of people who don't work for the company to put PDFs up for people to download doesn't help the case. Convenience isn't a justification for causing loss of sales - and since I've got at least a passing knowledge of the publishers who're saying it does cost sales, I'll stick by the statement that those PDFs do cause lost sales and lost profits.

Saying that I should buy stuff impulsively because to do otherwise somehow hurts the industry is kind of crazy. And that's what I read Digital M@ as saying. He was responding to someone who says he uses PDFs to browse books because he has no access to the books otherwise and can't browse them physically, and won't buy them without browsing them. He said that doing that hurts the publisher and that the poster should instead impulse-buy, because "impulse buying and poor purchases probably make a significant chuck of the RPG products sold." Therefore, failure to impulse buy in favour of considered purchases is somehow doing a disservice to publishers, who aren't making the money that they otherwise would have made if purchases were made impulsively. I don't buy that argument.

I always encourage informed opinions when shopping - I've been stung by impulse buying in the past. But I think a better avenue of being informed is encouraging publishers to create demos of their products, instead of encouraging people to rip them off with scans and PDF rips.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I know I don't impulse buy $40 dollar RPG books.

 

[PetriWessman]

I think Danny's "what you owe the publisher" calculation is based on what you've been caught in possession with. If you've got $10,000 in equivalent MP3 product, you've in effect stolen $10,000. On the one hand, nobody would normally just buy all those. On the other hand, having all that stolen material is equivalent to being a cleptomaniac in a WalMart. You really did steal it.

No, it is in no way equivalent.

If you steal N copies of item X from WalMart, WalMart no longer has those items (and cannot sell them to anyone else). This is called "stealing".

If you copy N copies of item X from SomePdfPublisher, they still have those bits and can sell any number of more copies. This is called "illegal copying", not "stealing", because of this vital distinction.

I'm not advocating piracy, and don't do it myself (except for downloaded episodes of TV which aren't available on local broadcast, but that's another issue). I personally don't think piracy has much effect on RPG sales, I suspect for every copy that is a real lost sale, there is another copy that generates a sale (which would not otherwise have occured). But that's just my semi-informed opinion, right now *nobody* knows the real effect. Not me, and not you, no matter what business you are in. It's just impossible to know "what would have happened without piracy", without some bizarre scifi gadgets

John Nephew is saying piracy has caused the drop in RPG sales. I'd dispute that, I think the drop is caused by computers and the Internet. There is simply much more competition for peoples' time nowadays from that front. People who would have been pen-and-paper roleplayers earlier now play computer games.

But again, I don't *know*. Nobody does. There are arguments in both directions.

 

[Jim Hague]

No, it is in no way equivalent.

If you steal N copies of item X from WalMart, WalMart no longer has those items (and cannot sell them to anyone else). This is called "stealing".

If you copy N copies of item X from SomePdfPublisher, they still have those bits and can sell any number of more copies. This is called "illegal copying", not "stealing", because of this vital distinction.

I'm not advocating piracy, and don't do it myself (except for downloaded episodes of TV which aren't available on local broadcast, but that's another issue). I personally don't think piracy has much effect on RPG sales, I suspect for every copy that is a real lost sale, there is another copy that generates a sale (which would not otherwise have occured). But that's just my semi-informed opinion, right now *nobody* knows the real effect. Not me, and not you, no matter what business you are in. It's just impossible to know "what would have happened without piracy", without some bizarre scifi gadgets

John Nephew is saying piracy has caused the drop in RPG sales. I'd dispute that, I think the drop is caused by computers and the Internet. There is simply much more competition for peoples' time nowadays from that front. People who would have been pen-and-paper roleplayers earlier now play computer games.

But again, I don't *know*. Nobody does. There are arguments in both directions.

Couple points:

1) John's in the industry, and so're (obviously) the publishers claiming lost sales. None have a reason to lie about their lost sales, and trying to obfuscate the issue by repeatedly saying 'nobody knows, nobody knows' is disingenious at best. I'll take the informed opinion of businesspeople over regular opinion any day.

2) With a complete, downloaded and illegal PDF, there's very little incentive to buy - you've got the book, for free, after all. I reiterate that the majority of filesharers do exactly that - they get the file, don't buy, and that does hurt the industry, because they're in possession of IP that they otherwise wouldn't have without paying. They're robbing the blind newsboy.

 

[JohnNephew]

I think you are ignoring one fact: The sheer volume of d20 garbage released.

Yes, in that post I was ignoring that fact and many others. Because...

If anything is causing the decline in RPG sales,

...the topic of that post was to provide supporting eveidence for my contention that there is an overall decline in RPG sales, a premise that was disputed by other participants in the conversation. The whole post was going on about evidence that there was a decline, with only the tangential observation that game products not susceptible to piracy don't seem to be suffering as much as those that are.

Having said that...

Here are some of the reasons I see contributing to the decline of d20 and RPG sales:

Those all sound like good hypotheses to me, and they've all been discussed at length within and among d20 publishers, distributors, and retailers. I hope it's obvious that economic trends are never monocausal -- success and failure alike in the market are driven by multiple factors, and it's really hard to conclusively prove or disprove the role of any of them. So, while all of those factors may be causes of the decline, their effect neither proves nor disproves a role for piracy in magnifying or mitigating the decline.

 

[JohnNephew]

So...you're trying to say that in order to be fair to publishers we should buy their books sight-unseen, because otherwise they'll miss out on our impulse-buy sales? Um...

Let me make two suggestions.

(1) Your local game store, which should be earning your business by offering such helpful things as copies of books to peruse before you buy.

(2) If you are limited to online purchases, I would like to note that most or all of our d20 books have sample pages that you can view on Amazon.com, and even "search inside the book" as an option.

If you're saying that in order to be fair to consumers, we should allow them to read a book in its entirety and maybe use it in their game for a few months before deciding if they'd like to pay for it or not...well, I'll just have to disagree.

 

[Morrus]

(2) If you are limited to online purchases, I would like to note that most or all of our d20 books have sample pages that you can view on Amazon.com,

And, when it comes to PDFs, the EN World GameStore allows you to do exactly the same thing.

 

[JohnNephew]

John Nephew is saying piracy has caused the drop in RPG sales.

I really want to drive home this clarification:

I am saying that I believe it is *one of the causes* of the drop in RPG sales.

I am certain that there are other causes. I am also certain that other causes are considerably more important. For example, I would wager that the lack of a hot product in the adventure game market right now (comparable to past phenomena like Magic, Pokemon, MageKnight/HeroClix, Yu-Gi-Oh!, in their prime), and the effect that has on retailers' open-to-buy free cash flow, has a much bigger impact on RPG sales than piracy.

I do not for a moment believe that stopping piracy would suddenly make the RPG industry healthy. And, in case I haven't been clear, I don't see a good way to stop piracy, and I think most efforts to block piracy (DRM, etc.) do more harm than good to the producers.

Please don't label me as "the guy who blames piracy for all RPGs' problems," because that is not my position.