RPG Illegal File Sharing Hurts the Hobby

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, if my buddy steals a nice car (and I don't realize its a stolen car) and takes me for a drive, and I decide to buy one just like it, the automaker makes a sale...

I, like you, have not comitted a crime, and you can legitimately say that the manufacturer made a sale...but the same could be said if the car's legitimate owner had driven me around, or if someone who had bought the Eden products had revealed them to you.

Publicity, especially in the form of word of mouth gained from personal experience with a product, is the single most powerful tool in advertising in the sense of measurably increasing sales or improving customer loyalty.

Flowers don't care where they bloom- they don't care whether the fertilizer that feeds them comes from compost heaps or dead mafiosos.

Its one of the great ethical mysteries that are part of the world- evil acts CAN have good consequences. That doesn't mean that we should encourage or look away when such an act occurs.

 

[Aus_Snow]

All I'm saying is that because one person brings a pirated copy of a book to a game, and the other players really like the product, it does not follow that the rest of the group will surely go and find a pirated copy themselves. That theory holds about as much water as the ice cream and rape theory.

Gah.

Just to get this straight, I wasn't saying that "the rest of the group will surely" do any one thing - or even that any one member of that group will! There's no new or arcane theory I'm striving to formulate or get across here - none whatsoever.

What I was and am still saying though, is that human nature has that one tendency, among others. It (both fortunately and not) holds sway even over many adults. Note that neither earlier nor currently have I said "all people", "all adults" or the like, in regards to temptation, peer influence and so on.

Others have probably said exactly what I've tried to say, only more eloquently. I would go so far as to say that the gist of it is common knowledge, in fact.

yeah, my analogy was a bit extreme.

As was "the ice cream and rape theory". Unless this is the one you meant?

 

[jeff37923]

I cross-posted this thread on a few other gaming forums Originally to get some
different opinions on the same subject. The discussion on all has been
damned interesting. Below are links to three of the other forums and their own
discussions.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=156122&page=1&pp=40

http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001587

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=229271

 

[Jim Hague]

I just want to point out that this exact thing has happened to me personally. I used to know someone back in college who had literally hundreds of RPG PDF files on his computer. Oddly, this guy didn’t even play RPG games, he just had some kind of obsession with file sharing, so it’s not like the gaming industry would ever have gotten a dime out of him had he not been able to download them anyway...But this is one case where I don’t see how piracy “hurt” the industry.

How about the part where he had 'hundreds' of illegal PDFs on his system with no intent of ever paying for them? This, I think, represents the vast majority of file sharers - people who have something just to have it, don't intend to buy it, and distribute it as widely as possible to other people who don't intend to buy it, simply because it's easier than spending their money.

Yeah, yeah...information may 'want' to be 'free', but that 'free' information you've got doesn't put money in my pocket. As a writer, I don't think I'll gamble on whether someone who's distributing a product I've worked on will decide to buy the product after ripping me off.

 

[Janx]

As always, some good points made by all.

I realize that Danny's a lawyer, who has an interest in copyright violation (my guess is he makes his money in court on these kinds of cases, he said he worked in the entertainment industry)

It seems there's 3 kinds of things that you can sell: goods, services, and ideas.
Ideas are more like services, in that they aren't physically tangible, but they are also like goods in that they are reproducible (copying).

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. It really is possible to steal more than you would normally buy.

I think the difference is in how we apply that number. What it's used for. The record industry did not LOSE $10,000 from our example pirate. They never would have gotten the sales. They did lose some amount, basically whatever batch of files the pirate actually uses (or that other downloaders would have bought). When they report the total pirate collective value as lost sales, they are misusing the data. As I said, their real lost value is the amount of sales that normally would have occurred, had the piracy source not existed. This number is really hard to estimate, so I can see why folks would like to shortcut.

However, when it comes time to prosecute, the pirate really did steal $10,000. That's different than lost sales, due to the intangible nature of the stolen item (data). The pirate should be charged and punished based on the amount of illegal product he has. It would be the same if a punk kid went down to the mall and jacked the nicest car in the lot. It is very easy to steal more than you can pay for, that's kinda why people steal.

Janx

 

[Belen]

Yes, I think it is typical, based on conversations I've had with publishers over the years, based on financial data I've reviewed as part of the due diligence process in providing loans/financing to other publishers, based on communication with fulfillment houses and distributors who handle multiple publishers' lines, etc. I can't give you detailed information that I have received in confidence, but I think it's not any secret that most d20 publishers, large and small, have seen sharp declines in sales. Every time a thread on the topic comes up here or on RPGNet, someone pipes in with "Company X says times have never been better!" -- which perhaps is true, but again, the proof is in what they do, not what they say. (Maybe it's from spending a few years intensively engaging in studying troubled/failing companies and short selling their stock, but I've seen a lot of companies putting on a happy face while the foundation of their business is crumbling...and I've seen disbelieving investors willing to buy shares of a company that has already declared its intention to liquidate in bankruptcy and leave common stock holders with nothing at all...)

Even in a category that is sharply declining, there are likely to be individual cases that buck the trend. Obviously Malhavoc continues to do very well, for example; but no one else has Monte Cook -- the closest thing to his name brand is WotC itself, which I am certain has done better than d20 in general. But look at other companies (including Malhavoc's publisher), and compare their current d20 release calendar with the past. Look at companies who existed before d20, published d20 books, and then went back to what they were doing before; look at the companies who have produced the most d20 books, and compare the type and number of their releases now to the past.



This could be true. From conversations with distributors, for example, I knew that some of the generalist products were, back in the day, selling two or three times as much as niche products we were doing at the same time. (It was no problem to me, since our niche products were profitable enough at the time to justify doing them as it pleased us.) But from other conversations I know that the sales of those generalist products also declined (albeit from a higher starting level), so that a very successful generalist product in 2004, say, was probably selling half or less of what one of our niche products did in early 2001.

-John Nephew
President, Atlas Games

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

If anything is causing the decline in RPG sales, it would be the large volume of material available. The variety of books and companies are killing sales. Other than WOTC, no other company can create a large enough fan base for d20 material. Non-d20 material can create a larger base because they are not competing with other companies plus the crazy PDF publishers in places like RPGnow.

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

1.) Market size vs. # of Producers: We have too many companies producing too many games for a limited audience.

2.) Older audience: No company, including WOTC, has found a way to market and sell to a younger audience. D&D is no longer in the public eye. It is more like the old anime of scifi clubs that you find on college campuses. People find the game by accident rather than design. Also, an older audience buys less books. They have limited time to play multiple games.

3.) New media: MMORPGs, CCGs, and PC games have eroded the existing audience and stolen the potential audience.

4.) Advertising: No one promotes the hobby. We promote it to ourselves.

5.) Shared experience: There is a lack of shared experience. Companies promote their IP, even WOTC. We see a lot of drive to pormote Eberron or FR, but very little to promote D&D.

6.) Standards or lack thereof: d20 publishers would have been wise to cooperate and create a list of standards for books such formats etc. I am surprised that we never saw a development company or editing company form. There is a need for such a centralized company that could promote standards or evaluate books.

7.) Development and release schedules: Too many companies announce books and then fail to release on schedule or in a timely manner. It sucks to wait a year for a book and a book is sometimes off your schedule by the time it is released.

8.) Know you audience: A lot of companies do not know their audience. They are run by gamers who produce what they think is cool rather than what people want. When I was working for a d20 company, this was a problem. We never attempted to ask what people wanted and then produce it. We kinda thought we knew and just wrote what we wanted to write.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You say that, yet this thread is full of publishers that say it does hurt them. It is their hard work, blood sweat and tears that made those books that people say have no value if they get them for free. Impulse buying and poor purchases probably make a significant chuck of the RPG products sold. How many thread have you read about people having shelves full of books they will never use. It is good that you support the hobby, but trying to say it is a vicimless crime is a copout.

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...

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

In either case, the person you take the money from no longer has it. That is not the case with pirated pdfs.

...and to add the essential corollary: If you download a PDF and never read it or use it, the claim that it somehow hurts the publisher is totally ridiculous, because it is essentially as though the pirate PDF doesn't exist. Therefore the issue of whether the pirate PDF is ever used is not immaterial.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

True...but that is part of the nature of a purely electronic good- you can steal it without depriving the original creator of posession.

There are VERY FEW goods that have that characteristic.

True. And it is those goods we're talking about. Which means that analogies to goods that don't have that characteristic are not useful.

 

[Jim Hague]

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...

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