Torrent throwdown on the Wizards board

[Daniel D. Fox]

Truly, the best way to combat financial losses due to file sharing is to allow users to peruse the ENTIRE book online, just as users can browse books in a book store. There isn't enough evidence beyond hearsay to state that piracy effects book sales negatively. If that were the case, WotC would be recording record losses every year and would not be able to churn out the same number of SPLAT books they publish month after month.

 

[Mr Jack]

I write computer games for a living. Everything I produce gets pirated. Data from various game releases shows that an early, or pre-release, pirate will reduce first month sales by 5-20%. Now, D&D is likely to suffer less due to the superiority of the print product but I'd still expect them to lose a non-trivial number of sales, and a non-trivial amount of money over this. Yes, there would have been scans up within hours, but the pre-release nature of these leak will be more harmful.

As for taking down torrents, and the like, yeah, you can't beat them but if you do nothing the problem gets worse and you lose more sales.

 

[Nifft]

I don't think we'll ever have good data on "lost" sales vs. "free advertising / loss leader" generated sales. The issue is just too charged.

Which is odd, since the exact entities who are claiming the biggest losses -- and are doing a lot of the divisive issue-charging -- are supposed to be faceless, emotionless, analytical profit-seekers.

Oh well, -- N

 

[jc_madden]

That paragraph reads like a definition of hyperbole.

We must be using conflicting definitions of the word. AFAIK, it means an exaggeration. I'm not exaggerating here. My experiences are not unique; I've seen many of the same complaints. Anecdotal? Yes. Hyperbole? No.

I'm going to re-iterate that it was a clear case of price gouging so you don't jump down my throat again.

I wasn't aware of jumping down your throat a first time. If I came of as such, I apologize it wasn't my intention. I'm vehement about the subject but I'm not trying to be rude.

Regardless of the print quality it is still going to be better than what you would get by printing at home which was the original comparison.

Strongly disagree. We're using a self-printed copy of the PrRC at our game now and it looks and feels great.

Changing the goal posts just turns your point into a straw man.

It's not a straw man, I'm not intentionally steering the argument to a subject I feel I can win. To add additional weight to my argument, I stated that if the print quality of KotS was any indication of the level of quality we can expect from future products, digital media may be a better solution. I would pay more money for a better quality book. If the quality of the books are lacking, I would print it myself if I could buy a PDF from WotC.

As we've seen from the leaked copies, they are full colour and that requires a higher quality print process and paper than we saw in the preview module.

Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by "full color,” I have KotS, it appears to be full color. The ink smudges horribly and the paper is too thin.

 

[SteveC]

Can't stop murder, either, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

...and your point is entirely irrelevant here.

First of all, as someone who has lost a good friend to murder, even if it was many years ago, the comparison of software piracy to murder is simply outrageous.

Second, you're wrong: to a large degree, a society that wants to stop murders from occurring can do so. That discussion is for another board entirely, however, as it comes down to politics.

Third, I stand by my statement: if WotC put everyone in the company on stopping the piracy of game products, they would not be able to curtail the process one bit. They would effectively do so, however, because they wouldn't be producing any new products for the pirates to torrent. That would be great, up until they went entirely out of business from lack of sales.

So I'll just say it clearly (and, remember, this is just my opinion, mkay?) every dollar a company like WotC spends trying to root out and stop piracy is one dollar they don't spend creating and marketing their products, and that's a waste.

Nothing that WotC does on this matter will make any difference, and it will only be a waste of their time.

What wouldn't be a waste of time would be for them to come up with a marketing and distribution strategy for the products so that we can legally get them electronically at a reasonable price. I'd buy them (and I'm not alone) and they would be making money off of it. That's the promise of the DDI, so I hope that will actually work out and we can all be happy. It seems to work pretty well for Apple and ITunes, after all.

I don't mean to be a jerk, and I don't support piracy (I've had the books on preorder since February!) but nothing we do here is going to affect the situation in the slightest.

--Steve

 

[warlockwannabe]

This post seems most to the point to me. From the wizards board.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GameJunkieJim
Right, but that doesn't include people like me who live probably 85 miles from the nearest urban center, and does their shopping online, or on a rare occasion makes a 2 hour trek to the nearest game store.

Yes, I DLed them. I DL anything like this before I buy it. Sometimes I buy, sometimes I don't. Rarely do the PDFs stick on the computer. Most of the PDFs I do have are either freely availiable (some from WotC own site, as well as a ton of old TSR Marvel stuff) or stuff I have in storage that I like to look at occasionally but don't want to dig out each time (AD&D 1E Players Handbook, some old Rolemaster supplements from the 80's, Gamma World, etc.)

If I don't own it, or if it's not a 'free' product, I delete it after I've perused it. I'm not saying it's OK to use something if you haven't paid for it, but in this day and age, it should be our right to make sure it's worth what we spend. Caveat emptor right??

which was responded to by.
As I said were not going to agree. I do feel for your perdicament. I grew up in a town like this. But I dont think that it necessarily entitles you to anything special. I can understand why you do it, but I dont feel it justifies it is a better way to put it. I have pdfs. A lot. But I buy them. Old editions of BECMI D&D, Stuff from Monte Cook. And a heck of a lot of freebies. But I simply dont feel that someone is entitled to something that isnt thiers. If WOTC allowed it it is one thing. But the fact that you rationalize it in this way only shows that you HAVE to rationalize it. If someone buys something, they never have to rationalize it. Cept maybe to the wife who didnt want you to spend the money.... but thats a different issue. If your doing what you know is right, you really never need to rationalize your actions.

Again, maybe I'm just jaded. And As I said, we may not agree. But I'd still play a game with ya.

 

[frankthedm]

I just wanted to post here to say that I was wrong. Many months ago, this subject first came up (for 4E, anyway) and I said that the core books would be scanned and available through downloads within 48 hours. It seems that the pirates beat the street dates!

Arrr, matey, don't be so quick to blame the pirates for scanning them. Some say they look more like an insider uploaded them.

 

[warlockwannabe]

Arrr, matey, don't be so quick to blame the pirates for scanning them. Some of them looked more like an insider uploaded them.

Dosent that make him a pirate too?

 

[frankthedm]

Dosent that make him a pirate too?

Mayhap, but it means beating street date was far less an accomplishment. It is like saying someone robbed a bank after the vaults contents were thrown on the sidewalk.

 

[SteveC]

Arrr, matey, don't be so quick to blame the pirates for scanning them. Some say they look more like an insider uploaded them.

Oh, to be sure. But doesn't that make it even worse in some ways? Controlling the people you employ or contract for service is one thing, but stopping someone who's willing to ruin the book by cutting it up and scanning it?

No matter what, though, this is going to be a huge launch, and this whole thing has probably given WotC a fair bit of extra publicity, so we'll never know how it really affected things.

--Steve