Wait a minute...

[jeffh]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not all like "WotC is evil!" over the lawsuit, but...

If WotC is sold out of the PHB2, how the heck do they figure piracy of it is costing them money?

 

[cildarith]

Now, now. We can't allow facts to get in the way of a good lawsuit...

 

[Piratecat]

All their copies are committed, sent to retailers and out of their warehouse. The theory is that piracy steals sales from the retailers - who in turn reorder fewer books from WotC's reprinting.

 

[Scribble]

Two sources of revenu.

Perhaps the damages they're arguing are coming entirely from their sale of pdfs?

Also lets say it's payday at your job. Your boss comes by, gives you your check, but also gives you 100 dollars as a bonus for being a good employee.

Some other employee a few minutes later comes buy and takes 50 of those dollars. Would you report him? After all you still made your entire paycheck, plus 50 extra dollars.

It's not exactly the same, but a similar idea.

 

[Maggan]

who in turn reorder fewer books from WotC's reprinting.

That's what I've been thinking. The dissemination of PDFs cuts into WotC's further sales of the coming printings, not necessarily the first one.

WotC has a lot of data on this, so I'd wager that they have a good grip on how much money they should be making from reprints, and it seems as if they're not hitting that target.

/M

 

[Morrus]

Sod out of the first print run. There will be further print runs.

 

[Ourph]

If WotC is sold out of the PHB2, how the heck do they figure piracy of it is costing them money?

They didn't sell out of the .pdf version, which is what was being pirated.

 

[Mark]

Sod out of the first print run. There will be further print runs.

No doubt. They should be able to sell up to as many PHB2s as PHB1s. So, too, for the PHB3, etc. That is the business model now in use for D&D.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not all like "WotC is evil!" over the lawsuit, but...

If WotC is sold out of the PHB2, how the heck do they figure piracy of it is costing them money?

As others have hinted, its a simple economic equation of supply and demand.

If part of the future demand for a product is satisfied by current piracy, that will drive down either the total number of future sales of that product at the price WotC set, OR the price WotC can demand per unit (while keeping total sales per edition constant). Either way, WotC's profits decline.