Not at all, the problem of getting good versions is an important consideration. Sounds like they'd still have to work on it, and at 4 bucks a pop, I don't know if they'd be making any real money on it.
Why doesn't WotC license older editions?
- Thread starter Kzach
- Start date
Not at all, the problem of getting good versions is an important consideration. Sounds like they'd still have to work on it, and at 4 bucks a pop, I don't know if they'd be making any real money on it.
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
I see what you mean, but many (myself included) would be content with just the old PDF being available again. The work on those files has already been done.
coyote6
Adventurer
Didn't Paizo have some connection to SVGames? Shared some owners or something?
Perhaps, but what would Wizards of the Coast get from that?
From your description of the quality, I'm not imagining them getting much in the way of praise or customers from it.
Sure, you might say "Well, they could have just kept the status quo" but I don't think it was enough to entice them.
They'd get $4 a pop.
You're essentially asking "Ok, so WotC doesn't have to put in any effort whatsoever, and people pay them. But what does WotC get out of it?"
There's a reason why I said the last line of my post:
Sure, you might say "Well, they could have just kept the status quo" but I don't think it was enough to entice them.
Why did I say this? Because I feel it's quite possible for Wizards of the Coast to not be gaining anything meaningful from the files being available. This could include profit. They may simply not have enough customers of those books for them to overcome the costs of having the files available. Which are not zero.
There's no reason to assume that they would be getting four bucks of pure profit from sales of this material. At the least, the vendor would take a cut to pay for its operations(servers only seem free, they really aren't), and I do think Wizards would have to do some accounting on their end. How much would they be getting from each sale? Well, as far as I know, we don't know, but heck, let's handwave it as four bucks. Now how many sales would they have? How many would it take before WoTC was impressed with the amount of money coming in? Believe it or not, there is such a thing as not enough profit for a corporation. Want to handwave some figure? Let's try 1,000. For me, 4,000 bucks in money would be quite a lot, by a year, or a month. How much is that to Wizards? Well, they have sales revenues over 100 million, so not so much I think.
So yeah, I'm left still wondering, what does Wizards really get out of it? What entices them to keep the sales available?
This is something they'd have to answer, though, as I doubt any of us have the insider picture to say. Well, except for the WoTC employees who are probably under orders not to reply on these kinds of things. Corporate inscrutability and all that. But perhaps with their future plans for digital publishing, we'll find out. Or maybe their lawsuit will feature some information, depending on what the defendants lawyers do. I do recall some mention of RIAA figures coming out in a music-sharing lawsuit.
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darjr
I crit!
Posting just to add that there is a customer support angle to putting out the PDF's.
It's a non trivial thing as well, I've been surrounded by customer support most of my career and those poor folks put up with a ton, and work a ton. It isn't free or cheap. Even a few hours a week or month or even a year of customer support for all those PDF's could crater any profit.
Even so. I suspect and guess, that the PDF's were worth it. I also wish they would come back... even if just for the older versions.
The licensing can, imho, be covered by the OGL.
It's a non trivial thing as well, I've been surrounded by customer support most of my career and those poor folks put up with a ton, and work a ton. It isn't free or cheap. Even a few hours a week or month or even a year of customer support for all those PDF's could crater any profit.
Even so. I suspect and guess, that the PDF's were worth it. I also wish they would come back... even if just for the older versions.
The licensing can, imho, be covered by the OGL.
Well, maybe in the future, when they've decided to go with whatever other options they're considering, they'll come back. If not, it's only a few more decades till they slip into the public domain!
Wizards has already left the OGL behind though, so I suspect that in their opinion, it can't.
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
I don't know. And now that I think about it, I'm remembering that the first PDFs that I bought (PHB, UA and DMG) were directly from Wizards, in 2001 before they licensed the sale to SVGames. The price for UA was $5 and for the PHB and the DMG it was $6. One year later, I bough the rest of the 1e manuals from SVGames, but the price was $5, not $4.
Your entire post is still missing the point.
It doesn't matter if the .pdfs sell very little. There's still a gain. There's a gain in profit, there's a gain in customer satisfaction, and there's a gain in public image.
The problem is, you're asking "why keep the status quo?" That's a pointless question. You keep it because it's the status quo. It's working.
The question is never "Why should we NOT change?" The question is, "Why should we change this. Why should we remove the .pdfs. What do we gain from this. What do we lose." As Kamikaze Banana likes to quote from Jurassic Park, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Wizards decided to change it. They lost customer satisfaction, they lost profit, and they lost public image. They gained nothing. Piracy is still rife, and has perhaps even grown. The lawsuits only made them look petty to a lot of people. And here's the thing - yes, to a lot of people, the lawsuits made them look good. But these were people who already supported WotC. They lost favor in people they had, and gained favor in people who already gave it to them. Once again, the change did not in any way, shape, or form, benefit WotC.
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