WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs

[Scribble]

Besides that, RPGs are a niche hobby and this is not going to change any time soon.

Maybe that's soemthing they'd like to see change. After all video games at one point were a niche market, and now they're HUGE. So was snowboarding, and now it's the most popular winter sport.

I remember one time way back in 96 at an Origins con when Adkison talked about his dream of seeing gaming one day being as accepted and popular as the movies.

Don't know if it's achievable, but maybe WoTC still holds that as part of its mission statement?

 

[Fenes]

Let's say you make money selling lemonaid. You have a big bowl of lemonaid sitting nearby that you scoop cups out of and sell to pople for 25 cents a cup.

You have five people buying that lemonaid. $1.25 woohoo! It covers the cost of you making that lemonaid so sweet deal. But then you notice that there's a line of people like 10 or so, who've been walking up behind your back and just scooping their own cups of lemonaid out of your bowl without paying you 25 cents.

Do you continue as is and just let those guys drink your lemonaid? Hey they're thirsty, but they might not have bought any from you anyway right?

Or do you take a break, put your lemonaid in your house, and go back to Target to try to find a better lemonaid holding mechanism? Maybe one with a lid and one of those spout things so you can have more control over who gets your lemonaid?

(My point being- Are you really firing those 5 people buying your lemonaid if you're only shutting down to find a more secure way to offer them lemonaid?)

Please... try to find a better example. The PDFs I was buying were already copied. I was buying OOP ones of older editions. Pulling them back did not change anything with regards to piracy, and WotC as anyone who did not ignore the realities of the internet knows this.

No, the only reason older edition material was pulled was to prevent people from legally buying it. Either to try to drive people to buy 4E, or in prepration to sell them through other channels - in whcih case WotC botched that move so much (lack of communication, lack of alternative offer) one has to ask oneself if they really could be that stupid.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I agree that there is a subset of existing customers that was intentionally written off, but I am much less sure it was such a good thing for the company to do so.

Right. It ain't a crap shoot up there in WotC R&D. They had a strategy, and yes, they intentionally pursued it. That doesn't imply malice.

I don't think intentionally cutting off a considerable section of the legacy market, when a token effort may have been enough to bring many of them on board, is as clearly a winner-strategy as you seem to imply.

Nobody knows what percentage they hoped to convert but there's no way that, for example, Vancian Magic die-hards were going to be on board for powers for all classes. There simply is no token effort that would suffice there. (That's the biggest, non-negotiable, fundamental change I can think of off the top of my head. Cosmology would be 2nd.)

WotC obviously believed it was a winner-strategy, otherwise they woldn't have pursued it. I have little doubt that WotC will be a successful company with their strategy, but I disagree with their assessment and believe they could have been even more successful if they tried to bring more of the legacy market on board (not all, of course, a 100% conversion rate is not realistic, but more than they did).

I think we can easily agree they hoped to convert as many as possible. But "Hope" is not a strategy. Every player they expected to lose, who nevertheless converted, is icing.

At any rate, it's clear that the current 4e strategy is obviously not what they had in mind when 4e was in development. 4e should be driving the sales of miniatures and DDI subscriptions-- neither of which is susceptible to digital piracy.

So the current PDF freak-out is a bit of a surprise. I didn't figure that the "dead tree" component of the product was that significant. The core rules-- even pirated PDFs-- should be whetting the appetites of the "larger market" to put their money down for the full experience.

 

[Scribble]

Please... try to find a better example. The PDFs I was buying were already copied. I was buying OOP ones of older editions. Pulling them back did not change anything with regards to piracy, and WotC as anyone who did not ignore the realities of the internet knows this.

The example holds no matter what you believe the "realities of the internet" to be.

WoTC has a product, and finds that product is compromised. So they pull the product back, in order to find a less compromised method of sale. Whether or not it costs them any money to make that poduct, is insignificant. They have a product that has been compromised.

Will it work? Who knows? It might help, or it might not, I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make that choice.

I doubt it will ever make the problem fully "go away" but it's possible it could help reduce it to "acceptable" levels.

Someone might still steal your car, but at least you're no longer leaving your doors unlocked.

But to argue that it's some type of hidden plan to get people to buy a product they don't want? That just seems WAY to over the top for me to believe. (Especialy whn done in such a fashion.)

 

[Fenes]

The example holds no matter what you believe the "realities of the internet" to be.

WoTC has a product, and finds that product is compromised. So they pull the product back, in order to find a less compromised method of sale. Whether or not it costs them any money to make that poduct, is insignificant. They have a product that has been compromised.

Will it work? Who knows? It might help, or it might not, I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make that choice.

I doubt it will ever make the problem fully "go away" but it's possible it could help reduce it to "acceptable" levels.

Someone might still steal your car, but at least you're no longer leaving your doors unlocked.

But to argue that it's some type of hidden plan to get people to buy a product they don't want? That just seems WAY to over the top for me to believe. (Especialy whn done in such a fashion.)

There's no need or reason to talk further with you if you honestly believe pulling the PDFs of OOP editions had anything to do with battling piracy.

 

[Nagol]

The example holds no matter what you believe the "realities of the internet" to be.

WoTC has a product, and finds that product is compromised. So they pull the product back, in order to find a less compromised method of sale. Whether or not it costs them any money to make that poduct, is insignificant. They have a product that has been compromised.

Will it work? Who knows? It might help, or it might not, I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make that choice.

I doubt it will ever make the problem fully "go away" but it's possible it could help reduce it to "acceptable" levels.

Someone might still steal your car, but at least you're no longer leaving your doors unlocked.

But to argue that it's some type of hidden plan to get people to buy a product they don't want? That just seems WAY to over the top for me to believe. (Especialy whn done in such a fashion.)

The difficulty I have understanding pulling back "compromised" material is the original material is unaffected and removing it does nothing to affect the availability of pirated work.

The best analogy is counterfeiting. If you discover that someone is counterfeiting your product, removing the auhentic product from the marketplace only increases the market share possibilities for the counterfeiters.

 

[Scribble]

There's no need or reason to talk further with you if you honestly believe pulling the PDFs of OOP editions had anything to do with battling piracy.

That's what was indicated by a company spokes person. I have no reason to call that man a liar, so that's the information I have to go on. If you don't want to discuss it because I disagree with you? Well hey whatever floats your boat man!

 

[Scribble]

The difficulty I have understanding pulling back "compromised" material is the original material is unaffected and removing it does nothing to affect the availability of pirated work.

The best analogy is counterfeiting. If you discover that someone is counterfeiting your product, removing the auhentic product from the marketplace only increases the market share possibilities for the counterfeiters.

Well, I'm not going to argue if it's the best strategy or not. Like I said, I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make that call.

But as to your point, it's not so much that pulling back is what you're doing to fight the counterfitting. You've discovered that the method you use to create whatever you create is actually making it easier to counterfit, so pulling back is the unfortunate side effect of figuring out how to fix it.

Pull back, patch your holes, then re-release for the people that want the product then work on fighting the old products floating in pirate space while you hope your new method holds?

 

[Roman]

There's no need or reason to talk further with you if you honestly believe pulling the PDFs of OOP editions had anything to do with battling piracy.

I don't think anybody actually believes that. Clearly, there is some other motive at hand or perhaps multiple motives. Some possibilities (some combinations are possible):

1) Desiring to bring PDF publishing in-house, WotC might have thought that yanking their PDFs from established distributors for that reason might generate some ill will among consumers, so they decided to make it coincide with some piracy lawsuits and blame it on piracy, believing that people would be sympathetic to the move on that account.

2) WotC has decided that OOP PDF products compete with 4E sales and has decided to pull them for that reason.

3) WotC has decided to send a message to GSL-using companies that their business is not safe and that they cannot rely on WotC goodwill or reasonableness not to cancel their license abruptly and capriciously at a whim. The message is: "Get out of this market or else!" This might be part of a strategy of 'reclosing' the system and delivering a blow to open gaming, but without actually yanking the GSL itself, which would have generated consumer outrage.

*Note: If it was a strategy to deflect consumer outrage by blaming the move on piracy to mask the real move, WotC has clearly miscalculated the level of anger their policy would generate. It may, however, still have been less anger than what they would have incurred if they had stated the real reason for the move.

There might be other reasons as to why WotC did what it did, but 'fighting piracy' does not even figure on my list of possibilities, because that would be so mind-bogglingly stupid and ineffectual (and actually likely to increase piracy) that it just cannot be.

 

[f33b]

But as to your point, it's not so much that pulling back is what you're doing to fight the counterfitting. You've discovered that the method you use to create whatever you create is actually making it easier to counterfit, so pulling back is the unfortunate side effect of figuring out how to fix it.

Pull back, patch your holes, then re-release for the people that want the product then work on fighting the old products floating in pirate space while you hope your new method holds?

Much of the OOP OD&D, 1st and 2nd pirate content pre-dates official TSR/WOTC pdfs by several years, so it's not necessarily a case of PDFs from vendors making copy infringement easier. Further, PDFs from licensed vendors contain identifying marks that help discourage or punish piracy. There are other DRM options, such as using the Microsoft Reader .lit format, but none are as universally acceptable as the PDF, and none have even half the market penetration as the PDF.

Finally, there is no marketplace that generates revenue for WotC from OOP sales other than PDF sales.

When a company completely abandons a market and all associated revenue streams, they aren't generally looking to "fix" problems in that market, rather they usually have identified that market , service or product as being outside their core competencies, and are removing themselves completely, in the interest of streamlining their business.