Okay, everyone knows I keep a torch and pitchfork in the umbrella stand by my front door for when Wizards pulls a stunt like this, but come on. Is there really any reason to keep bending over? There are so many alternatives these days, cheaper, better, and more respectful of their customers. Why not finally put D&D out with the trash? The only thing it has going for it, even 4e, that no one else has is the letters “D&D”. Are they going to coast forever on the emotional resonance that title evokes? I’ve said it before and I’m saying it now: bah.

The argument that they’re making (“due to piracy concerns”) is the same one the RIAA made ten years ago about .mp3 files. Based on what I’ve experienced by WotC’s marketing department, this boneheaded move is pretty much SOP for them.

My group play either 3.5 or a 1e/2e mashup. We do not and will not play 4e. We have books, we have PDFs, we have the SRD and Paizo’s Pathfinder is coming. Wizards of the Coast could fold tomorrow and we wouldn’t care. Frankly, I want to see this blow up in WotC’s face.

Andrew Modro’s last blog post..Five Games I Want To Play

Firstly I’ll say, I generally agree that this sort of thing won’t really have the desired (or at lest stated desired) outcome. Fighting pirates is generally a loosing battle, you tend to punish the innocent and make people grumpy.

That said… do you mean to imply that in point 1 it’s okay to pirate cause “where else am I gonna get my pdf?”. I’m not exactly the most upright of citizens, but come on… “They made me steal it” isn’t really much of a defense. However point 1a is spot on. There is a market for online digital purchases and whoever fills that niche will gain those dollars.

Point 2, it’s certainly possible that there is some truth to it. Something like this is very unlikely to be based on any one factor. However relying on anecdotal evidence of poor 4e performance is sketchy. Time and again I’ve said it, to a point I feel a bit like a broken record, that “Everyone I know agrees with me” isn’t really a good benchmark for the broader state of the market. It always strikes me as a bit… naive.

I don’t really have much to say about point 3. In a general sense I agree, a specific game or rule set isn’t needed… whatever draws the most folk “wins” at any given moment.

justaguy’s last blog post..Logs and ponderings

This is probably the final nail in the coffin when it comes to 4e D&D. Much as I love the system, Wizards’ consistently make it harder to support them in any way, shape or form.

So much for months of hard work convincing my group to play 4e. Wizards & Warlocks here we come!

greywulf’s last blog post..Other games still available as PDF shocker

I’d agree that this is a very weird reaction, especially if they think it will fix the piracy problem.

Regarding the “watermarking to protect files” – it doesn’t work. I’ve been doing a bit of investigation for a piece about the pirating of RPGs I am writing for my blog and in the process uncovered a few of the piracy communities that have formed. In almost all cases watermarking is stripped off the pdf before it’s posted. Places like RapidShare and the other file sharing services are packed with illegal pdfs. Ironically enough, Paizo, who can no longer sell WotC stuff, has come up with some sort of file protection for their pdfs that has been giving the pirates a lot of problems. I guess Paizo won’t be sharing that one with WotC….

Incidentally, these communities refer to the whole process of buying, stripping the copy protection, and putting it up on the net as “freeing a file to the wild” which gives you an idea of how they think of themselves.

MJ Harnish’s last blog post..No more WotC pdfs?

How tragic. Clearly the number of pirate copies far exceeds the legally distributed PDFs therefore the pirates must be copying the PDF.

They couldn’t possibly be scanning paper copies in now could they?

Wooly thinking from WotC. This isn’t how business is done nowadays is it??

satyre’s last blog post..dungeon construction: legendry

RE: watermarking. See what I know? I buy legal PDFs and know nothing how

RE: sale figures. Say I’m wrong about sales being soft. Say that sales are CRAZY huge and Wizards is making hella money (that’s right, I said “hella”). How does that make this business move make MORE sense?

RE: condoning piracy. I don’t. All I’m saying is, if someone wants something and it’s not legally available to purchase, but there’s a pirate copy out there to be had, well… you’re faced with three choices. Download the pirate copy, because the company isn’t providing you with a means to give them money. Buy a physical copy, although that may not be what you want because you prefer a PDF. Or buy a competing product from another publisher that is available for legal purchase in PDF format.

RE: preview PDFs. My shelves are full of books I purchased because a publisher made the PDF free or low-cost, or provided a free preview PDF that allowed me to try-before-I-buy. I have also purchased books because a friend loaned me theirs, I liked it, and wanted my own copy — similar to the theory Ryan offered about pirate PDFs.

Taking away legal copies doesn’t make those pirated copies suddenly disappear, or remove them from the various places pirate copies crop up.

Can’t it be stupidity and malice? Didn’t someone say, “Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice,” or is that just an Arthur C. Clarke paraphrase?

@Xose Lucero – Nice. Keeping that one for a rainy day at work I think.

@Felipe Veloso – Stats courtesy of Core Mechanic and Paizo Message Board (linked separately because it’s convenient).

Sure the pirates can’t get the downloadable PDF, de-watermark it and then move on; instead they’ll just scan the dead-tree in and then upload it. It doesn’t take a whole lot of searching to find such things if you want. And you can bet that people will look.

It may be malice, it may be misunderstanding, it may even be unwillingness to play a game which they can’t quite grasp. Closing the door on a revenue stream is not how smart business is done and this may come back to haunt WoTC if someone is smart enough to work out how to do it properly.

satyre’s last blog post..dungeon construction: legendry

How is that an answer to a request to back up a statement that something is a “documented fact”?

Of everything I said, that’s the point you chose to harp on? As if I’m a serious journalist and not a blogger shooting his mouth off. My “misdirecting” response was pointing out that sales figures really don’t matter, other than to feed into my wild-ass conspiracy theories. See also: first sentance of this post where I state that this is based on opinion and anecdotal evidence.

As for 4e books being bestsellers, that is true. However, as someone who spent a significant portion of his adult life in the book trade, I can tell you that “bestseller” and “sold as many copies as we’d projected to sell” are two entirely different things.

As for the “documented fact”, Wizards does guard their sales figures very closely, but there are various sources, such as Amazon, the New York Times, and USA Today as well as various book trade sites, with bestseller databases that track not only rank on bestseller lists but the number of units sold in order to make those lists. Figures vary from one source to another, but many of them show the 3.5 PHB outselling the 4e PHB in the first few months of release (some do put the numbers close, and some put the 4e PHB higher), but nearly all sources show 4e DMG and MM sales well behind 3.5 in an equivalent time period. One can argue various reasons for it, but the data is out there.

But this still doesn’t address the key issue: even though sales didn’t suck (and no, they didn’t, they sold a lot of copies) how many copies did Wizards THINK they were going to sell. This is data we don’t have. Even if the 3.5 PHB sold (I’m making numbers up for this exercise) 50,000 copies and 4e PHB sold 60,000 copies, if Wizards expected to sell 75,000 copies then sales were still “soft”.

We now have to factor in various leaked information, which is admittedly sketchy and questionable, that the suits at Wizards are disappointed by 4e sales. To that we can look at the layoffs that occurred last December 8th, 2008 (a well-documented fact) of game designers and developers working on DDI (which was originally a core piece of the 4e marketing strategy) and infer that Wizards is trying to cut costs. Doing so immediately after a major product line launch strongly implies that 4e sales weren’t up to their expectations.

But it’s all semantics. Because I really am spouting off personal opinion, spinning conspiracy theories, and talking out my ass for the sake of entertainment here.

@Xose: I think you might be thinking of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Clarke’s was sufficiently advanced technology and magic.

Anyway… I think the piracy explanation is a ploy. I don’t think the powers that be at Hasbro are dumb enough to think that pulling PDFs from online stores will reduce piracy noticeably. Ten to fifteen years ago, I might buy that explanation, but not today. It’s not impossible, but I think it’s unlikely.

I’m guessing they have something in the works, something they hope will allow them to more tightly control the PDFs. Something they think will bring them lots of business, because big corporations don’t typically eliminate their own markets on impulse. There has to be some plan behind this, and I’m reasonably sure it’s something more than “Hey, no more pirates!” or even “Let’s kill legacy games.” Yanking PDFs isn’t exactly likely to do the first, and I doubt the second is high enough on their radar to justify the costs involved.

Someone might’ve underestimated those costs, or maybe even fabricated some sort of anti-piracy impact… Wizards has certainly shot itself in the foot before. But I’d wager there’s a better plan behind it than that (or Wizards thinks there is, anyway). This only makes sense as an opening move for something bigger.

Best-case scenario, Wizards makes PDFs available exclusively from their own site with some sort of half-witted DRM scheme.

Oh, it’s definitely a bad move. I can’t even imagine what they might have in store that they think would make up for it. At best, it’s dismissive of a small but vocal portion of their fanbase, and the vocal fans are generally not the ones you want to piss off, because they’re the ones who’ll let everyone know exactly what they think of you.

So, maybe WotC is dismissing that. (They’d practically have to have a Luddite running things, though…)

Or, more likely in my opinion, they’ve got a plan. I have a hard time imagining what, but some form of online store of their own would be my best guess, too. But they’ve probably overestimated the strengths and appeal of their plan, and underestimated the weaknesses.

It’d have to be a hell of a plan, though. Unless they’re just counting on a short memory.

Here’s a plug for an excellent podcast on the topic:

Recently, Wizards of the Coast pulled all PDF sales off the internet. The move sparked a huge debate about the impact of piracy on the game publishing industry. In addition, it re-ignited the debate over the PDF industry’s impact on the friendly local game store. Joining us on the issue is DriveThruRPG/RPGNow marketing director, Sean Patrick Fannon.

http://thegamesthething.com/index.php?post_id=454781